The revenue from legal global sports betting is estimated at around $1.7tr a year.
Of that, football makes up roughly $900b, meaning that the match-fixing industry,
which seeks to influence results and outcomes, is potentially worth billions in itself.
But what is match-fixing, where does it happen and who is involved?
And why is it so difficult to detect?
It can be broken down into two different categories.
Match-fixing is much as it sounds. It’s the illicit
and intentional attempt to influence the outcome of a sports event.
Spot-fixing, though, is more specific, and it involves the manipulation of
events within a fixture around which a betting market exists.
So, here are two examples:
When eight members of the Chicago White Sox were banned for life
for fixing the result of baseball’s 1919 World Series, that was an example of match-fixing.
However, when the Pakistani cricketer Mohammad Asif was found to have
deliberately bowled no-balls in a 2010 test match against England,
he was guilty of spot fixing and being part of a conspiracy to defraud bookmakers.
It needn’t always involve players, though. Officials can be bought and compelled to
make decisions which favour particular markets, while coaches, too, can be persuaded to field
weakened teams, omit influential players, or make tactical decisions which serve ulterior motives.
Sometimes, a fix needn’t involve anyone actually involved in the event. In the late 1990s,
for instance, the Premier League was blighted by a succession of floodlight failures.
Most memorably, in November 1997, West Ham fought back from 2-0 down against
Crystal Palace to equalise with a 65th minute Frank Lampard goal.
At which point, the stadium went dark and the game was abandoned, with the scoreline frozen at 2-2.
Bad news for the fans, but good news for an Asian betting syndicate, who – because enough of the
game had been played for particular markets to be settled – were able to cash their winnings.
Floodlights would also go out a month later, during a game between Arsenal and Wimbledon.
And then again at The Valley, during a game between Charlton and Liverpool.
Following a tip off, two Malaysians, one Chinese man and the Charlton
security supervisor were all sentenced to custodial sentences, after it was revealed
that they had conspired to trip the ground’s electrics using a remote-controlled device.
So, sometimes match-fixing has a sporting objective.
More commonly, as in that instance, outcomes are manipulated for the purposes of gambling,
and that’s the kind of match-fixing we’ll be concentrating on.
And specifically in football which, because of its appeal, its number of competitions, and also
the range of betting opportunities it affords, is considered to be the sport most at risk.
In 2015, the Qatar-based International Centre for Sport Security estimated that up to €1bn
is staked on each English Premier League game and that 80% of the money wagered on those matches is
from within countries where sporting betting is either illegal or improperly regulated.
This is big, big business. The games never stop and the flows of money around them are
absolutely enormous. Together, that helps to partly explain the relative
ease with which criminal activity is able to hide in plain sight.
But who is actually doing this?
Sometimes, it is an individual acting for their own benefit. A professional
sportsperson can take advantage of certain markets and then use friends to place bets.
Generally, though, the kind of match-fixing that gets exposed is enacted by players or teams,
but orchestrated by organised crime groups or networks.
And, actually, the most complex forms of
match-fixing usually rely on two groups working together.
One Organised Crime Group – or OCG - is local and responsible for making contact
with officials or players and arranging payments. In many cases, individuals might
be targeted because of debts or addictions, or because they’re vulnerable in some other way.
The local OCG can obviously profit from this activity themselves, but they are often acting
on behalf of the second group - a larger OCG that pays them for their service and local knowledge.
These OCGs are frequently based in China and specifically take advantage of Asian betting
markets and Asian handicap betting – some 65% of the world’s betting takes place on such markets
and they are subject to less regulation than the European equivalent. Some of these books
are run illegally and therefore not subject to the same checks as European markets.
These larger OCGs are often involved in other criminal activities such as money-laundering,
drug, weapons, or people trafficking, and other types of fraud or property crimes. This means
that match-fixing directly subsidises the most serious types of crime, right up to murder.
Or, as Europol put it: “Overall, match-fixing, fuelled by illegal betting,
is perceived by criminals as a high profit and relatively low-risk crime.”
But underneath this larger network, what are the mechanics of fixing a game?
Certain types of spot fixing only need one player to be involved.
Fixing a whole result, or number of goals or cards, requires the cooperation of several,
and potentially also officials and coaching staff.
Intermediaries are used to make contact, facilitate payments, and ensure outcomes,
but OCGs are becoming increasingly sophisticated.
One increasingly common tactic is for fixers to embed themselves in a club,
almost like a parasite.
This is done either by buying the club outright, which can itself be a useful
vehicle for laundering, or by creating a promised financial relationship with the club.
As an example, let’s say an OCG from China want to fix games in an African top-flight league:
First, they form a front company and use an intermediary with a background
in football to make the approach to the club.
Then, the company offers to sponsor the rest of the season,
but only if they can get the club to employ a particular manager and bring in certain players.
In reality, though, the manager and players are part of the fixing gang. Once a certain number
of games have been fixed, the front company either disappears, or cuts ties blaming poor results or a
lack of involvement. This trick can be repeated as many times as the OCG can set up fronts.
According to Europol, Russian-speaking OCGs are also increasingly using this approach,
taking over certain clubs with a view to fixing games and laundering cash.
And, of course, they can also target match officials.
In the German match-fixing scandal of 2005, referee Robert Hoyzer confessed to fixing a
number of games in the second and third tier of German football, as well as in the German Cup.
Among others, Hoyzer was proven to have taken a
bribe to fix Hamburg’s DFB Pokal match against Paderborn in 2004.
In 2005, he would be banned for life by the DFB and served a prison sentence of two-and-a-half
years – but he also co-operated with prosecutors, leading to the arrest of a second referee,
Dominick Marks, who would receive a suspended sentence.
It would also be revealed that the match-fixing scandal had been masterminded by a Croatian
syndicate comprising three brothers, who had operated out of café in Berlin.
According to Hoyzer’s indictment,
one of those brothers made in excess of €750,000 from that infamous Paderborn victory
and, during the referee’s trial, it was also discovered that the syndicate would ring him
in his dressing-room at half-time during games and that, in total, he was responsible for nine
fixed games for which Hoyzer was found to have accepted €67,000 and a new flatscreen television.
Ultimately, Hoyzer’s fraud was discovered because his decisions were so obviously strange.
But while referees can have a clear impact on games, players have to fix matches
in more subtle ways – and those can be very difficult to spot.
So, if match-fixing is relatively easy to arrange and hard to detect, how can it be stopped?
There are three main ways - intelligence,
betting analysis, and game analysis. Most of the time, the three work in tandem.
Intelligence can take many forms: informants, tracking individuals previously shown or suspected
to have been involved in fixing, and players or officials raising concerns.
Betting analysis is conducted in-house by bookmakers or by third-party companies
like Sportsradar. It looks at odds and market movement to detect suspicious
patterns. If a game is halfway through and the score is 0-0, the likelihood
of an over-three goals outcome should be drastically reduced, and the odds longer.
But if the game is fixed, then it’s likely that money is continuing to back that outcome,
which keeps the odds shorter than they should be.
Game analysis uses sophisticated analytics tools to observe how a team played.
This will be looked at relatively, comparing a team in one fixture against an average of others,
or examining a team’s performance during the course of a game to see whether there were,
for instance, significant changes to marking patterns or the depth of defensive line.
Both these types of analysis can show if a team has deviated from the way they normally play.
And, individual player performances can be analysed too, with Statsperform – who
are becoming increasingly involved in integrity - grading individual’s actions on
a sliding scale of suspicion; this includes positive acts, like goal-line clearances,
that likely show that a player isn’t involved in any fixing activity.
Game analysis is tricky. In a low-scoring, luck dominated game like football, anomalies occur.
As a result, this kind of scrutiny is generally applied to matches
over which concerns have already been raised.
The overall framework for investigating and prosecuting match-fixing is complex,
too. And comparatively underfunded. In 2020, Interpol’s entire budget for investigating and
prosecuting match-fixing was €135m and Europol’s, while slightly larger, was still just €175m.
Together, that’s around a third of what’s estimated to be staked on one Premier League game.
Sportsradar estimates that 1% of all the events they look at indicate fixing. While top
professional leagues are often insulated because players and even officials receive good pay and
significant scrutiny, match-fixing is considered endemic in smaller leagues or lower paid sports.
It has even spread to eSports. In March 2020, with professional sports
shutting down because of the pandemic, fixers turned their attention online.
An Australian professional e-gamer reported being offered £30,000 to lose a Fifa20 match.
In other cases, gamers have reported threatening or coercing behaviour prior to their fixtures,
and abusive comments from disgruntled punters on social media afterwards.
The real-life Premier League is relatively protected; it has several things in its favour.
Its officials are professional and highly-audited. The players are also extremely well paid,
meaning that incentives for involvement in fixing would have to be unrealistically high.
Further down the pyramid it’s a different story – in 2013, it was reported in The
Guardian that “Asian gangs were thought to be targeting lower league matches in England,
with millions of pounds wagered on a single non-league tie”.
The same year, many UK bookmakers had stopped taking bets on games involving AFC Hornchurch,
Billericay Town and Chelmsford City. All clubs outside the professional leagues,
represented in many cases by players without much financial security.
Moses Swaibu knows what it is to be in that position.
Raised in South London, he grew up dodging the No Ball Games signs in Croydon, playing local
football for his district and watching Crystal Palace from the Holmsdale Stand at Selhurst Park.
A tall, slender centre-half, he progressed through the fertile Palace academy. He captained youth and
reserve teams along the way before, like so many young hopefuls, being released in his late teens.
Instead of the top-flight, his senior professional career began down the leagues, at Lincoln City.
He won the Young Player of the Year award at the end of his first season and was linked with moves
to Aston Villa and Birmingham – but that was also when he first encountered match-fixing.
He was 19 and, late one night before an away game,
teammate Delroy Facey, a former Premier League player,
invited him to his hotel room, where he would find a man he had never met before and €60,000 in cash.
He was young and impressionable, and he trusted the older player.
More importantly, for fear of the consequences and the likely effect on his career,
he didn’t feel able to tell anyone about what had happened.
He would say no to the offer, but that first exposure would prove a life changing moment.
Swaibu left Lincoln in 2011, falling into non-league football – and, in so doing,
became more exposed to those who prey on the game at that level.
He would be tried twice for match-fixing. On the second occasion, in 2015,
he was found guilty of conspiracy to commit bribery and was sentenced to 16 months in prison.
He was also given a 15-year suspended ban from football.
Prison changed his outlook. It was there that he conceived the idea for what, today,
is MS5 Solutions, a consultancy which works with organisations to provide support and
education for young athletes across the full spectrum of integrity issues in sport.
MS5 have held workshops with young players at Premier Leagues clubs during each of the past
four seasons, with groups at Crystal Palace, West Ham, Manchester and Chelsea among them.
In addition to which, the consultancy has worked with data organisation Genius Sports,
helping them to use their data to better identify corrupted matches,
and has held seminars at Loughborough University.
The aim is cultural reform. But it’s also to help produce a new generation
of athletes and leaders in sport, equipped with the education and ethics that protect a career.
To which match-fixing is as serious a threat as there is.
Its promises of low-risks and high-rewards stalk the game
at every level, across the world. With the benefit of technological
changes in betting and the globalisation of crime, it’s the very definition of a 21st century crime.