Abstract
Match fixing to serve betting interests is certainly as old as organised sport itself, for example it is believed to have been common in the case of eighteenth century professional cricket in England. And in the twentieth century, the history of sport even at its most elite levels was punctuated by high-profile scandals, including fixes in the baseball World Series of 1919 and in the South Africa-England cricket series in 1990. For football (soccer), Hill (2010) gathered credible documentary evidence that fixing was far from infrequent in the supposedly Golden Age of the game in England in the 1950s.
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- 1.
Forrest, McHale and McAuley (2008) provide a tabulation of some prominent twentieth century cases.
- 2.
In addition to cases which have been detected, evidence of extensive match fixing in football is also found in survey data. From a large sample of professional footballers, the international federation of player unions reported that 24 % were aware of fixes and 12 % had been approached to take part (FifPro 2012).
- 3.
Playing a weak team was one of the techniques used at the Finnish football club, AC Allianssi, to ensure poor performance. The Club had been purchased by criminal interests (IRIS 2012, p. 29).
- 4.
In Asian betting markets, bets are honoured according to the score at the time a match is abandoned.
- 5.
A risk-loving individual may sell the fix if the expected cost is not much greater than expected benefit Successful sportsmen may include a relatively high proportion of risk-lovers compared with the general population: there is evidence that willingness to engage in risky strategies is a feature of success in sport (for example, Sullowag and Zweigenhaft 2010). Sports players who are successful enough to advance to the professional ranks should therefore include many risk-lovers. It is also known that professional sportsmen are disproportionately interested in gambling, another indicator of risk-love.
- 6.
The term ‘grey market’ has been used in debate to refer to betting markets where the sports book is maintained by a bookmaker which holds a licence issued by a legitimate jurisdiction but where that jurisdiction applies minimal or no regulatory oversight. The largest Asian operators are licensed in the Cagayan Special Economic Zone, Philippines.
- 7.
Finland attracts exceptional betting interest from international markets because it plays part of its season in months when most other countries are on their summer break: it is ‘the only game in town’. It is fair to add that awareness of potential fixing is now high amongst the Finnish public and the country’s media, which one might hope would prevent repetition of past problems.
- 8.
Levitt and Venkatesh (2000) for drug-dealing and Strumpf (2003) for illegal street bookmaking found lower returns in these sectors than in alternative, legal opportunities. This is consistent with criminals exhibiting risk-love such that there is a risk-discount rather than a risk-premium attached to such activities.
- 9.
Similar results were noted for other European football leagues.
- 10.
A literature survey in a report for the European Commission by the Swiss Institute of Comparative Law (2006, Second Part, Chap. 8) pointed to strong findings of high elasticity of demand (sensitivity to price) in gambling markets.
- 11.
For example, most people may want to bet on the result of a football match, where competitive balance restricts the range of odds on offer to not very far from even money. But less conservative bettors (risk lovers) may seek longer-odds bets. When there are enough of them, long-odds products will be supplied to meet their preferences, for example bets on which player will score first. So there is product proliferation.
- 12.
For example, in-play (live) betting was very restricted before the internet because neither clients nor odds-setters could respond fast enough for a viable market to be conducted as events unfolded on the field. Now clients with a fast internet connection can place bets almost instantly and computer algorithms move odds automatically as different incidents occur in the match.
- 13.
In basketball, liquidity is high in the handicap result market and in that on total points. Cricket betting is by far heaviest in markets on the match outcome or the total number of runs in a session.
- 14.
At industry conferences, insiders tend to agree that about 70 % of football and 90 % of tennis on-line stakes are now placed during rather than before a match. However, no published statistics are available to verify these exact figures.
- 15.
It should be emphasised that this is a different argument from that which represents spot fixing as a new phenomenon related to new and novel proposition betting markets. The point was made above that many proposition markets are too illiquid to support large wagers; but some spot fixes may enable profit to be made on the more established markets around the final result.
- 16.
Allowing foreign companies to enter a previously monopolistic national market only if they accept a (low) cap on the proportion of stakes paid out as winnings is clearly in the interests of the established monopolist. The policy may be claimed to be based on making fixing less lucrative. A more obvious argument is that integrity issues require that as much liquidity as possible should be retained within a well-regulated national market rather than induced to migrate to grey markets offshore. This outcome is not promoted by offering consumers poor value-for-money.
- 17.
The screens used by the reviewer are available to broadcasters and shown also at the stadium.
- 18.
Public health campaigns often have disappointing results because too much faith is placed in education. Information about the deleterious effects of smoking has been disseminated to the point where survey evidence (since Viscusi 1990) indicates that a large majority of smokers actually perceive risks as considerably greater than they in fact are. Nevertheless, even buttressed by strong measures on price, participation-rates in Europe have only halved in 50 years.
- 19.
Research would perhaps be appropriate to validate their role. Monitoring systems can provide an indicator for a fix but the statistical algorithms may not necessarily be judged by the courts to have been shown to be sufficiently robust to comprise admissible evidence. Further consideration of how criminals adapt their betting strategies to combat the monitoring systems might also prove valuable.
- 20.
A ‘dead rubber’ is where a match takes place after the winner of the series has already been determined. In the infamous case of the South African cricket captain ‘selling’ the last match of the 1990 series v. England, his team had in fact already won the series. When members of a French handball team appeared to arrange to underperform in an end of season league match, they had already been assured of finishing in first place in the standings.
- 21.
China is an example of a football federation where an active fixer reached the head of the organisation, facilitating his manipulation of football throughout the league (IRIS 2012, p. 45).
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Forrest, D. (2013). Match Fixing: An Economics Perspective. In: Haberfeld, M., Sheehan, D. (eds) Match-Fixing in International Sports. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02582-7_10
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