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Match Fixing: An Economics Perspective
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. © 2013 Springer International Publishing Switzerland. All rights are reserved.
... Gorse et al., 2014;Maennig, 2005;Streppelhoff, 2015), individual participation in match-fixing (Pitsch, Emrich, & Pierdzioch, 2015) or was of rather conceptual nature (e.g. Caruso, 2009;Forrest, 2013). Empirical evidence on the organizational level and/or cross-national scale is still scarce. ...
... Besides violating the integrity of sporting competitions, match-fixing causes economic effects which are exclusively positive for the deviating actors as long as their behavior is not detected, but negative for everyone once the manipulation is actually unveiled . Forrest (2013) demonstrates that the contemporary epidemic of matchfixing can be explained by recent developments in the betting sector which saw a rapid increase in liquidity in effectively unregulated markets. Sport-specific characteristics that suggest that the football market is such an unregulated market are described by Heilemann (2014). ...
... The author also claims that the necessary bribes for corruptive behavior in the sport sector are significantly lower than in other economic sector. Thus, match-fixing has become more lucrative for individuals and consequently, the demand for fixed matched increased (Forrest, 2013). ...
Research question: As empirical evidence on match-fixing within the European grassroots football context is scarce, this paper seeks to demonstrate that match-fixing is a serious organizational problem for the grassroots of football. Moreover, it aims to detect protective organizational capacities – alone and in concert – against match-fixing and explain them theoretically.
Research methods: Match-fixing is discussed from a sociological and economic perspective and analyzed within the organizational capacity framework. The empirical evaluation is based on n=3,004 European grassroots football clubs in five countries. Descriptive statistics and multivariate logistic regression models demonstrate the effects of organizational capacities alone and in concert.
Results and Findings: Empirical evidence on scale and dispersion of the organizational problem match-fixing is provided. Results from the regression models indicate that particularly revenue diversification and socio-structural capacities are protective capacities.
Implications: It is important to analyze both, individual and in concert effects of organizational capacities on the problem of match-fixing. Practical recommendations are provided.
Fulltext: http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/r4eRKxfWAwYtpAyiiaDR/full
... Along this line of thinking, sports players, coaches, supporting staff, and officials (and their families) can have access to information that is key to predicting whether the stock price goes up or down (who wins a match), such as who is playing and who is injured (Hosmer-Henner, 2010). Even if these people did not bet, information from them can be used and sold in betting markets (Forrest, 2013). Therefore, in many countries, sharing of inside information is prohibited by match-fixing-related regulations of sports organizations and/or by criminal codes. ...
Gambling has emerged as a double-edged sword for contemporary sport: it serves as a key source of revenues, while simultaneously posing serious challenges. This chapter provides a critical understanding of the social forces, regulations, and discourses around today’s sports under the influence of gambling. The chapter starts with a brief historical overview of the fluctuating relationship between sports and gambling. It outlines how the financial-ethical trade-offs have governed the relationship between sports and gambling and continue to raise integrity and public health issues. Narrowing the focus to the issue of match-fixing, the chapter also reviews diverse approaches adopted: economic, investigative-journalistic, sociocultural, and institutional perspectives. Finally, it discusses how the ongoing policy discourses of sport integrity constitute potential debates surrounding the ethical codes of conduct in sport.
... In addition, although match-fixing has infected all types of sports (Carpenter, 2012), match-fixing may be more frequent in some Psychological perspectives on match-fixing 7 sports (Van Der Hoeven et al., 2020). For example, Forrest (2013) suggested that match-fixing has rapidly developed alongside developments in the betting sector, implying that match-fixing is more prevalent in sports where betting exists. In this sense, individual differences pertaining to level and type of sport participation should be taken into account when trying to understand match-fixing behaviors. ...
... Another reason for players to participate in match-fixing is threat of the criminal organizations (Forrest, 2013). Criminal organisations will force players to fix matches by threatening them to harm family/close friends. ...
Match-fixing is the process where the result of a sporting contest or game situation is deliberately manipulated for the personal material gain of one or more parties involved in
that activity. Match-fixing is a serious problem in football affecting the integrity of the
game. While indicators such as betting patterns have been used to identify match-fixing
cases, there are still many that go undetected and even those that are exposed are difficult to prosecute due to a lack of hard evidence. Electronic performance and tracking systems can potentially assist in both identification and evidence- development actions by detecting unusual changes in a players’ movement behaviour on the pitch. The purpose of this research was to examine whether performance metrics derived from players' positional x and y coordinates can detect match-fixing behaviour in football. Six different performance metrics have been examined and were used to create player performance profiles. The player performance profiles have been compared with standardized mean differences and were analysed with Approximate entropy (ApEn) analysis and different recursive partitioning techniques. Results show that match-fixing behaviour influenced defensive fixing players’ performance metrics during a football game. Positional performance metrics were most associated with fixing behaviour and showed substantial differences compared to normal behaviour. Fixing players moved forward on the pitch and kept more distance towards the position-specific centroid. The altered movement pattern resulted in more spread of play in the lateral direction suggesting fixing players are stretching the defence to create space. Further studies should investigate the use of a wider range of fixing scenarios of numerous games to further develop the match-fixing detection framework. The findings of this thesis can be beneficial, not only for integrity purposes of the football related society, but also for a wider spectrum of team sports using electronic performance and tracking systems to measure player performance. These findings provide insights to player performance metrics underpinning match-fixing behaviour for defence players which can possibly assist in providing supporting evidence to prosecute match-fixing players. Further, it provides scientific knowledge to create a match-fixing detection approach which covers both betting and non-betting related match-fixing.
Debido a las características del nuevo mercado global de apuestas deportivas online, una práctica histórica del deporte, como la manipulación de competiciones, sufrió una reconfiguración radical. El amaño de partido se transformó en un fenómeno relacionado con la infiltración del crimen organizado transnacional en el deporte. La sucesión de escándalos a nivel internacional llevó a que el tema sea introducido en las agendas políticas de organismos internacionales, gobiernos y fuerzas de seguridad. Este contexto propició la emergencia de una nueva área de estudios sociales con diversas líneas de financiamiento y con impacto internacional debido al interés político, económico y social por el problema. Sudamérica no está exenta del problema. Pero a pesar de que los casos de amaño relacionados con apuestas comienzan a multiplicarse, el interés de la academia por el tema continúa a ser escueto. Este artículo defiende la importancia de estudiar el tema y presenta una agenda de investigación y acción para la región.
Gambling-related match-fixing is a form of corruption that has become a global issue particularly since the start of the new millennium. Research on match-fixing has often emphasised the involvement of mafia-like criminal groups in match-fixing arrangements. By incorporating an activity-centred view of organised crime, this paper examines how, and to what extent, organised crime is involved in betting-related match-fixing with particular focus on the 2011 Korean football scandal. Analysing data from 11 in-depth interviews with government, football and gambling officials and two convicted footballers, this paper traces the relative contributions of external criminal influences and internal vulnerabilities of the football league towards the occurrence of the K-League’s match-fixing cases. The results suggest that illegal betting operators’ exploitation of match-fixing to hedge risks demonstrates the influence of external criminal groups. However, risks were also observed within the football sector (e.g., financial and performance imbalances in the league, normalised betting and inside-trading amongst footballers, close social links with organised mobs, etc.) revealing that, at that time, K-football was not only susceptible to external criminal influences but facilitated the opportunistic structure for match-fixing. Overall, this study highlights that match-fixing is not solely instigated by organised crime groups, but can also be incubated within a sport whose culture, management and ethics are not ready to co-exist with gambling.
Digital banking is one of the numerous impacts of globalization and technological advancement on Nigeria's economy. It allows for smooth
delivery of banking services, giving its numerous benefits. However, despite the numerous benefit of digital banking, it suffices to state that there are several
challenges and also, a legal uncertainty as to whether there is sufficient legislation that regulates digital banking in Nigeria. It is concerning this that this study employs a hybrid method of research in ascertaining the prospect, challenges, and legal issues concerning digital banking in Nigeria. Online survey questionnaires were sent to 306 respondents (randomly selected) residing in Nigeria. Descriptive and analytical statistics were adopted in analyzing the responses to the questionnaire. The study found that the key challenges to digital banking in Nigeria are the lack of specific legislation regulating digital banking, poor internet infrastructures, and increased cyber fraud, amongst others. It was therefore concluded and recommended that, for a continuous advancement in technologically enable banking system, there is need for Nigeria government and stakeholders to ensure that there is a practical legal
framework concerning digital banking. Furthermore, there is need for an intensify efforts in creating a conducive atmosphere for digital banking to thrive
in Nigeria.
This study provides a structured overview of the literature published between 2010 and 2020 on the causes and consequences of fraud in sport using a systematic search strategy. Our results show that the current literature on this phenomenon is mostly focused on football as a specific type of sport, and on competition manipulation as a specific type of fraud. Guided by the routine activity theory, we observed that motivated offenders, suitable targets, and the lack of capable guardians render sport vulnerable for fraud in general, and for competition manipulation, corruption, financial fraud, and human trafficking in particular. The consequences of fraud in sport are mostly financial, through a diminution in the public's trust combined with a decrease in attendance and spectatorship to sport events. The phenomenon of fraud in sport remains strongly under-researched through empirical designs, and an interdisciplinary approach is required to tackle its complex nature and scope.
The global expansion of sports betting has resulted in the formation of (inter)national governing regimes aimed at sustaining revenue and regulating attendant issues, including match-fixing. This article explores the workings of these regimes vis-à-vis the management of match-fixing issues in sport. More particularly, this article focuses on betting monitoring programmes as countermeasures against match-fixing and conceptualises these as social instruments that ultimately define issues and influence the wider integrity agenda of anti-match-fixing campaigns. Analysing documentary, observation and interview data from two disparate monitoring programmes, the results show that betting monitoring is a technical extension of corporate risk management, invariably reflecting the business interests of the betting industry. Therefore, the operating logic of betting monitoring defines match-fixing as an act of sabotaging the competitive edge of betting companies. Moreover, this interest-laden paradigm reigns within the broader policy agenda of sport integrity by equating the betting industry's interest with that of sport. From this, the article suggests that betting monitoring plays a part in the legitimation of commercial gambling by reframing the issue of match-fixing as a common enemy that gambling and sport join forces to combat, not a risk that gambling brings to sport.
The present study aims to explore the social conditions and underlying mechanism of match-fixing, especially when it is not facilitated in a quid pro quo relationship. Analyzing scandals in Taiwan’s Chinese Professional Baseball League, our research investigates how both individual agendas and organizational interests are served in match-fixing. Practically, the prerequisites and actors’ rationales for their involvement in match-fixing are explained. Theoretically, actors’ motivations and the exchange of intangible resources (not in the form of money) are examined. Our findings speak to theories of structural, cognitive and relational social capital by elaborating on the dark side of social capital. The relational attributes possessed by actors embedded in their social networks are involved in the cognitive process of actors’ decision making. Alternative policy implications are proposed to reduce the potential for match-fixing.
The purpose of this paper was to examine the invisible hand behind a corrupt structure in professional sports. Specifically, this paper sought to explain the match-fixing phenomenon in sports from the perspective of the Code of Brotherhood (CoB, yiqi 義氣) and to address the underlying mechanisms through which illegal behaviour is generated and continuously practised, as well as the dynamics serving both individual agendas and organisational interests. Taking Taiwan’s Chinese Professional Baseball League (CPBL) as a case study, the findings revealed that the origin and embodiment of CoB, the nature of CoB, and the CoB as the driver of trust illustrate how CoB functioned in and paved the way for match-fixing. The application of CoB as an emic Chinese construct helps to explain why match-fixing is conceived and realized, not just for money, but rather in the name of righteousness and loyalty.
Although match fixing threatens the integrity of competitions in sport, studies on the prevalence of match fixing are scarce. We measured the prevalence of competition manipulation by German elite athletes and the total percentage of these athletes who had been asked to participate in match fixing by using the randomized response technique. Approximately 8% of the athletes were asked to participate in match fixing, and approximately 7.5% were actually involved in competition manipulation during their careers. More than 30% of athletes reported an attempt to illegally influence referees’ decisions, but only 4.9% had ever directly participated in such attempts. Only the parameter of the financial status provides a different perspective. In general, this study shows that the dissemination of deviant behavior is not extremely high.
The following article intends to analyse the factors that drive the presence of match fixing in football matches. The starting point is a wide theoretical framework of sports’ fraud and, more precisely, of match fixing. The main matter of the article is the study of the Calciocaos Case both in statiscal and econometrical analysis. The econometric model estimates the contributions, for the probability of fraud’s existence, of each one of the considered variables. Lastly, the econometric model is then transformed in order to enable its’ use with different samples given suspicions of arrangement fixes made by referees.
The emergence of the internet has facilitated a dramatic change in the size and nature of one of sport’s biggest issues: match-fixing. Simultaneously, the internet has provided access to vast amount of data that can be analysed to look for telltale signs of this fraud. The company Sportradar has been a pioneer in this area, and now monitors games across the world for a huge number of leagues. Whilst their work has many success stories, it is also apparent that the vast majority of fixed matches are not dealt with. A public version of the Sportradar system would bring much needed transparency to the field, although developing such a system would require detailed knowledge of copyright and related laws.
Drawing upon new institutionalist lines of thought, this article examines how the institutional design of contemporary sports betting precipitates match-fixing and frames it as individual ethical failure. Given the inherent trade-off between pursuing: (1) managerial efficiency to insulate players from outside influence and (2) ethical legitimacy to render the business of sports betting socially desirable, this study analyses how the conflicting imperatives are reconciled in two contrasting institutional designs for sports betting: (a) South Korean football betting; and (b) motorboat race betting. Employing a qualitative multi-method approach, the analysis reveals that the football-betting regime sacrifices managerial efficiency for social legitimacy, thus engendering match-fixing; however, such an institutional failure is compensated by shifting the responsibility for match-fixing to individual players. Consequently, it is suggested that who is to blame for failure is not something functionally determined; rather, it is determined politically and justified by institutional power that renders individual ethical failure a much greater crime, only because the institution is too big to fail.
MUST be set to Private only
How is corruption in sport evolving into a global public policy issue? In the past century, four trends have affected sport according to Paoli and Donati (2013) – de-amateurisation at the turn of the twentieth century, medicalisation since the 1960s, politicisation and commercialisation to the point where sport is now a business worth more than US$141 billion annually. Each of these trends had a corrupting effect on what is generally perceived as a past ‘golden age’ of sport. In the twenty-first century more public funding is being directed into sport in the developed and developing world. As a result this paper will argue organised sport has entered a fifth evolutionary trend – criminalisation. In this latest phase, public policy needs to grapple with what constitutes corruption in what has historically been a private market.
This paper examines what drives match-fixing in football and why some leagues collapse from corruption. Based on more than 220 interviews with players, referees, sports officials and law enforcement officers, the gambling industry and corrupters, three factors presented when high levels of match-fixing were observed: strong illegal gambling networks, high levels of relative exploitation of players, and perceived corrupt officials. Leagues collapsed if the public became aware of high-level corruption and an alternative market competitor was introduced.
The subjects of doping and corruption in the Olympic family and the fight against them have until now largely been matters of sporting politics and jurisprudence. This contribution emphasizes that (a) both problems have a high degree of economic determination and (b) economics can offer efficient solutions. The corruption problem could be dampened by reducing the surpluses in the host cities, making the selection process more transparent, and increasing the incentive for corruption-free behavior. With regard to the phenomenon of doping, an economic solution could increase the expected costs of doping by agreeing on financial penalties of a sufficiently high level.
This contribution attempts a delimitation of the concept of corruption in sport and gives an overview of topical instances. It is thereby demonstrated why the definition of corruption in sport is especially problematic. The causes of the corruption and their social costs are analysed. The anti-corruption measures of the Amateur International Boxing Association (AIBA) and the German Football Association (DFB) are described. These are based on two fundamentally different approaches and can be regarded as representative of many anti-corruption measures in sport
We argue that the current match-fixing crisis in world cricket has its origin in the economic structure of the game. Cricketers’ pay is demonstrably low relative to sports of comparable significance and this is a consequence of the organisation of the game with its emphasis on international representative cricket. We propose and outline details of an international club championship with competition for players’ services.
JEL Classification: L83, K49
This paper provides an economic analysis of illegal sports bookmaking using detailed records from six bookmakers who operated in the 1990s. These operations are struc- tured like standard firms and utilize incentive contracts to induce appropriate employee behavior. The bookmakers oer prices which closely follow the geographically sepa- rated legal market, but larger operations price discriminate based on individual betting patterns. Despite the availability of inexpensive hedging instruments, all operations take on substantial financial risk. This implies the bookmakers cannot be risk-averse and must hold large cash reserves. The risk-adjusted profit rate is lower than in legal financial markets. These results and behaviors are consistent with standard models of economic self-interest.
According to expectations derived from evolutionary theory, younger siblings are more likely than older siblings to participate in high-risk activities. The authors test this hypothesis by conducting a meta-analysis of 24 previous studies involving birth order and participation in dangerous sports. The odds of laterborns engaging in such activities were 1.48 times greater than for firstborns (N = 8,340). The authors also analyze performance data on 700 brothers who played major league baseball. Consistent with their greater expected propensity for risk taking, younger brothers were 10.6 times more likely to attempt the high-risk activity of base stealing and 3.2 times more likely to steal bases successfully (odds ratios). In addition, younger brothers were significantly superior to older brothers in overall batting success, including two measures associated with risk taking. As expected, significant heterogeneity among various performance measures for major league baseball players indicated that older and younger brothers excelled in different aspects of the game.
This paper uses a national survey of 3,119 individuals to examine the effect of lung cancer risk perceptions on smoking activity. Both smokers and nonsmokers greatly overestimated the lung cancer risk of cigarette smoking, and the extent of the overestimation is much greater than the extent of underestimation. These risk perceptions in turn significantly reduce the probability of smoking, as suggested by an economic model of risky consumption decisions. Cigarette excise taxes in effect endow individuals with additional risk perceptions comparable to their current assessed lung cancer risks. Copyright 1990 by University of Chicago Press.
This paper offers an explanation of the use of mandatory-retirement clauses in labor contracts. It argues that the date of mandatory retirement is chosen to correspond to the date of voluntary retirement, but the nature of the optimal wage profile results in a discrepancy between spot wage and spot VMP (value of the worker's marginal product). This is because it is preferable to pay workers less than VMP when young and more than VMP when old. By doing so, the "agency" problem is solved, so the contract with mandatory retirement is Pareto efficient. A theory of agency is presented and empirical evidence which supports the hypothesis is provided.
We use a unique data set detailing the financial activities of a drug-selling street gang to analyze gang economics. On average,
earnings in the gang are somewhat above the legitimate labor market alternative. The enormous risks of drug selling, however,
more than offset this small wage premium. Compensation within the gang is highly skewed, and the prospect of future riches,
not current wages, is the primary economic motivation. The gang engages in repeated gang wars and sometimes prices below marginal
cost. Our results suggest that economic factors alone are unlikely to adequately explain individual participation in the gang
or gang behavior.
Much of the interest in the study of sports from the perspective of an economist lies in the empirical application of contests as efficient mechanisms for eliciting effort. Contestants respond to contest incentives, and these incentives include the incentive to cheat. This paper discusses different forms of cheating: sabotage, doping, and match fixing. The paper discusses how these forms of cheating arise and how they can be treated. In particular, we look at specific forms of cheating in soccer, baseball, and cricket. In the appendix we develop a simple model of match fixing. Copyright 2003, Oxford University Press.
We review the relationships between gambling and sport. British sports and sports infrastructure have benefited considerably from funding through the National Lottery. We argue that there is an implicit sports tax on lottery products and that this policy may be neither efficient nor equitable. We suggest that further research, employing contingent valuation methodology, would be required before any firm conclusion could be made over whether the spending facilitated by the tax represents an efficient allocation of resources. Betting on events and outcomes in sport, especially team sports, has become a high-growth sector; we explore the potential for sports to capture some of this bettor spending and discuss associated public-policy issues. While sport may extract revenue from betting, there are also costs. We focus especially on betting corruption in sports, developing an expected utility framework to show where the risk of corruption is most likely to arise and what regulatory options are open to sports governing bodies and government. Copyright 2003, Oxford University Press.
Crime is a subject of intense emotions, conflicting ideologies. However, economists have generally explained it as a reflection of individual choice and equilibrating market forces. Two major themes of the literature are outlined: the evolution of a 'market model' to explain the diversity of crime across time and space, and the debate about the usefulness of 'positive' versus 'negative' incentives. Systematic analyses generally indicate that crime is affected on the margin by both positive and negative incentives; there are serious limitations to the effectiveness of incapacitation and rehabilitation; and optimal enforcement strategies involve trade-offs between narrow efficiency and equity considerations. Copyright 1996 by American Economic Association.
Online gambling: an economics perspective
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Risks to the Integrity of Sport from Betting Corruption, Central Council for Physical Recreation
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