Match-fixing and sports corruption
The sports industry generates billions of dollars every week. There are many people who earn an honest living from the earnings of the sport. In fact, if sport were to disappear from the picture, millions of people would be unemployed and in desperate straits. Therefore, it is essential to eradicate everything that threatens the integrity of the sport. Unfortunately, there are those wicked characters who employ nefarious methods to take advantage of ill-gotten financial gains from the unsuspecting public by persuading athletes and administrators to become complicit in match-fixing and venue-fixing. They use the lure of money to ensnare their victims (athletes and administrators alike) using sports betting outlets as playgrounds. While it is almost impossible to judge how far this cancer has spread, it is almost certainly a much bigger problem than we anticipated. One thing is clear, they are inflicting irreparable damage on the sports industry.
There are currently two high-profile cases of match-fixing going around.
the first case is the alleged point fixing by four Pakistani bowlers who were asked not to bowl in predetermined overs for substantial sums of money in their matches against England. The bowlers were extracted from the tower. The investigation is ongoing and has soured relations between England and Pakistan, resulting in Pakistan boss Ijaz Butt criticizing Andrew Strauss’s men as match-fixers and claiming England were paid to lose the third one-day international match at the Oval, which Pakistan won by 23 runs. Butt stated: “It is spoken loud and clear in the bookie circle that some English players have been paid huge amounts of money to lose the match. “It is no wonder that there is a total collapse of the English team. We won the match and we are under suspicion. England lost, their players should be investigated.”
the second box of match-fixing involves the three-time world champion and current world no. 1 pool player John Higgins. In May, the World News alleged that Wishaw-born Higgins and his manager Pat Mooney had agreed to fix frames at a World Series of Snooker event in Ukraine for £261,000. I am pleased to report that Higgins has been cleared of the match-fixing charges brought against him and will be able to resume his billiards career in November. However, he was handed a retroactive six-month ban and a £75,000 fine on misdemeanor charges of breaking the rules by discussing bets and failing to report an approach by a party trying to instigate corruption in the game. He was also ordered to pay £10,000 in costs.
There is also the ongoing case of alleged match-fixing during Steven Maguire’s match against Jamie Burnett at the UK Championship in Telford on December 15.
Match-fixing or spot-fixing is a scourge that has contaminated sport for many years. The first major scandal to hit the cricket world was the Hansie Cronje match-fixing scandal in India over a decade ago. Hansie admitted to fixing the spots, but never throwing a match, which seems to indicate that players feel that fixing the spots is not as serious as throwing a full match, and are therefore more open to suggestions of this nature. This is utterly naive and certainly not well thought out, because these actions have the same dire ramifications.
It automatically leads one to reflect on how endemic these backroom dealings really are. How deep and wide have the tentacles of corruption infiltrated sport?
How many sports codes have been or are affected by corruption? With sports betting being such a massive industry, it’s hard to see anyone (especially the big moneymakers) escaping the clutches of corrupt operators.
Could this phenomenon be manipulated to the point where an athlete could buy their way to the number 1 spot, or worse yet, a country pay their way to the highest ranking in a particular sport?
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