Steve Menary is part of a team of journalists investigating the intersection of sports betting, data and match-fixing. The group, which also includes Philippe Auclair, Jack Kerr and Samindra Kunti, won the 2023 Investigative Journalism for Europe (IJ4EU) impact award for their Devil in the Data investigation. Other grant funded investigations by the team, which previously included Andy Brown are Play Local, Fix Global, FC Cyber Slavery and Under the Radar in Russia.

We spoke with Menary about their recent investigation — “Illegal offshore betting websites offer wagers on U.S. college soccer games” — as well as broader sports gambling issues.

SOCCER AMERICA: What led to your coverage of offshore gambling on American college soccer? How did you discover it?

STEVE MENARY: With a group of colleagues [listed above], we have been researching the links between sports data, illegal and offshore betting and match-fixing for a number of years, particularly in soccer.

The changes in betting regulation in the USA were obviously going to have an impact so it was an area we wanted to look at and the Fund for Investigative Journalism awarded us a Seedcorn grant to explore that.

SA: What factors go into a betting firm picking the games that you found available to wager on?

STEVE MENARY: Because there is a time lag on all broadcasts and streams of sports events, no betting companies — offshore or onshore — will offer in-play betting [aka live betting] just using the stream as they can be beaten by someone at the game. They need live data from someone at the ground and I imagine the availability of scouts at the game was a deciding factor.

Wherever the data scouts are available, they’re going to pick those games. Where they’re recruiting them from is a mystery. The data scouts go to those games, and people probably aren’t even aware. They’re seeing someone on their phones — tap, tap, tap, tap — and think, Oh, he’s on Instagram or whatever. He’s not. He’s collecting data from these games.

SA: The data scout works for a data company that supplies the betting firm and prevents gamblers from winning prop bets made after the action occurred?