Sports That Have Gotten Plagued the Most With Fixing Scandals

It goes without saying that any competition can get rigged. Nonetheless, over the past century, some sports have been more vulnerable to manipulation than others. That has occurred because various elements within certain athletic competition types and one’s outside them have distinctly affected them in this area. Today, it is harder than ever for anyone to fix games in any sport due to cooperation between sports organizations and law enforcement agencies, with even bottom-tier games getting recorded with multiple cameras and advanced data analytics. Still, we are here to tell you about three sports that have seen their share of fix scandals.

Football

Without argument, football is the most popular sport on the planet. FIFA notes that today, one hundred and thirty professional players are playing at over four thousand and four hundred clubs. Because football matches draw so many eyes, it is the sport with the most extensive betting market selection at bookies. Therefore, it has the most “fix” opportunities. In a match, one goal can change everything, so this lets one player influence the result quite dramatically. That particularly holds for the goalkeeper and central defenders, as these are positions where mistakes can have substantial consequences.

Football is also the most organized sport, with the most leagues. In England, fifty-seven leagues are in the country’s system, featuring eighty-four divisions. The ones below the EPL and Championship do not draw as much attention from the public. These competitions are the most common playgrounds where betting-connect corruption exists, given that most modern online sportsbooks list events from second-tier national competitions from less developed countries.

That said, players accepting bribes to underperform has too happened at the highest level. One of the most infamous examples occurred in 1993 when Marseille’s midfielder Jean-Jacques Eydelie admitted to offering Valenciennes players money to lose easily. His team needed to beat Valenciennes to win France’s championship, but Marseille also had a CL final coming up against AC Milan. So, he did not want his team to overly exert themselves before their Champions League final, which they did win. That case produced prison sentences and various bans for all involved individuals, with Eydelie getting seventeen days in prison and a year’s suspension.

Boxing

Boxing has a long history of corruption controversies. There are no two ways about that. This is so due to several reasons. First off, individual competitions are far more susceptible to fixing, given that their outcomes can get determined by only one person. The next, and in the case of boxing, equally vital, is the lack of centralized governance. There is no continental/global boxing organization like European football has UEFA, for instance. Boxing is a fragmented sport. It features multiple sanctioning bodies. Fans of it are well aware of this, as they know there are IBF, WBC, WBA, and WBO belts as the sport’s four major ones. Yet, multiple other, lower-tier ones also exist. So, this fragmentation has help led to regulation inconsistencies, creating different openings for corruption.

Moreover, the sport implements a 10-must-point system, with judges boasting a sizeable discretion concerning how they can score round winners. In truth, most boxing rounds are somewhat uneventful, making them hard to score. Thus, the combo of this and subjectivity has created wacky scorecards by highly competent judges in major fights and opened the door for low official accountability in this department. In the past, organized crime has had its hand quite deep in boxing, using it for money laundering and other nefarious activities. Rumors have also flooded boxing of promotors incentivizing fighters under their banner to take dives so they can set up more desirable, bigger money matches or build up young boxers they believe will become stars down the line.

It is important to note that boxing is a business. Yes, all pro sports are, but boxing lacks the competition structure of other athletic competitions, not counting its amateur level. Massive stars can take a year of waiting for a big fight, keeping their belts, and only a few boxers make good money. The rest barely make ends meet by participating in the sport. Hence, they are susceptible to throwing fights. One famed example of a high-profile boxer taking a dive is Jake LaMotta vs. Billy Fox in 1947, where LaMotta succumbed to pressure from a criminal organization to lose to Billy Fox by TKO.

Basketball

Basketball is a high-scoring contest where key players have a massive effect on results. That means one or two players can easily manipulate an outcome by underperforming via bad plays. Referees also have a substantial impact as their decisions can interpret the game’s flow. They can claim human error or a subjective interpretation of the rules as the thing at fault for their ill-advised choices.

However, in basketball, the end result rarely gets manipulated. It is most often the score. That is something referred to as a point-shaving scheme. These have been present for decades, with illegal gambling syndicates, often tied to organized crime, paying off players to fiddle with the spread so they can make money betting on these contests. Point shaving can have various forms. It does not only need to involve missing shots. It can entail allowing the opposition team to score easily, committing turnovers, etc. Accordingly, these systems are difficult to detect, as no one blatantly throws games. It is a subtle process usually not present at the highest level.

You have likely heard of the Tim Donaghy NBA scandal, a case involving an NBA referee who gave gamblers details that affected the point spread in many NBA games. But, as mentioned, the NBA has not had any other proven such scandals. College basketball, on the other hand, has had more than a few. You have the 2009 University of Toledo scandal that detailed the school team’s games from 2003 to 2006. Then there is the 1994-95 Northwestern University Basketball Scandal, the 1978–79 Boston College one, and the CCNY point-shaving scandal of 1950–51 as the most prominent examples. Naturally, college athletes are more susceptible to accepting bribes, as they are amateurs who do not get paid for competing for their schools.

Top Bitcoin Betting Sites