Finnish Floorball Betting Scandal Unfolds in Malmö: A Shocking Revelation
December 2024.
Finland is set to face Norway in the Floorball World Championship in Malmö.
Two bets stand out prominently beforehand:
■ That two players will score exactly the same number of goals in the match.
■ That players from the major team Classic will score more goals than those from top rival Esport Oilers.
It turns out that the Finnish national team planned to rest three players.
But this is secret information known only to the inner circle – and the trio is still listed in the lineup.
The players being rested all belong to Esport Oilers.
None of the two players predicted to score the same number of goals play a minute in the match.
Strange Bets During the Playoffs
The Finnish state-owned betting company Veikkaus concludes that someone must have leaked insider information used to place bets on the match, reports Yle on Thursday.
This marks the start of a larger investigation – which has recently come to light in Finland and has received significant media attention. In some quarters, the scandal has been compared to the major match-fixing scandal in Finnish baseball in the 1990s.
– This is not the same large-scale scandal, but we don't know everything yet. However, it has damaged the reputation of Finnish floorball. It has been widely reported in all major Finnish media in recent days, says Joel Siltanen, editor-in-chief of the floorball site Pääkallo.
Veikkaus has not found who leaked the information, but when they studied who bet on the World Championship match, they found several players in the Finnish F-Liiga and people around the national team. Many of them also placed significantly higher bets than they had previously.
In the spring, Veikkaus's interest was piqued again.
In the third semifinal of the Finnish playoffs, Classic faced SPV.
The underdog SPV was heavily bet on beforehand. Veikkaus calls it an “exceptional bet.”
When the lineups were then presented, a chaos of illness was noted in Classic where both goalkeepers were missing.
Classic still won the match – and now in retrospect, Veikkaus reports that several people who placed bets on that match have “a clear connection to Classic.”
Classic – which has been Finland's major floorball giant in the past decade – announces on its website that they take the situation very seriously.
“We want to emphasize that we are currently not aware that Classic as a club is suspected of violations or that the club is under investigation. We do not tolerate any illegal activity under any circumstances. We have initiated internal discussions and remind everyone of responsible behavior both on and off the field,” writes the Tampere club.
“A Shocking Situation”
Alongside these two matches, Veikkaus's investigation found a larger fraud scheme.
A dozen male players in the F-Liiga and employees or other people closely connected to teams have bet on league matches during the past two seasons. This is prohibited, according to current agreements and rules in Finland.
In total, it involves betting for tens of thousands of euros (equivalent to hundreds of thousands of Swedish kronor) just during the 2024/25 season.
– This is a shocking and surprising situation. Fortunately, this is extremely rare in Finnish betting, says Mikko Lahti, head of security and risk management at Veikkaus, to Yle.
It is currently unclear whether the scandal could lead to any penalties or other consequences for those involved.