Abstract
Since the mid-2000s, match-fixing i.e. the manipulation of the outcome of sports games for financial gain or to obtain an advantage in a tournament or competition has increasingly started to attract attention as scandals came to light in many countries and in different sports. This paper questions two issues that seem to have developed into axioms in the debate about match-fixing. The first is that the rigging is mainly the work of ‘outsiders’, including, in particular, organised criminals, who ruthlessly target ‘insiders’ (players, officials, clubs and even sports associations) for financial gain. The second is that match-fixing is mostly linked to Asian illegal gambling operators. In practice ‘insiders’ are often better placed to fix matches whereas the illegal Asian gambling market is much less independent from the online gambling industry than one might think.
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Notes
- 1.
A serious crime is a conduct constituting an offence punishable by a maximum deprivation of liberty of at least four years or a more serious penalty.
- 2.
The ‘Integrity in sport weekly media recap’ newsletter is available at www.interpol.int.
- 3.
Theoretically, such an operation could be shut down by forcing a company such as CBCX to annul the contract with a license holder when it is discovered that illegal bookmakers are using the software and have the license revoked in the jurisdiction where it was issued.
- 4.
See, for example, <www.sbo.net> for detailed instructions on how inhabitants of Asian countries can play online.
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Spapens, T. (2021). Match-Fixing. In: Nelen, H., Siegel, D. (eds) Contemporary Organized Crime. Studies of Organized Crime, vol 18. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56592-3_9
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