Last week, Handbollskanalen revealed that a Swedish club had reported a case of match-fixing to WhistleB. Club representatives then told Handbollskanalen that they had not received any video of the match. Now Handbollskanalen has found the missing video of the full match.
Since our original article was published, other media have revealed the name of the Swedish club. We therefore see no reason to hide the team name. In October, H65 Höör faced SPD Radnicki Kragujevac away in the qualifiers for the European Champions League. It is this match in Serbia that has been reported by H65.
During the match, there were so many situations that favored the home team that H65 chose to report the match for alleged match-fixing to WhistleB, an independent whistleblower service. People from the Swedish club that Handbollskanalen were in contact with said, among other things, that they ”had never seen anything like it” and that they were ”100 percent sure that the match was fixed”. The statistics from the match showed 14–3 in 7-meter penalties to the home team’s advantage. When the second leg match was played in Sweden, it was a completely different game – which meant that H65 won big, and advanced to the third round based on aggregated results.
But despite the facts mentioned and the reporting to WhistleB, nothing more has happened in the case. A problem for the European Handball Federation has been that they lack further evidence, including a video from the match. There is conflicting information as to whether the match was broadcast on TV or not. H65 believes that the match was broadcast as players and leaders were interviewed before and after the match in front of TV cameras. Despite this, the Swedish club could not get hold of a match video.
Handbollskanalen has been in contact with various rights holders, but both EHF and Serbian TV channels have expressed that they don’t hold the rights and can’t access film material from the match in Serbia.
Now Handbollskanalen has managed to find a video from the match. Through several interviews with experts on match-fixing over the last week, Handbollskanalen has learned and written about the fact that it is very difficult to concretely prove that a match was fixed. On one hand, strange fluctuations in the odds of betting companies can not be completely verified, and on the other hand, it is difficult to prove when individual players or referees act suspiciously. But we can safely conclude that the number of independent sources who have seen the same peculiar things during the match as H65 means that our publication does not rest solely on the comments of H65.
Our conclusion is that there is only one way to approach this – to let those interested and knowledgeable in handball make their own assessment. Therefore, we intend to let experts watch the video and comment on what they see and how they interpret it.
But naturally, we do not stop there – watch the full match in the video player below.
The match is available to download here.
READ MORE: Handbollskanalen reveals: Match-fixing in the EHF Champions League in autumn 2021
READ MORE: Handbollskanalen reveals, part 2: Swedish club has reported match-fixing
READ MORE: Source confirms: Match fixed in the Champions League
READ MORE: Match-fixing, part 4: A giant scandal – Handbollskanalen dives deep
READ MORE: EHF on suspected matches: ”No legal proceedings have been initiated”
READ MORE: Match-fixing, part 6: ”The work against match-fixing is 15-20 years behind”
READ MORE: Match-fixing, part 7: This is how the Swedish Handball Association works against match-fixing
READ MORE: Match-fixing, part 8: Sportradar explains: ”Since the pandemic, match-fixing has exploded”
READ MORE: Match-fixing, part 9: The survey – one in every four Swedish elite players knows of a fixed match
READ MORE: Match-fixing, part 10: EHF starts match-fixing training for referees and delegates
READ MORE: Match-fixing, part 11: SHF responds to the survey: ”The figure is much too high”
READ MORE: Match-fixing, part 12: Professor of match-fixing on ”the perfect crime”