A ‘perfect storm’ of corruption, money troubles, cultural issues and the Covid-19 lockdown led to snooker’s biggest match-fixing scandal, investigators have told BBC Sport.
Liang Wenbo and Li Hang were given lifetime bans and eight others – including major winners Yan Bingtao and Zhao Xintong – were handed suspensions earlier this year.
Artificial Intelligence, specialist Mandarin speakers and mobile phone data extraction were all used to catch the culprits.
Now it is hoped the sanctions will act as a deterrent to potential cheats, while further education and greater involvement are planned at snooker academies.
Bringing in licences for agents and managers is being considered, and players have been warned criminal prosecution is possible if they flout the rules.
How did the scandal unfold?
The allegations against the 10 players included manipulating games, approaching players to cheat, betting on snooker and fixing matches in 2022.
Nine of the players were based in Sheffield and trained at the Ding Junhui Snooker Academy and Victoria’s Snooker Academy in the city.
While there is no blame attached to the academies themselves, the group spent much of their time together, many did not speak English and they became lonely and isolated during the Covid-19 pandemic when they were unable to return to their homeland, which was in lockdown.
“Players relocated to Sheffield to give themselves a better chance with their career,” said Nigel Mawer, who led the World Snooker and Professional Billiards Association’s investigation.
“Inevitably those players who don’t speak English gravitate together. There were two senior players in that group looking to make money through betting.
“You’ve got a corrupt influence in the camp, money shortages and the cultural and Covid issues, it was a perfect storm.”
An independent disciplinary hearing was told Liang’s behaviour was “disgraceful”, putting pressure on young players experiencing financial difficulties to fix matches while Li became involved after initially having a betting account which he used to help younger players gamble.
The cheating mainly revolved around fixing the scores, or the number of frames won in matches.
One corrupt match generated a profit of £30,000 with £5,000 of that going to the player who cheated.
Betting patterns, AI software & mobile phone data
Snooker’s governing body works with technology company Sportradar to monitor suspicious betting patterns.
Tom Harding, the firm’s senior vice president of investigations, told how it was alerted to the corruption.
“It was triggered by four things – the detection of suspicious betting and the reporting of that activity by a betting operator, whistleblower information, and players coming forward saying that they’d been approached to fix matches,” he said.
Sportradar uses artificial intelligence to track betting and was also able to analyse data from nine of the players’ phones.
“Our fraud detections systems are AI-driven technology, and this is monitoring thousands of sporting events each year on behalf of several sporting partners,” said Harding.
“Our technology has calculated odds for fixtures, and what we expect those odds should look like throughout the course of a match or an event.
“We’re also able to extract and analyse the content of mobile devices to a forensic standard.”
He said around 300 hours of time were spent scrutinising messages and internet activity.
“It’s crucially important that our Mandarin speaker analysts were able to analyse this information – not just written messages, but voice notes between players,” he said.
“In this particular investigation, one player may have deleted messages but the player he sent messages to hadn’t, so we’re seeing them on the other side.”
Steps to prevent corruption
An advanced prize money scheme, introduced in October, had been planned before the case but means all 130 professionals on the World Snooker Tour are guaranteed minimum earnings of £20,000 per season.
This should reduce the amount of players who feel financially vulnerable – in December 2022 one of the banned players, Chang Bingyu, had less than £100 in his bank account, while Bai Langning had run up debts of around £15,000.
“The prize money scheme is a loan that they pay back, but if they don’t win money, we write it off. There previously wasn’t any support directly apart from sponsorship and prize money,” said Mawer.
He admitted improved oversight and liaison was needed with training academies, with help from the Chinese Snooker and Billiards Association.
“Because the academies are proper legitimate academies run by good people, we thought they were in a safe environment this type of issue wouldn’t occur,” said Mawer.
“What we’ve learnt from this is players see the academy staff that look after them as almost like parents, so when they’re going to be naughty, they’re going to keep it away from their parents.
“We need to have a greater intervention now with the academies, and a key part of that is the Players’ Association is going to go there and we’re going to go in as well and liaise.”
WPBSA chairman Jason Ferguson said: “One of the things we’re moving into is the licensing of managers and agents. This is a key process in understanding who is looking after those players.
“Education has to be the key here. It has to be, this is the World Snooker Tour, this is how to behave, and we don’t tolerate anything like this is this sport. And that’s a message we’ve sent in this case.
“While sometimes in people’s lives everything is glamorous, they’re earning lots of money, everything is great, there are also some tough times. And it could be anything, it could be going through divorce or it could be other problems that causes the vulnerability.
“Monitoring that vulnerability and staying on track is key. We will be working with small groups of players on the tour from time to time. We’ve found that to be the most effective.”
‘Snooker in better place’ after bans
Five of the suspensions were increased by the Chinese authorities, and Ferguson has warned criminal action cannot be ruled out in any future cases.
“The behaviour of some individuals in this last case was absolutely despicable, especially older players who had good careers using young vulnerable players to do the dirty work,” said the former professional player.
“I was delighted to see those lifetime bans, they were well deserved.
“There is a risk to anyone that gets involved in match fixing of criminal prosecution, and that’s not just in China, that’s actually here and everywhere else.”
Despite the headlines around the biggest corruption case snooker has seen, Mawer is upbeat about the future.
“We monitor 3,000-plus matches every year. Since the beginning of 2018, there have been 13 matches we know have been fixed, of which 10 were in the Chinese case we’ve just had – it’s 0.1% of matches that have come to notice,” he said.
“As a sport we are incredibly clean and the vast majority of players are there to make a living and do well out of the sport.
“I think snooker’s in a good place, and actually, although it’s a strange thing to say, I think it’s in a better place after the case we’ve just had.”
