The sports industry generates billions of dollars every week. There are plenty of people who make an honest living off of sports earnings. In fact, if the sport were to disappear from the landscape, 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 nefarious characters who employ nefarious methods to take ill-gotten financial gain 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 trap their victims (sportsmen 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 anticipate. One thing is clear, they are inflicting irreparable damage on the sports industry.
There are currently two high-profile cases of match-fixing making the rounds.
the first case is the alleged points fixing by four Pakistani bowlers who were asked not to bowl balls in predetermined overs for substantial sums of money in their matches against England. The bowlers were drawn 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-fixing and claiming England were paid to lose the third one-day international at the Oval, which Pakistan won by 23 runs. Butt stated: “There is talk loud and clear in the bookmaking circle that some English players have been paid huge amounts of money to lose the match.” It is not surprising that there is a complete collapse of the English side. We won the game and we are under suspicion. England lost, their players should be investigated.”
the second case of match fixing involves the three-time world champion and reigning world no. 1 pool player John Higgins. In May, the World News alleged that the Wishaw-born Higgins and his manager Pat Mooney had agreed to fix frames at a World Series of Snooker event in the 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 six-month retroactive ban and a £75,000 fine on the lesser charges of breaching the rules by discussing betting and failing to report an approach by a party attempting to instigate corruption in the game. He too was 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 the 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 points, but never throwing a match, which seems to indicate that players feel that fixing the points is not as serious as throwing an entire match, and therefore they are more open to suggestions of this nature. This is absolutely naive and certainly not well thought out, because these actions have the same dire ramifications.
It automatically leads one to ponder how endemic these underhanded dealings really are. How deep and wide have the tentacles of corruption infiltrated the 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 money makers) escaping the clutches of rogue operators.
Could this phenomenon be manipulated to the point where an athlete could buy their way to the number 1 spot, or worse, a country pay their way to the top ranking in a particular sport?
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