Shining Light on World Cup Betting

We’re a little over a week away from the start of the 2010 World Cup. The action will kick off in Samoa on August 25 at the Pacific Games where a bunch of countries that have no shot of making it to South Africa will go through the motions with the top three joining New Zealand in a two-legged tournament with the winner going on to play the fifth place team from Asia. Clear on that? Good.

Without much in the way of on the field news taking place, we are left with a couple of off the field World Cup-related stories. The first involves our good friends at FIFA who say they are absolutely committed to preventing match fixing during the 2010 World Cup qualifiers. They’ve set up an independent company whose sole purpose is to make sure that irregular betting doesn’t take place during matches like Samoa versus Tonga. This is a good idea, of course, but we’ll have to wait and see how effective it turns out to be. With so many games and with the spread of online gambling the possibility for foul play is always present.

The second bit of news involves the South African government which assures us all that no matter what the lights will stay on at the stadiums even with the games being played during the electricity-strapped winter months. Short of that, fans will be given a box of matches and will have to light a new one each minute so that those of us watching on tv can see the action.