Match fixing

• 1. Introduction

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  Match fixing is the act of playing or officiating a sports contest with the intention of achieving a predetermined result. It is as old as organised competition itself. The ancient Olympic Games were almost constantly dealing with allegations of athletes accepting bribes to lose, and city-states poured large amounts of money into manipulating outcomes. The athletes swore oaths to protect the integrity of the events. The punishments for those who were caught could be severe. None of it stopped the practice.

  Today, the company Sportradar monitors sporting events on behalf of sports federations and estimates that as many as one percent of the matches they track show suspicious betting patterns that may indicate fixing. That number sounds small. Stretched across thousands of matches each year across dozens of sports and leagues, it is anything but.

• 2. The Gambling Connection

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  The Black Sox Scandal of 1919 stands as one of the most notorious early cases in North American sport. Several members of the MLB's Chicago White Sox conspired with gamblers to fix that year's World Series for monetary gain. In response, Major League Baseball established the office of the Commissioner of Baseball. One of Kenesaw Mountain Landis's first acts in that role was to ban all involved players for life.

  Gambling-related fixing was not limited to team sports. The 1933 Tripoli Grand Prix offers one of the best-known examples from motorsport. The winning number of a lottery was tied to the number of the race-winning car. A ticket holder who held the number belonging to driver Achille Varzi contacted him and offered to share the lottery winnings if Varzi won the race. Varzi then approached other drivers, who agreed to deliberately underperform. Despite a poor start, Varzi won after his opponents let him through.

  When fixing is motivated by gambling, it typically requires contacts and money transfers among gamblers, players, team officials, and sometimes referees. Those contacts and transfers can occasionally be traced. But fixing that is internal to a team, such as deliberately losing to improve draft position, leaves almost no trail and is very difficult to prove.

  Modern bookmakers accept bets on a far wider range of propositions than their predecessors did. This has created a category sometimes called spot-fixing, where the target is not the final result but a smaller event within the match: a specific no-ball bowled at an agreed moment, or a throw-in early in a Premier League game. In 2009, retired footballer Matthew Le Tissier admitted that in 1995, while playing for Southampton FC in a Premier League match against Wimbledon FC, he had tried and failed to kick the ball out of play right after kick-off so that associates could collect on a bet placed on an early throw-in. The fix failed, but the attempt itself illustrated how granular the manipulation can get.

  The 2010 Pakistan cricket spot-fixing scandal showed what the consequences look like when such schemes unravel. Three Pakistani players accepted bribes from bookmaker Mazhar Majeed during the Lord's test match against England, deliberately bowling no-balls at specific prearranged moments. On the 1st of November 2011, Majeed, Pakistan captain Salman Butt, Mohammad Asif, and Mohammad Amir were all found guilty of conspiracy to cheat at gambling and to accept corrupt payments. On the 3rd of November 2011, jail terms were handed down: 30 months for Butt, one year for Asif, six months for Amir, and two years and eight months for Majeed. The International Cricket Council also issued playing bans: ten years for Butt, seven for Asif, and five for Amir.

• 3. Tanking for Advantage

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  Losing on purpose to gain a future competitive edge is a different beast from gambling-related fixing. The motive is internal, the decision is often made by coaches rather than players, and sporting rules have repeatedly failed to keep pace with the incentives.

  Draft systems in North American and Australian leagues create one of the clearest structural incentives. For much of the NBA's early history, a coin flip between the teams with the worst records in each conference determined who received the top pick in the draft. In the period leading up to the 1984 draft, which would eventually produce four Hall of Fame players, several teams were accused of deliberately losing games to secure a top position. The NBA responded by establishing a draft lottery before the 1985 draft, involving all teams that had missed the playoffs. The theory was that removing fixed draft positions would remove the incentive to lose. In practice, the incentive proved more durable than the lottery.

  The 2014-15 NHL season produced a version of the same problem at the highest intensity. Two prospects, Connor McDavid and Jack Eichel, were projected as generational talents heading into the 2015 entry draft. Because the last-place team was guaranteed at least one of the two, the Buffalo Sabres found their own fans openly rooting against them in the hope of clinching last place. The Sabres denied they were tanking and criticised their fans for suggesting it.

  The 2006 Winter Olympics in Pool B provided one of the more candid episodes. Sweden was set to face Slovakia in the final pool match, and Swedish coach Bengt-Ake Gustafsson publicly considered losing the game. He knew a Swedish win would set up a quarterfinal against either Canada, the 2002 gold medalists, or the Czech Republic, the 1998 gold medalists. Gustafsson told Swedish television: "One is cholera, the other the plague." Sweden lost 3-0. The most telling moment came when Sweden had a five-on-three power play featuring Peter Forsberg, Mats Sundin, Daniel Alfredsson, Nicklas Lidstrom, and Fredrik Modin, and failed to put a single shot on goal. Sweden went on to win the gold medal.

  At the high school level, in February 2015, two Nashville-area teams, Riverdale and Smyrna High Schools, were both trying to lose a consolation match so they would avoid ending up on the same side of the regional bracket as defending state champion Blackman High School. Both teams pulled their starters early, missed shots deliberately, turned the ball over intentionally, and committed deliberate fouls. The Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association ejected both teams from the postseason, fined Riverdale $1,000 and Smyrna $500, and placed both on probation through the 2015-16 school year.

• 4. The Referee as the Fix

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  On the 2nd of December 1896, former Old West lawman Wyatt Earp was chosen as referee for the Fitzsimmons vs. Sharkey boxing match, promoted as the Heavyweight Championship of the World. He was selected that same afternoon after both managers refused to agree on anyone else. In the eighth round of a fight that Fitzsimmons had largely dominated, Sharkey suddenly collapsed, clutching his groin, yelling foul. Earp conferred briefly with both corners and then disqualified Fitzsimmons on a foul that almost no one present had seen. Fitzsimmons went to court to stop Sharkey from taking the purse but lost when the court ruled the match had been illegal.

  Eight years later, a man named B. Brookes Lee was arrested in Portland, Oregon. He had been accused of treating Sharkey in a way designed to make it appear he had been fouled. Lee stated: "I fixed Sharkey up to look as if he had been fouled. How? Well, that is something I do not care to reveal, but I will assert that it was done. There is no doubt that Fitzsimmons was entitled to the decision and did not foul Sharkey. I got $1,000 for my part in the affair."

  More than a century later, the pattern had not changed. FIFA banned referee Ibrahim Chaibou from Niger for life in January 2019 after an investigation established that he had received bribes and fixed matches over many years, making controversial decisions in high-stakes national team games.

  Sports writers have long speculated about why referees in high-salary leagues are more vulnerable to corruption than the players themselves. The reasoning is straightforward: in competitions where players earn enormous sums, referees are typically paid far less, creating a structural imbalance that makes them a more affordable target for those looking to influence results.

  NBA referee Tim Donaghy became one of the most discussed cases of referee-based fixing in recent memory. Donaghy is alleged to have influenced "over-under" bets by calling games in ways that produced more combined points than expected, while managing to avoid the appearance of outright bias toward either team.

• 5. Two Teams, One Goal: Mutual Fixes

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  Occasionally, both teams on the field share the same interest in a manipulated result, which makes the fix harder to detect and easier to execute without outside involvement.

  One of the earliest documented examples in modern football occurred in 1898. Stoke City and Burnley intentionally drew in the final "test match" of that season so both clubs would remain in the First Division the following year. The Football League's response was to expand the divisions to 18 teams, which allowed the intended victims of the arrangement, Newcastle United and Blackburn Rovers, to stay up as well. The test match system was then abolished in favour of automatic relegation.

  The 1982 FIFA World Cup produced a more openly shameful version. West Germany faced Austria in the final group B match. A West German victory by one or two goals would send both teams through; any narrower result eliminated Germany; any wider one eliminated Austria. Germany scored after ten minutes and the players spent the remainder of the match passing the ball around without attacking. Algerian supporters, whose nation had already been effectively eliminated by the arrangement, waved banknotes at the players. A German fan burned his national flag in disgust. ARD commentator Eberhard Stanjek refused to continue commenting on the game. Austrian television commentator Robert Seeger advised viewers to switch off their sets. FIFA responded by scheduling all final group matches simultaneously at future World Cups.

  The 1998 Tiger Cup final group match between Thailand and Indonesia took mutual losing to a different extreme. Both teams had already qualified for the semi-finals. The structure of the bracket meant that whoever won the match would face host nation Vietnam on their national day, in Hanoi, at the national stadium. The runner-up would face Singapore in Ho Chi Minh City, where the match itself was being played. Neither team showed much interest in scoring. In stoppage time, Indonesian defender Mursyid Effendi scored an own goal, overcoming the efforts of several Thai players and the goalkeeper, who together tried to prevent him from doing so. Both teams were fined $40,000. Effendi was banned from international football for life.

  In the 1992-93 Serie A season, Milan entered a late-season match needing only a point to secure the title. Brescia believed a draw would keep them in the division. Two British journalists writing a 2004 retrospective on the "dodgiest games" in football history described the match as one in which "the two teams engaged in a shameful game of cat-and-mouse, in which the cat appeared to have fallen asleep and the mouse was on tranquilisers." Milan scored in the 82nd minute. Brescia equalised two minutes later, with what the writers described as a "mysterious" overlap. The 1-1 draw secured Milan's title. It did not save Brescia, as other results went against them and they were relegated anyway.

• 6. Outside the Playing Field

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  Match fixing is not always about the match itself. In the 1950s, the producers of several televised quiz shows in the United States were found to have fixed contests to boost viewer ratings. The quiz show Twenty-One became the most notorious case. Its sponsor, Geritol, was unhappy with the performance of early contestants. At the time, broadcasters simply provided studios and airtime; sponsors controlled most of what went on screen. Geritol demanded that the production company, Barry and Enright Productions, arrange outcomes to be more dramatic.

  Champion Herbert Stempel was instructed to lose to Charles Van Doren, a Columbia University English teacher the producers believed would be more popular with viewers. To build audience anticipation, the producers arranged for the first episode of their match to be played to three consecutive ties. Winners on Twenty-One received $500 for every point of their margin of victory, and the prize increased by $500 after every tie game. After one more tie, Stempel threw the match by answering specific questions incorrectly, including deliberately misidentifying the Best Picture winner at the 28th Academy Awards as On the Waterfront. The correct answer was Marty, which happened to be one of Stempel's own favourite films.

  The investigation that followed led to the passage of a federal law prohibiting broadcasters from airing fixed contests that resembled any game of chance or intellectual skill. One quiz show, Our Little Genius, was cancelled before its premiere after accusations that its outcomes were being scripted.

  In 2022, local authorities in Gujarat, India, shut down an operation running a fake, staged version of the Indian Premier League designed to scam Russian sports bettors. Matches took place on a floodlit field with players wearing replica jerseys of real IPL teams. Umpires and players received instructions based on bets placed on a Telegram channel. Broadcasts were streamed on YouTube using artificial crowd noise, a sound-alike of real commentator Harsha Bhogle, and camera angles chosen specifically to avoid clear shots of the pitch, the players, or the deliveries. Participating players received 400 rupees per game. The operation was estimated to have taken around 300,000 rupees from bettors before police shut it down.

• 7. Detection and the Long Game

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  Sportradar, hired by multiple sports federations to monitor integrity, has built systems that track both pre-match and in-game betting markets for anomalies. Prior to the 2016 MLB season, Major League Baseball hired Genius Sports, a sports technology company focused on integrity, to watch betting patterns across all their games. Interpol also monitors and publishes major developments in match-fixing and corruption in sport around the world.

  The detection challenge is asymmetric. Gambling-related fixes leave traces in betting markets, which is precisely what monitoring services look for. But competitive tanking, the kind orchestrated by coaches resting key players with vague injury excuses, is almost impossible to distinguish from legitimate rest decisions. Leagues have tried to counter this through rule changes, draft lotteries, and expanding playoff formats. The NBA's 2019 draft lottery reform gave the three teams with the worst records equal odds at the top pick. The 2022 MLB postseason expanded to include a third wild card and made the opening round a best-of-three series, partly to give additional value to winning the division outright.

  The 1999-2000 La Liga season provided one reminder that sometimes the evidence only surfaces years later. Sevilla FC, already relegated, faced Real Oviedo in their thirty-fifth match of the season. An Oviedo victory would push Sevilla's crosstown rivals, Real Betis, into the relegation zone. Sevilla performed poorly while their fans openly cheered for Oviedo. Oviedo won 3-2, and Betis were eventually relegated. Twelve years later, former Sevilla goalkeeper Frode Olsen admitted the team had intentionally lost the match.

  A large match-fixing ring in the lower levels of professional tennis, centred on gambling, was broken up in 2023 with at least 181 players involved. A similar organised effort in Chinese and NCAA basketball was uncovered in 2026. The persistence of these cases across generations, sports, and continents suggests that as long as contests carry financial stakes, the problem Kenesaw Mountain Landis confronted in 1919 will keep returning in new forms.