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Is Sport Match Fixing a Worldwide Problem?

Organized sport brings with it huge gambling and betting industries. Adoring fans from all over the world are willing to place their trust in their favorite teams and players and put down bets that could win them or lose them large sums of cash. For others, it’s an industry or a sport in its own right.

Sports betting is huge, and precisely because it is huge, there are always going to be instances of cheating. Match fixing is one such kind of cheating that is seen in a range of different sports. Before we jump into it then it’s of cause important to say that match fixing does not happen everywhere and you can place bets with a great bonus various places on the web i.e. if you go here.

What is Match Fixing?

If you’ve never heard of match fixing, this is a term that refers to a fix that involves the players in the game. It means that players violate the rules and change the way that they play in order to help people who have placed a bet. It might also involve people who are close to the team, including managers, who get to choose which players are involved with the game. Typically this simply means that players, or managers, manipulate the game in a way that ensures or increases the likelihood that their team loses. It is near impossible, of course, to ensure that a team wins.

Match fixing typically involves offering a financial incentive for the players, or the managers, who are involved in the trick. A large bet will be placed in favor of one team (or player) over another, and the winnings that come from the successful bet will be distributed between the people who were involved in ensuring it wins.

The practice is controversial not just because it is obviously unethical, but also because it’s sometimes very difficult to prove. Without evidence that money has been distributed and the reasons for which it was distributed, it is extremely difficult to prove that a team went out of their way to lose a game on purpose. However, the fear of being found out serves as a big enough deterrent for most people to get involved with the practice. Unless, however, it relates to smaller games where it is less likely that there will be suspicion or an investigation into conduct.

Where Has Match Fixing Happened?

If the question is whether sports match fixing is a worldwide problem, then the answer is simply yes. This is a practice that has been seen widely used in the United States, but it also takes place all over the world.

In American football, one of the earliest cases (if not, the earliest case) was in 1906. It was the first major scandal to take place in the American professional football industry, and it involved the coach for Canton Bulldogs, Blondy Wallace, working to fix the series with Walter East and the Massillon Tigers. Another case of match fixing took place in 1915 when an offer of $150 was given to a player from the Multnomah Athletic Club. The bribe never went ahead, but the player who was offered the bribe wasn’t allowed to play in order to ensure the bet wasn’t followed through.

In 1946 there was a case in the NFL Championships, during a game between the Chicago Bears and New York Giants. Just three years later in 1949, a New York man was arrested after offering a football player in a high school team the sum of $200 to fix an upcoming match.

Outside of the United States, there have been many instances. In October 2000, the Italian Football Federation found eight players top have been guilty of the practice. In 2004, an operation by the Portuguese Police found several football players and club presidents to have been involved with a scam. South Africa saw a similar issue in 2004.

Match fixing is absolutely a global problem, and it is not accepted by any professional team, club, association, or even country. The practice goes against the ethics of playing sports, ruins the game for a lot of people, and opens up a can of worms that could bring both the gambling and the sports industries crashing down. So, while t

Other Kinds of Match Fixing

As well as working to ensure a team loses, there are a couple of other ways that match fixing works. One way is to have corrupt referees change the scores or adapt the way that they score during a game. There have been instances in Brazillian and Portuguese sports whereby referees have fixed matches for gamblers.

In other instances, teams have been accused of working together to either draw or to arrive at a pre-determined score. These cases are far more complex and involve more players, sometimes even the entirety of the teams, and while they are fairly rare they are not strictly found in one place.

For as long as sports and gambling exist, so will match fixing.

This article does not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors or management of EconoTimes.

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