Match fixing
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In organized sports, match fixing (also known as game fixing, race fixing, throwing, rigging, hippodroming, or more generally sports fixing) is the act of playing or officiating a contest with the intention of achieving a predetermined result, violating the rules of the game and often the law. There are many reasons why match fixing might take place, including receiving bribes from bookmakers or sports bettors, and blackmail. Competitors may also intentionally perform poorly to gain a future advantage, such as a better draft pick[1] or to face an easier opponent in a later round of competition.[2] A player might also play poorly to rig a handicap system.[3]
Match fixing, when motivated by gambling, requires contacts (and normally money transfers) between gamblers, players, team officials, and/or referees. These contacts and transfers can sometimes be discovered[4], and lead to prosecution by the law or the sports league(s). In contrast, losing for future advantage is internal to the team and very difficult to prove. Often, substitutions made by a coach, designed to deliberately increase the team's chances of losing (such as having key players sit out, often using minimal or phantom injuries as an excuse), rather than ordering the players who are actually on the field to intentionally underperform, are cited as the main factor in cases where this has been alleged.
Match fixing includes point shaving and spot-fixing, which center on smaller events within a match that can be wagered upon but are unlikely to prove decisive in determining the game's final result. According to Sportradar, a company that monitors the integrity of sports events on behalf of sports federations, as many as one percent of the matches they monitor show suspicious betting patterns that may be indicative of match fixing.[5] In sports where a handicap or ranking system exists and is capable of being abused (including sports such as racing, grappling and golf), throwing the game is known as "sandbagging". Hustling, where a player disguises his abilities until he can play for large amounts of money, is a common practice in many cue sports, such as nine-ball pool.
Motivations and causes
[edit]Some major motivations behind match fixing are gambling and team advantages. According to investigative journalist Declan Hill it has also been linked to corruption, violence and tax avoidance.[6] In Eastern Europe, organized crime is linked to illegal gambling and score fixing. In Russia, people have disappeared or been murdered after acting against bribery in sports.[7]
Agreements with gamblers
[edit]There may be financial gain through agreements with gamblers[8]. The Black Sox Scandal of 1919 involved several members of the MLB's Chicago White Sox conspiring with gamblers to fix that year's World Series for monetary gain.[9] One of the best-known examples of gambling-related race fixing (in motorsports) is the 1933 Tripoli Grand Prix, in which the winning number of the lottery was determined by the number of the race-winning car. One ticket holder, who held the number belonging to Achille Varzi, contacted him and agreed to share the winning should he win. Varzi contacted other drivers who agreed to share the money if they deliberately lost. Despite a poor start, Varzi won the race after his opponents deliberately underperformed throughout the race.[10] A large match-fixing ring in the lower levels of professional tennis, centered around gambling, was broken up in 2023[11]. At least 181 players were involved.[12] A similar organized effort in Chinese and NCAA basketball was uncovered in 2026.[13] In June 2026, former Detroit Pistons play Malik Beasley was indicted on federal charges related to an alleged sports-related scheme.[14]
Competitive advantage
[edit]Match fixing can also occur when teams or athletes manipulate the outcome of a match to gain a strategic or competitive advantage rather than direct financial benefit. In such cases, the aim may be to influence standings, improve seeding, or create conditions that benefit a particular competitor. In sports such as Formula One, where each team fields two drivers, teams have at times used one driver to create a strategic advantage for the other. While team orders themselves are not inherently match fixing, controversies such as Crashgate demonstrate how the pursuit of competitive advantage can motivate deliberate manipulation of a sporting event. In this case, Renault driver Nelson Piquet Jr. was instructed to crash deliberately, exploiting the safety car rule to benefit his teammate Fernando Alonso, enabling him to win the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix.[15][16]
Better playoff chances
[edit]Many sports have tournaments where the result of one round determines their opponent in the next round. As a result, by losing a match, a team can face an easier opponent in the next round, making them more likely to win. The National Basketball Association (NBA) is the only one of the four major professional sports leagues of the United States and Canada in which home advantage in the playoffs is based strictly on regular-season records without regard to seeding. The top six teams earn an automatic playoff berth, while the seventh through tenth teams compete for the last two seeds in a "play-in tournament".[17]
In the Canadian Football League, since the introduction of the cross-over rule, Western teams have been occasionally accused of losing near the end of the season in situations where a loss would cause them to finish fourth place in their division and where such a finish was still good enough to secure a berth in the league's East Division playoffs. In recent years, the East has often been viewed to be a weaker division than the West; however, if any Western team has attempted such a strategy, it has not paid significant dividends for them since teams who qualify for the playoffs via crossover have gone a combined 5–7 in the East Division Semi-Finals, and 0–5 in the East Division Finals. As of the 2022 season, no Western team has advanced to the Grey Cup championship game from the Eastern bracket. An earlier example of possible match fixing 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 losing 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 match fixing was when Sweden had a five-on-three powerplay 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. (Sports Illustrated writer Michael Farber would say about this particular powerplay, "If the Swedes had passed the puck anymore, their next opponent would have been the Washington Generals.") 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.[18]
The 1998 Tiger Cup – an international football tournament contested by countries in Southeast Asia – saw an example of two teams trying to lose a match. The tournament was hosted by