Ivan Toney banned for eight-months for breaching betting rules

Ivan Toney will not play again for Brentford or England this year after he was banned from football for eight months after accepting 232 breaches of the English FA’s rules on betting.

Toney was expected to be hit with a heavy punishment after he was subject to 262 FA charges at the end of 2022, but the extent of the ban has still surprised many within the game. Under the terms of the sanction, Toney will be suspended from playing until January 2024 and cannot train with his Brentford team-mates until September.

“Ivan Toney has been suspended from all football and football-related activity with immediate effect for eight months, which runs up to and including January 16th 2024, fined £50,000 and warned as to his future conduct for breaches of the FA’s betting rules,” the FA said in a statement.

“The Brentford FC forward was charged with 262 breaches of FA Rule E8 in total between February 25th 2017 and January 23rd 2021. The FA subsequently withdrew 30 of these breaches and he admitted to the remaining 232.

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“His sanctions were subsequently imposed by an independent regulatory commission following a personal hearing. He is permitted to return to training only with his club for the final four months of his suspension starting from September 17th 2023.”

The FA will shortly publish the written reasons for its decision, with Toney charged under Rule E8 which bans players from betting on games, asking others to do so on their behalf or sharing privileged information for betting purposes. Previous high-profile cases have seen Kieran Trippier banned for 10 weeks and fined £70,000 after bets were placed on his prospective transfer from Tottenham to Atletico Madrid, while Joey Barton was the subject of an 18-month sanction for more than 1,000 breaches of Rule E8.

Toney has enjoyed a highly successful season on the field, scoring 20 goals in the Premier League and making his international debut for England. His punishment also comes at a time when football is reluctantly confronting its ingrained relationship with the gambling industry.

The Premier League recently announced a voluntary ban on shirt sponsorship by betting companies, but the presence of gambling advertising remains pervasive at matches of all levels, with Sky Bet the title sponsor of the EFL. Brentford’s owner, Matthew Benham, meanwhile, is himself a former professional gambler and the founder of SmartOdds, a company that provides data services to companies “looking to outsmart the sports betting markets”.

Anti-gambling campaigners criticised Toney’s punishment. The Big Step, which wants to end gambling advertising and sponsorship in football, posted four images on Twitter of Ivan Toney holding personal awards festooned with gambling advertising, alongside the message: “If you force young people to endorse addictive products, don’t be surprised if they use them.”

Matt Zarb-Cousin of the organisation Clean Up Gambling tweeted: “Forced to promote gambling as a footballer, authorities allowed bookies to turn the sport into a series of random betting events prone to match fixing – like time of first throw and number of corners – while player safeguards amount to sanctions in line with skipping a drugs test.” – Guardian