Match fixing

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Match fixing or game fixing in organized sports occurs when a match is played to a completely or partially pre-determined result. Where the sporting competition in question is a race then the incident will be referred to as race fixing. Games that are deliberately lost are sometimes called thrown games. When a team intentionally loses a game to obtain a perceived future competitive advantage rather than gamblers being involved, the team is often said to have tanked the game instead of having thrown it.

Thrown games, when motivated by gambling, require contacts (and normally money transfers) between gamblers, players, team officials, and/or referees. These contacts and transfer can sometimes be found, and lead to prosecution, by law or by the sports league(s). In contrast, tanking is internal to the team and very hard to prove. Often, substitutions made by the coach designed to deliberately increase the team's chances of losing (frequently by having one or more key players sit out, often using minimal or phantom injuries as a public excuse for doing this), rather than ordering the players actually on the field to intentionally underperform, were cited as the main factor in cases where tanking has been alleged.

Contents 1 Reasons for and means of fixing matches 1.1 Getting a better draft pick 1.2 Better playoff chances 1.3 More favorable schedule next year 1.4 Match fixing by referees 1.5 Match fixing to a draw or a fixed score 1.6 Individual performance in team sports 2 History 2.1 Japan 3 Match fixing and gambling today 4 Recent incidents 5 Outside of sports 6 References

[edit] Reasons for and means of fixing matches

Match fixing is often motivated by agreements with gamblers. But even if there are no gamblers involved, sometimes a team may deliberately lose to gain some perceived future advantage. This section explores many possible motivations for not playing as hard as possible to win.

[edit] Getting a better draft pick

In the NHL and NBA, teams near the bottom of the standings have sometimes been accused of throwing games at the end of the season to finish with the worst record in the league — thereby gaining the first draft pick. To deter this, these leagues now use a draft lottery which does not guarantee the first pick to the team at the bottom of the standings. Other leagues such as the Australian Football League and the NFL do not make use of a lottery, which leads to suspicions of match fixing, especially since top draft picks can have top careers. Like the NFL, MLB does not conduct a draft lottery, though it is very unlikely that an MLB team would tank a game for a draft pick because of the series of minor leagues that draft picks have to go through, and the fact that a first round draft pick may go his entire professional career without appearing in a single major league game.

[edit] Better playoff chances

In the NBA (but not in the NHL, which re-seeds teams after the first playoff round), there have also been allegations of teams throwing games in order to finish in sixth rather than fifth place in the conference standings, thus enabling the team in question to evade a possible playoff match with the conference's top seed until the final round of playoffs in that conference (for more details see single-elimination tournament). For example, the 2006 Los Angeles Clippers allegedly tanked late season games so they could finish with the 6th seed and play the 8th-ranked team in the league's Western Conference, the Denver Nuggets, who were the 3rd seed by way of winning their division. Another quirk in the league's playoff system gave the Clippers even more of an incentive to tank. The NBA is the only one of the four major professional sports leagues of the United States in which home advantage in the playoffs is based strictly on regular-season record without regard to seeding. If the Clippers had finished with the 5th seed in the West, they would have had to face the Dallas Mavericks, who despite being the 4th seed had the second-best record in the conference, which would give the Mavericks home advantage. However, the Clippers would have home advantage in a series against the Nuggets by virtue of a better overall record. If tanking was indeed their strategy, it worked, as the Clippers easily won their first round series. Following the 2006 season, the NBA changed its playoff format so that the best second-place team in each conference would be able to obtain up to the #2 seed should it have the second-best conference record. ^[1] On occasion, an NFL team has also been accused of throwing its final regular-season game in an attempt to "choose" its possible opponent in the subsequent playoffs. For example, in the closing game of the 2004 season, the Indianapolis Colts faced the Denver Broncos. With a win, the Broncos would advance to the playoffs as a wild card and face the Colts as their first round playoff opponent. It would seem the Colts had little incentive to win as their loss would ensure that they would play a team they dominated in the 2003 Wild Card game. Sure enough, the Colts rested their starters, lost the game, and went on to blow out the Broncos the following week in the playoffs.

Perhaps the most notable example of this was when the San Francisco 49ers, who had clinched a playoff berth, lost their regular-season finale in 1988 to the Los Angeles Rams, thereby keeping the New York Giants (who had defeated the 49ers in the playoffs in both 1985 and 1986, also injuring 49er quarterback Joe Montana in the latter year's game) from qualifying for the postseason; after the game, Giants quarterback Phil Simms angrily accused the 49ers of "laying down like dogs."

A more recent example of possible tanking occurred in the ice hockey competition at the 2006 Winter Olympics. In Pool B, Sweden was to face Slovakia in the last pool match for both teams. Sweden coach Bengt-Åke Gustafsson publicly contemplated tanking against Slovakia, knowing that if his team won, their quarterfinal opponent would either be Canada, the 2002 gold medalists. or the Czech Republic, 1998 gold medalists. Gustafsson would tell Swedish television "One is cholera, the other the plague." Sweden lost the match 3-0; the most obvious sign of tanking was when Sweden had a five-on-three power play with five NHL stars—Peter Forsberg, Mats Sundin, Daniel Alfredsson, Nicklas Lidström, and Fredrik Modin—on the ice, and failed to put a shot on goal. If he was seeking to tank, Gustafsson got his wish; Sweden would face a much less formidable quarterfinal opponent in Switzerland. Canada would lose to Russia in a quarterfinal in the opposite bracket, while Sweden went on to win the gold medal, defeating the Czechs in the semifinals.^[2]

[edit] More favorable schedule next year

NFL teams have been accused of throwing games in order to obtain a more favorable schedule the following season; this was especially true between 1977 and 1993, when a team finishing last in a five-team division would get to play five of its eight non-division matches the next season against other last-place teams.

[edit] Match fixing by referees

In addition to the match fixing that is committed by players, coaches and/or team officials, it is not unheard of to have results manipulated by corrupt referees. Since 2004, separate scandals have erupted in prominent sports leagues in Portugal, Germany, Brazil and the United States, all of which concerned referees who fixed matches for gamblers. Many sports writers have speculated that in leagues with high player salaries, it is far more likely for a referee to become corrupt since their pay in such competitions is usually much less than that of the players.

[edit] Match fixing to a draw or a fixed score

Match fixing does not necessarily involve deliberately losing a match. Occasionally, teams have been accused of deliberately playing to a draw (or a fixed score) where this ensures some mutual benefit (e.g. both teams advancing to the next stage of a competition.) For example, in the 1982 FIFA World Cup, West Germany played Austria in the last match of group B. A West German victory by 1 or 2 goals would result in both teams advancing; any less and Germany was out; any more and Austria was out (and replaced by Algeria, who had just beaten West Germany). West Germany attacked hard and scored after 10 minutes. Afterwards, the players then proceeded to just kick the ball around aimlessly for the remainder of the match. Algerian supporters were so angered that they waved banknotes at the players, while a German fan burned his German flag in disgust.^[3] By the second half, the ARD commentator de:Eberhard Stanjek refused any further comment on the game, while the Austrian television commentator de:Robert Seeger advised viewers to switch off their sets. As a result, FIFA changed its tournament scheduling for subsequent World Cups so that the final pair of matches in each four team group are played simultaneously.

A more recent and similar example of alleged match fixing in football occurred in the 2004 European Football Championship. Because unlike FIFA, UEFA takes "head-to-head" play into consideration before overall goal difference when ranking teams level on points, a situation arose in Group C where Sweden and Denmark played to a 2-2 draw, which was a sufficiently high scoreline to eliminate Italy (which had lower-scoring draws with the Swedes and Danes) regardless of Italy's result with already-eliminated Bulgaria. Although Italy beat Bulgaria by only one goal and would hypothetically have been eliminated using the FIFA tie-breaker too, some Italian fans bitterly contended that the FIFA tie-breaker would have motivated their team to play harder and deterred their Scandinavian rivals from, in their view, at the very least half-heartedly playing out the match after the score became 2-2.

But the FIFA tie-breaker, or any goal-differential scheme, can cause problems, too. There have been incidents (especially in basketball) where players on a favored team have won the game but deliberately ensured the quoted point spread was not covered (see point shaving). Conversely, there are cases where a team not only lost (which might be honest) but lost by some large amount, perhaps to ensure a point spread was covered, or to grant some non-gambling related favor to the victor. Perhaps the most famous example was the match between Argentina and Peru in the 1978 FIFA World Cup. Argentina needed a four goal victory to advance over Brazil, an almost unheard-of margin at this level of competition, especially since Argentina had a weak offense (6 goals in 5 games) and Peru a stout defence (6 goals allowed in 5 games). Yet somehow, Argentina won 6-0. Much was made over the fact that the Peruvian goalkeeper was born in Argentina, and Peru was dependent on Argentinian grain shipments, but nothing was ever proven.

Although the Denmark-Sweden game above led to calls for UEFA to adopt FIFA's tiebreaking formula for future tournaments, it is not clear this solves the problem - the Argentina-Peru game shows a possible abuse of the FIFA tie-breaker. Proponents of the UEFA tie-breaker argue that it reduces the value of blow-outs, whether these be the result of a much stronger team running up the score or an already-eliminated side allowing an unusually large number of goals. Perhaps the most infamous incident occurred in December 1983 when Spain, needing to win by eleven goals to qualify for the 1984 European Football Championship ahead of the Netherlands, defeated Malta by a score of 12-1 on the strength of nine second half goals. Especially in international football, such lopsided results are seen as unsavoury even they are honest. If anything, these incidents serves as evidence that the FIFA tie-breaker can cause incentives to perpetrate a fix in some circumstances, the UEFA tie-breaker in others.

[edit] Individual performance in team sports

Finally, it should be noted that bookmakers in the early 21st century accept bets on a far wider range of sports-related propositions than ever before. Thus, a gambling-motivated fix might not necessarily involve any direct attempt to influence the outright result, especially in team sports where such a fix would require the co-operation (and prerequsitely, the knowledge) of many people, and/or perhaps would be more likely to arouse suspicion. Fixing the result of a more particular proposition might be seen as less likely to be noticed - for example, scandalized former National Basketball Association referee Tim Donaghy has been alleged to have perpetrated his fixes by calling games in such a manner as to ensure more points than expected were scored by both teams, thus affecting "over-under" bets on the games whilst also ensuring that Donaghy at least did not look to be outright biased. Also, bets are increasingly being taken on individual performances in team sporting events, although it is currently unlikely that enough is bet on an average player to allow someone to place a substantial wager on them without being noticed.

[edit] History

Since gambling pre-dates recorded history it comes as little surprise that evidence of match fixing is found throughout recorded history. The Ancient Olympics were almost constantly dealing with allegations of athletes accepting bribes to lose a competition and city-states which often tried to manipulate the outcome with large amounts of money. These activities went on despite the oath each athlete took to protect the integrity of the events and the severe punishment sometimes inflicted on those who were caught. Chariot racing was also dogged by race fixing throughout its history.

By the end of the 19th century gambling was illegal in most jurisdictions, but that did not stop its widespread practice. Boxing soon became rife with fighters "taking a dive" - probably because boxing is an individual sport which makes its matches much easier to fix without getting caught. Baseball also became plagued by match fixing despite efforts by the National League to stop gambling at its games. Matters finally came to a head in 1919 when eight members of the Chicago White Sox threw the World Series (see Black Sox Scandal). In an effort to restore confidence, Major League Baseball established the office of the Baseball Commissioner, and one of Kenesaw Mountain Landis's first acts was to ban all involved players for life. Strict rules prohibiting gambling persist to this day (See Pete Rose).

[edit] Japan

Yaochō (八百長 , やおちょう^?) is a Japanese word meaning a cheating activity which is committed at places where a match, fight, game, competition, or other contest, is held, where the winner and loser are decided in advance by agreement of the competitors or related people. It is believed that the word "Yaocho" came from the name ("Chobei") of the owner of a vegetable stand (yaoya) during the Meiji period. Created from the first syllable of "Yaoya" and "chobei", the word "yaocho" was created for a nickname of Chobei. Chobei had a friend called "Isenoumi Godayu" (7th Isenoumi stablemaster) with whom he played the game Igo, who had once been a Sumo wrestler "Kashiwado Sogoro" (former shikona was "Kyonosato") and now was a "Toshiyori" (a stablemaster of Sumo). Although Chobei was a better Igo player than Isenoumi, he sometimes lost games on purpose to please Isenoumi, so that Isenoumi would continue to buy merchandise from his shop. Afterward, once people knew of his cheating, they started to use "Yaocho" as a word meaning any decision to win/lose a match in advance by negotiation etc. with the expectation of secondary profit, even though the match seems to be held seriously and fairly.

Economists, using statistical analysis, have shown very strong evidence of match fixing in Sumo wrestling.^[4]

[edit] Match fixing and gambling today

Influenced by baseball's experiences, the NFL and NBA have followed MLB's lead and adopted a hard line against gambling on its games, especially by those directly involved in the league. The NCAA goes as far as to prohibit its athletes and coaches from gambling on any sport in which the NCAA holds a championship, and prohibits venues in championship play to carry advertising for any form of gambling, including state lotteries. Each of these organizations was, and may still be influenced by fears that their games could come under the influence of gamblers in the absence of these tough measures.

In Britain the authorities in both government and sport have taken a softer line on gambling. Sports betting was legalized in the 1960s and organizations such as The Football Association seem to have taken the stance that gambling on their events is inevitable — unlike the American leagues, The FA only prohibits betting on a match by those directly involved in the game in question. In 1964 in the great British football betting scandal of the 1960s was uncovered. A betting ring organized by Jimmy Gauld and involving several Football League players had been fixing matches. The most famous incident involved three Sheffield Wednesday players, including two England international players, that were subsequently banned from football for life and imprisoned after it was discovered they had bet against their team winning in a match against Ipswich Town. A similar scandal had occurred in 1915.

The integrity of horse racing remains an ongoing concern since gambling is an integral part of this sport. Recent allegations of race fixing have centered around the recently-formed betting exchanges which unlike traditional bookmakers allow punters to lay an outcome (that is, to bet against a particular runner). Leading exchange Betfair has responded to the allegations by signing Memorandums of Understanding with the Jockey Club, The FA, the International Cricket Council, the Association of Tennis Professionals and other sporting authorities. These MOUs are evidence of the vast difference between British and American attitudes — as of 2008 it would be almost unthinkable for an American sports league to sign such an agreement with a bookmaker or betting exchange.

It should be noted that while British football has never been rocked by match fixing allegations on the scale of the Black Sox scandal (the aforementioned incidents involved league matches, not major championships), football match-fixing has become a serious problem in parts of Continental Europe.

Cricket has been scandalized by several gambling and match fixing allegations in recent years, culminating in the World Cup investigations of 2007. These highly publicised enquiries were prompted by the surprise defeat of Pakistan in the Cup by Ireland and the subsequent murder investigation into the suspicious death, straight after the match, of Pakistan's head coach Bob Woolmer. Cricket match-fixing and the fallout of the Woolmer case have since become the subject of crime/thriller literature in the novel 'Raffles and the Match-Fixing Syndicate' (2008) by Adam Corres.

The high salaries of some of today's professional athletes likely serves to insulate their leagues from player-instigated match fixing. In the NCAA and in leagues where the salaries are comparatively less (or, in the case of the amateur NCAA, zero), match fixing by players remains a serious concern.

[edit] Recent incidents

• In February 1999 a Malaysian-based betting syndicate was caught attempting to install a remote-control device to sabotage the floodlights at English Premier League team Charlton Athletic's ground with the aid of a corrupt security officer. If the match had been abandoned after half-time, then the result and bets would have stood. Subsequent investigations showed that the gang had been responsible for previously unsuspected "floodlight failures" at West Ham's ground in November 1997, and again a month later at Crystal Palace's ground during a home match of Palace's groundsharing tenant Wimbledon. ^[5][6]

• In 2000 the Delhi police intercepted a conversation between a blacklisted bookie and the South African cricket captain Hansie Cronje in which they learnt that Cronje accepted money to throw matches. The South African government refused to allow any of its players to face the Indian investigation unit, which opened up a can of worms. A court of inquiry was set up and Cronje admitted to throwing matches. He was immediately banned from all cricket. He also named Salim Malik (Pakistan), Mohammed Azharuddin and Ajay Jadeja (India). Jadeja was banned for 4 years. They too were banned from all cricket. As a kingpin, Cronje exposed the dark side of betting, however with his untimely death in 2002 most of his sources also have escaped law enforcement agencies. Two South African cricketers, Herschelle Gibbs and Nicky Boje, are also wanted by the Delhi police for their role in the match fixing saga. A few years before in 1998, Australian legends Mark Waugh and Shane Warne were fined for revealing information about the 'weather' to a bookmaker.

• In June 2004 in South Africa, thirty-three people (including nineteen referees, club officials, a match commissioner and an official of the South African Football Association) were arrested on match-fixing charges.

• In the summer of 2004, Betfair provided evidence of race fixing to City of London Police that led to the arrest of jockey Kieren Fallon and fifteen others on race fixing charges. On 7 December 2007 the judge in the case ordered the jury to find Fallon not guilty on all charges.

• 2005 Bundesliga scandal: In January 2005, the German Football Association (DFB) and German prosecutors launched separate probes into charges that referee Robert Hoyzer bet on and fixed several matches that he worked, including a German Cup tie. Hoyzer later admitted to the allegations; it has been reported that he was involved with Croat gambling syndicates. He also implicated other referees and players in the match fixing scheme. The first arrests in the Hoyzer investigation were made on January 28 in Berlin, and Hoyzer himself was arrested on February 12 after new evidence apparently emerged to suggest that he had been involved in fixing more matches than he had admitted to. Hoyzer has been banned for life from football by the DFB. On March 10, a second referee, Dominik Marks, was arrested after being implicated in the scheme by Hoyzer. Still later (March 24), it was reported that Hoyzer had told investigators that the gambling ring he was involved with had access to UEFA's referee assignments for international matches and Champions League and UEFA Cup fixtures several days before UEFA publicly announced them. Ultimately, Hoyzer was sentenced to serve 2 years and 5 months in prison.

• In July 2005, Italian Serie B champions Genoa was arbitrarily placed last in the division, and therefore condemned to relegation in Serie C1, after it was revealed that they bribed their opponents in the final match of the season, Venezia to throw the match. Genoa won the match 3-2 and had apparently secured promotion to Serie A.

• Brazilian football match-fixing scandal: In September 2005, a Brazilian magazine revealed that two football referees, Edílson Pereira de Carvalho (a member of FIFA's referee staff) and Paulo José Danelon, had accepted bribes to fix matches. Soon afterwards, sport authorities ordered the replaying of 11 matches in the country's top competition, the Campeonato Brasileiro, that had been worked by Edílson. Both referees have been banned for life from football and face possible criminal charges. Brazilian supporters have taken to shout "Edílson" at a referee who they consider to have made a bad call against their team, in a reference to the scandal.

• 2006 Serie A scandal: In May 2006, perhaps the largest match fixing scandal in the history of Italian Serie A football was uncovered by Italian Police, implicating league champions Juventus, and powerhouses AC Milan, Fiorentina, and Lazio. Teams have been suspected of rigging games by selecting favorable referees, and even superstar Italian World Cup team goalkeeper Gianluigi Buffon has been charged with betting on football games. [1] Initially, Juventus were stripped of their titles in 2004-05 and 2005-06, all four clubs were barred from European club competition in 2006-07, and all except Milan were forcibly relegated to Serie B.^[7] After all four clubs appealed, only Juventus remained relegated, and Milan were allowed to enter the third qualifying round of the Champions League. The stripping of Juventus' titles stood.^[8]

• 2007 NBA Referee Scandal: In July 2007 it was revealed that National Basketball Association referee Tim Donaghy had gambled on 10 to 15 games, including games which he refereed. The matter is currently being investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation as well as the NBA.

• 2007 AFL According to former assistant coach, Carlton Blues deliberately underperformed in its last four matches in the 2007 season in a bid to secure better players in the AFL draft.

• 2007 NBA According to Minnesota Timberwolves owner Glen Taylor made comments about Kevin Garnett "tanking it" at the end of the 06-07 season when he went to California to rest his injured knee. In an interview after a game against the Houston Rockets, Garnett denied these accusations and declined to criticize Taylor in the locker room

[edit] Outside of sports

• The 1980s TV game show Starcade had a policy of matching contestants up based on their gaming abilities, which means that after potential contestants had played a number of video games for a certain amount of time, they would be paired up by their total scores. Although it was written in the rules that intentionally doing badly in order to be paired up to someone who really wasn't that good was grounds for disqualification, many contestants did it anyway, and were stripped of any awarded prizes and disqualified.

[edit] References