Reading Head of Football Operations suspended for betting breaches

Reading Head of Football Operations Mark Bowen has been suspended for 12 weeks (with eight suspended until the end of 2025/6) and fined £7,000 by the Football Association for breaching betting rules.

The Welshman admitted placing 95 bets on football matches - which were unrelated to Reading - between April 19th 2022 and January 14th 2024. The total amount staked was £8,450.00, with returns of £7,939.02, resulting in a net loss of £510.98.

During the period in question, Bowen was the Manager at AFC Wimbledon and then Head of Football Operations at Reading from May 2022. The report of the FA's Independent Regulatory Commission revealed that Bowen had previously been sanctioned for breaching betting rules in December 2020.

In fact two of the three members of the current Commission - Chairman Simon Parry and member Matt Williams - were on the Commission for that 2020 case. On that occasion, Bowen was found to have placed 36 bets (one of them ‘aggravated’) worth a total of £5,178.58, with a net loss of £2,723.31, over the course of two seasons.

He was fined £2,500 and ordered to pay costs.

For this reason, Bowen had become a ‘monitored customer’, and a ‘well-known betting company’ provided details of his betting activity to the FA, believing it could potentially have breached their rules.

Bowen said ‘at most a dozen’ of these bets had been for a friend, whom the Commission called ’N’, who "had had a long and distinguished career in law enforcement and, since retirement, was engaged in sensitive professional employment."

N was interviewed by the Commission and “accepted that he had asked MB to place football bets on his behalf. He confirmed that at no stage did MB refuse to do so, nor did he reveal to N that he was prohibited from so doing.”

In the period between his interview and the proceedings, N had died. Bowen said he regarded these as ‘not being his bets’, because they were placed for someone else, but the Commission ruled that he had made “a wilful and conscious decision to place football bets for another, knowing that he was prohibited from so doing.”

In their conclusions, the Commission said: “We are satisfied on the evidence before us that MB does have a disorder in relation to gambling and one that he now seeks to address with professional help.”

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