According to the national football association, hundreds of referees in the Turkish professional leagues have taken part in betting on games.
There are 152 referees who are said to have actively placed bets, said the president of the Turkish Football Association (TFF), Ibrahim Haciosmanoglu, according to the Anadolu news agency. Of these, seven are top referees.
Hundreds of referees with betting accounts
Overall, evaluations showed that 371 of 571 active referees in the professional leagues had a betting account. Ten of the accused referees placed more than 10,000 bets, one of them alone 18,227 times, 42 referees each on more than 1,000 football games, said Haciosmanoglu.
Most of the games that were bet on were games in foreign leagues. It remained unclear whether referees were suspected of betting on games that they themselves officiated.
“We will not make exceptions”
The disciplinary committee will now initiate the “necessary procedures,” said Haciosmanoglu, without giving specific details. “We are determined to rid football of any trace of corruption. We will make no exceptions”said the head of the association.
Due to the allegations of bias regularly made against Turkish referees, the Turkish association entrusted the video referee for several Süper Lig games to foreign referees in the spring of 2024.