6. Match-Fixing

The inquiry that followed uncovered that players from FC Schalke had also accepted money to lose against Bielefeld; nearly all the Hertha and Schalke players were subsequently banned from football for varying terms.

Although many known cases of owners buying results relate to relegation struggles, there may equally be an incentive to manipulate where a club is fighting for a championship. In 1993, the French football club Marseille reached the European Cup Final and was also competing closely for the domestic title. Evidence emerged that management at Marseille paid players on an opposing and much weaker club to lose their league match against Marseille as the season approached its climax (Boniface et al. 2012, p. 25). Probably Marseille would have won anyway but the championship was so valuable that increasing even further the probability of three points from the particular fixture made the ‘investment’ worthwhile.

Worthy of particular note is that these effects were found only on the men’s tour. There was no evidence of collusive fixing amongst women players. The broader literature on the relative propensities of men and women to engage in corruption is inconclusive but one strand of thought is that women are less likely to commit corrupt acts because of greater risk aversion (fear of sanctions) and less trust in potential partners in collusion. For a concise survey, see Boehm (2015).

Another situation where collusion might occur is where a particular result would serve the interests of both competitors in a match. An archetypical and infamous example was the Austria-West Germany FIFA World Cup match in 1982 in Gijón where both countries would qualify for the knockout stage if and only if West Germany won by either one or two goals. Such a result occurred and many commentators thought the outcome looked manufactured. There are numerous other examples of a mutually beneficial outcome being achieved whether through explicitly or implicitly agreed collusion, taking advantage of weak features in tournament design. In other circumstances, there may even be advantages actually to lose, perhaps to influence whom one will play in the next round (four badminton pairs were disqualified from the 2012 Olympics for attempting to lose in these circumstances). In US sport, draft-pick rules may incentivise clubs to lose matches late in the season to fall further in the rankings and gain a higher-place in the draft for the following season (Taylor and Trogdon 2002, see also ‘Lakers can win by losing, so that’s what they should do’, Los Angeles Times, April 6, 2017). All these sorts of situation could be considered morally ambiguous since here manipulation involves taking advantage of, rather than breaking, the rules. This puts the onus on organisers to check that rules are incentive compatible (Dagaev and Sonin 2017, demonstrate that, in European football, they often are not).

Another possible source of manipulation might be the sports league itself. For example, it might pressure referees to manufacture a win for a team which is losing a best-of-five series in order to extend the series and capture more revenue. Or it may encourage referees to treat star players leniently because they bring in the television audience. Accusations such as these have been made often but not proven. There is, however, a substantial academic literature on home team bias by football referees. This might be unconscious bias because of crowd pressure but an alternative explanation is that referee behaviour is aligned with the commercial interests of the League, generally served by keeping fans happy. Most tickets are purchased by home fans.

http://​en.​rfi.​fr/​sports/​20150711-french-handball-player-found-guilty-match-fixing, Accessed August 13, 2017.

The list is not exhaustive. Interpol publishes a fortnightly digest of media reports of sports manipulation, the Integrity in Sport Bi-Weekly Bulletin (www.​interpol.​int/​Crime-areas/​Crimes-in-sport/​Integrity-in-sport). The perusal of a few issues will give a flavour of how pervasive the problem seems to have become.

The Report (the ‘Black Book’) is downloadable from: https://​www.​fifpro.​org/​en/​projects-partners/​don-t-fix-it/​black-book, Accessed August 14, 2017.

The Survey (2017) was carried out as part of the Fix The Fixing project funded by the European Commission. See www.​theicss.​org/​en/​news/​read/​35-athletes-believe-matches-at-their-level-were-fixed-says-forthcoming-stud, Accessed August 13, 2017.

In an early contribution, Wolfers (2006) compared US college basketball results with bookmaker spreads. He noted the unexpectedly high frequency with which favourites won but by a little less than the spread. He attributed this bulge in the distribution of results to ‘point shaving’, where a strong team manipulates the result such that it wins on the court but bets on its opponent win in the wagering market. He concluded that about 1% of college basketball matches in his sample of more than 44,000 had been manipulated for betting gain. However, it should be noted that some authors have dissented from his interpretation of the data (for a review, see Borghesi 2015).

Forrest and McHale (2015) conducted an independent audit of Sportradar’s system in the context of European football matches. They concluded that the contractor was cautious in its decisions on which potentially suspicious matches were to be reported to the sports governing body, implicitly prioritising specificity over sensitivity of the screen. This could imply that the proportion of matches reported is properly considered as a lower-bound estimate of the proportion actually subject to manipulation.

The mechanics of how the market operates, for example how potential corruptees are approached, were described and discussed in Hill (2009b). Since then, approaches via social media present new opportunities for recruiting players. In addition to the classic model of external parties buying fixes from players and referees, possible modi operandi of fixers includes purchase of failing clubs and subsequent transferring in of pre-corrupted players or coaches (cases in Belgium and Finland, Boniface et al. 2012) and even formation of new leagues specifically to serve as vehicles for fixing (state-level leagues in Indian cricket, www.​pinkcitypost.​com/​rajputana-cricket-league-rpl-match-fixing-scandal-14-arrested-rs-38-47-lakh-seized/​, Accessed August 6, 2017).

Most commonly the sanction would be a ban from the sport, which would translate into a money sum as the present value of loss of future earnings.

It might be suspected that professional sports players are in fact typically risk-lovers. The route into the profession usually requires costly investment in training during adolescence, not least in terms of foregone future-income-generating effort in education; but few of those who reach the standard to be considered for entry succeed subsequently in being recruited and retained by the sport. Those making that big investment therefore take a big gamble, revelatory of risk-love. Risk-loving players may accept a bribe even if the mathematically expected benefit falls a little short of the mathematically expected cost.

American college sports, subject to many fixing scandals, represent an illustrative case. Players are not (supposed to be) paid at all but there is a substantial volume of betting in an illegal and therefore unregulated market.

China and a few American states provide for pools-type betting but not wagering on single events. Pools betting is more akin to lottery products in terms of operator takeout and long odds against winning. It carries low integrity risk because winning depends on correct prediction of several sports events.

The figures do not include betting on horse racing which, in most jurisdictions, is treated legally as a separate category of gambling from sports betting. Indeed, in many, horse race betting is permitted on- and even off-track despite a general prohibition of sports betting.

The definitions of ‘legal’ and ‘illegal’ are controversial. The source of the estimates quoted here defines as illegal any bet which is unauthorised in the jurisdiction where the bettor is located. Thus, a bet placed by an American resident with a licensed Caribbean online operator would be deemed illegal even though the operator is not breaking its local law by accepting the bet. Operators in offshore gambling hubs typically argue that legality should be defined by point of supply rather than point of consumption.

Forrest (2012b, p. 35) tabulated trends in odds, at the bookmaker Ladbrokes, on English Premier League football matches; implicit bookmaker commission fell from 11.1% of stakes in 2000–2001 to 6.1% in 2010–2011.

https://​www.​betangel.​com/​blog_​wp/​2017/​02/​04/​the-growth-and-growth-of-inplay, Accessed August 14, 2017.

The popularity of in-play betting allowed sports to develop a new and significant revenue source. Data, preferably with pictures, must be transmitted fast and reliably from the stadium to the betting market if the latter is to function efficiently. Sports themselves control their stadia and the facilities they offer, so are best placed to organise and charge for data supply to the betting industry. However, some critics argue that by providing data sports facilitate the operation of the market and raise integrity risk.

High volume professional bettors from Europe will usually bet through Asian agents rather than with European bookmakers because European operators typically impose low betting limits, offer worse odds and close accounts of consistently successful customers.

In this case, betting was in the total goals market. From the evidence of criminal trials, fixers in football will make their profits by wagering, pre-play and in-play, in the markets on the result of the match, the total number of goals and the number of goals scored by a particular team. These markets offer the most liquidity. Betting operators offer dozens of other markets, some of which relate to events, such as the number of red cards, which might seem easy to manipulate. However, these markets are not typically of interest to fixers because liquidity is low and so therefore is maximum feasible bet size. These small markets are not of great interest to criminals because prospective profitability from fixing is too low. Similarly, cricket fixers seek to manipulate the result or team totals while in basketball liquidity lies primarily in the markets on the result and the total points in the match.

Further, the English season is at a time of year when relatively little cricket product is available from the rest of the World.

When matches take place is another relevant factor. For example, football is a relatively minor sport within Finland which itself is a small country. But there is at times intense Asian betting on Finnish matches because its season covers the summer months when other European football leagues are on an extended break. Leisure bettors therefore turn to Finland and it is the liquidity supplied by leisure bettors which provides the camouflage that allows fixers to operate in the market.

Tim Donaghy was sentenced to fifteen months in prison for attempting to manipulate total match points at the behest of a criminal gang (http://​www.​espn.​co.​uk/​nba/​news/​story?​id=​3509440, Accessed August 16, 2017).

The highest-level case involved Asad Rauf who had umpired in 170 internationals but whose career ended when convicted of fixing in the Indian Premier League (http://​www.​bbc.​co.​uk/​sport/​cricket/​35558872, Accessed August 16, 2017).

A more subtle way to disrupt corrupt transactions is to attempt to destabilise them by creating conditions which undermine the trust which must underpin any relationship necessarily unprotected by contract law. The general corruption literature explores the issue of leniency for corruptees who self-report ( e.g. see Feess and Walzi 2004). A practical illustration is that the first firm in America to report collusion within an illegal cartel has penalties waived. This should make co-conspirators wary because their partners may have an incentive to reveal the existence of a network if they come to fear the authorities may learn about it. Use of game theory to explore parallel situations in sport is a possible avenue for future research.

A government considering legalisation may be drawn to a model which emphasises the generation of tax revenue or monopoly profits which it itself can capture. But delivering poor value for consumers may leave many of them preferring to continue dealing with the illegal sector.

https://​www.​coe.​int/​en/​web/​conventions/​full-list/​-/​conventions/​treaty/​215.​

This is consistent with conclusions drawn from general analyses of the prevalence of corruption (outside sport). For example, Fan et al. (2009) found that firms were more likely to report having to pay bribes the lower a country’s per capita income.

However, all economic policies have the potential for unforeseen and undesired consequences. At Wimbledon, 2017, seven players retired injured during first round matches on the first two days, depriving spectators of meaningful contests. Critics alleged that players were coming to Wimbledon knowing they were unfit to complete a match but coming anyway because the payment just for taking part in the tournament is high (http://​www.​independent.​co.​uk/​sport/​tennis/​wimbledon-2017-roger-federer-alexandr-dolgopolov-news-latest-a7823446.​html). Some might view such behaviour as itself a form of abuse or manipulation of sport.

see footnote 8 above.

https://​www.​interpol.​int/​Media/​Files/​INTERPOL…/​IGLC/​Match-fixing-biggest-threat, Accessed August 18, 2017.