Vietnam considering legal soccer betting
HANOI - Vietnam is working on a plan to legalize soccer betting to generate money for the country's sports industry and curb rampant illegal gambling, an official said Thursday.
The plan will be submitted to the prime minister for approval by the end of this month, said Le Hung Dung, vice president of Vietnam Football Federation.
"If everything goes smoothly, we hope to start offering legal soccer betting next year," he said.
Dung said five international betting companies, including the U.K.'s Ladbrokes, Austria's Bet and Win and Singapore's S.Pool, have been in contact with Vietnamese sports authorities to help with the plan.
Vietnam's soccer betting market is estimated to be worth about $1 billion a year.
"We cannot completely wipe out illegal betting," Dung said. "But it would help to reduce illegal betting."
Authorities uncovered 348 betting cases involving 1,554 people during the World Cup in Germany earlier this year, confiscating $300,000, Thursday's Liberated Saigon newspaper quoted a police report as saying.
Soccer in Vietnam has been rocked with recent series of match-fixing and betting scandals with scores of players, officials and referees arrested.
The country's Transport Ministry also was embroiled in a scandal over the past year that allegedly involved millions of dollars in funds skimmed from infrastructure projects to pay for luxury cars and gambling on European soccer matches.
The transport minister resigned and several in his ministry were arrested.
The Associated Press - September 14, 2006.
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