Van Barneveld withdrew from online darts tournament last year due to match fixing suspicions

Raymond van Barneveld dropped out of an online darts tournament during the Coronavirus lockdown after being suspected of match fixing.

Van Barneveld told this to NOS podcast Gefixt with the police looking into the case but decided to pause it 'pending new information'.

After the match, the Darts Regulatory Authority (DRA) received signals that Van Barneveld had lost deliberately. It led to the tournament coming under scrutiny, but also to Van Barneveld dropping out of the tournament.

"I was kind of done with it," Van Barneveld said of his decision to quit to NOS. "Soon they will be scrutinizing my every match. I don't like that."

Van Barneveld denies that he lost the match on purpose. "I am vehemently against match fixing. I don't like it and will never sell myself."

The match in question was the talk of social media at the time with the fourth day of the tournament seeing Van Barneveld face old rival Martin Adams.

He lost 5-0 to 'Wolfie' averaging 65 with the DRA flagging this up due to suspiciously high bets on the loss of Van Barneveld.

Stress due to being told of high bets

According to research done by NOS during this podcast, betting accounts wagered nearly £60,000 euros on Adams winning and Van Barneveld losing.

This reached the Dutchman with this in turn stressing him out.

"Everything went through my head. Because yes, if I lose immediately, I will have the whole world over me," he continued. "I was completely in a state of stress. That turned out to be true, because I couldn't really hit anything."

Read also

Nijman suspended for five years due to match-fixing, half of sentence possibly suspended

Nijman and McKinstry caught; DRA regulation following incidents

As was previously reported, Wessel Nijman and Kyle McKinstry were two players who did fall foul of this and were caught match fixing during these online tournaments.

This all came about due to the DRA regulating the tournaments and in turn players had to hand over their bank account and telephone details so that they could get to the bottom of match fixing easier.

This in turn saw Van Barneveld withdraw and not fall foul like Nijman: "I understood from my manager that they were going to start an investigation. Then they said: 'Let Ray take it easy'."

Due to Van Barneveld himself not being a professional darts player at the time, the DRA though couldn't investigate with only the police allowed to do anything in which they found no information as of now.