One man and his pie: betting and its continued influence in football

This week it’s been impossible not to hear the name Wayne Shaw. Before Sutton United were drawn against Arsenal in the FA Cup he was just a face known to circle of non-league football fans, but now he’s climbed up a few more rungs on the old fame ladder.

Shaw, a 45-year-old backup goalkeeper-cum-coach at Sutton United, found himself in hot water after eating a pie (or pasty, if you take his word for it) on the sidelines as his club went down to Premier League opposition. But what at first seemed like an unprofessional joke soon turned out to have a slightly darker edge.

Before the game, Sutton announced that they had struck a one-game sponsorship with Sun Bets to replace their regular sponsor on the front of their shirts. On the face of it, you could say fair enough. This company are going to give them what they probably earn in a year for just one game. On the other hand, it was The Sun.

In hindsight, we should have smelled a stunt coming a mile away. As Shaw wrapped his mouth around that pie (pasty) someone, somewhere, was making a few quid off it, and it’s now all blown up in his face as he was made to step away from the club and now both Sutton and Sun Bets are being investigated by the FA and the gambling commission respectively.

This, if we’re not careful, could become a worrying trend in football. Betting companies are already working their way deeper into football and are now displaying that their power at bending clubs over a barrel and delivering a spanking.

Over the years a number of gambling companies have lent their sponsorship to be emblazoned on the front of shirts. The list is exhaustive: Betway, 32 Red, Genting, Dafabet, Tombola, Bet 365, bwin, Mansion, Bet East and Sport Pesa, to name a few, while the Football League is also sponsored by Sky Bet.

In the past, Tobacco and drinks sponsorship was visible across sport, before advertising for the former was wiped out completely. It is likely that there will be similar pressure to reduce betting’s presence in the coming years as the number of clubs sponsored by gaming services has increased its share in the Premier League from 25% to 50% over the past five years.

However, with the government’s laxed views on gambling sponsorship and the increase in mobile betting apps, it’s not likely that that pressure will amount to much.

There’s now a betting advert starring Jurgen Klopp. Let that sink in. One of the most revered managers in the game is now hawking odds for BetVictor. How, or why this has happened only highlights the influence these ompanies now have in the game. Surely he can’t have needed the money.

But in the past, where they’d got to the likes of Chris Kamara, Ronaldo and er…Carlton Palmer, they’ve now shown they can get to those still relevant. That might sound harsh, but Klopp is a big, big draw and actively involved in the game at the very highest level.

Now they’ve managed to wave enough cash at some poor bloke who didn’t stop to think of the consequences once the cameras were rolling. It’s a bit of fun some will say, but in the simple act of eating a pie (pasty) in a dugout he’s managed to allow a media organ to debase him, and his club, on live TV. It was meant to be a proud night for a small club thrust into a circumstance bigger than themselves, and now it’s been reduced to a cheap joke.

Despite their size and the DIY nature of the club, it’s a good thing that the FA and the Gambling Commission are coming down on them. Make no mistake, when it’s done properly, guerilla marketing is a wonderful thing. A lot of people didn’t know Sun Bets existed before this week, but now, thanks to this, everyone knows who they are.

It might sound a bit harsh to want the FA to take action. Sutton seem like a decent enough club, but that alone is not enough. It needs to be clear that this is not okay, to allow this to go unpunished will set a dangerous precedent for the future.

Not only will this allow the floodgates for betting companies to play a bigger part in shaping the game to suit their revenues, but it’ll also sanitise the game. Football already has that problem on so many fronts, and while it’s important to have a sense of humour about the sport, when it’s so obviously staged it takes away the comical element. Do we really want to become used to this?

It is hard not to feel bad for the guy, though. He probably devoted a lot of time and effort to the club and now it’s been taken away because he just didn’t think. But that’s banter for you, isn’t it? There’s already a petition doing the rounds to reinstate him, led by someone that loves banter and signed by people uttering the same rhetoric: it’s only banter.

Humour is vital, not just to sport but to life in general, so you have to say it’s a natural rise, albeit a slightly nefarious one, but where do you draw the line? There’s already so much that gets swept under the banter rug and now bribery — because let’s be honest, that’s exactly what it was — is now a part of that.

I hate this incident because it puts me on the same side as the authorities. Just like if you laugh at a joke in poor taste, you become implicit, it’s the same principle.

Someone profited off that. A lot of people did. I don’t bet, nor do I have a problem with it. I get how and why it makes things more exciting, but only when it’s fair, only when there is still an element of unpredictability involved.

But then, on the same token, only in the UK could a man lose his job because he ate a pie (pasty).

He’ll likely be set for life either way, though. He’ll be on Celebrity Big Brother next year or something. Or he’ll join Klopp and Ray Winstone as the face of some betting agency. At worst he’ll be a meme, appearing to remind you that another year has passed since a man ate a pie (pasty) at a football match.

It’ll be tomorrow’s chip paper I’m sure, but there is a danger that it could set the standard for future stunts. Gaming the system it may be, but when we sneer at corruption elsewhere can we really afford to stand by and just let this kind of thing keep happening?

I don’t know, maybe I just don’t see what’s so funny about a man eating a pie.