Soccer is in Trouble (and so are we)
by Devanshu Mehta
You know Soccer, right, the sport where commies chase the ball? It’s in trouble. Brian Phillips reports on the large scale match-fixing for Grantland:
Right now, Dan Tan’s programmers are busy reverse-engineering the safeguards of online betting houses. About $3 billion is wagered on sports every day, most of it on soccer, most of it in Asia. That’s a lot of noise on the big exchanges. We can exploit the fluctuations, rig the bets in a way that won’t trip the houses’ alarms. And there are so many moments in a soccer game that could swing either way. All you have to do is see an Ilves tackle in the box where maybe the Viikingit forward took a dive. It happens all the time. It would happen anyway. So while you’re running around the pitch in Finland, the syndicate will have computers placing high-volume max bets on whatever outcome the bosses decided on, using markets in Manila that take bets during games, timing the surges so the security bots don’t spot anything suspicious. The exchanges don’t care, not really. They get a cut of all the action anyway. The system is stacked so it’s gamblers further down the chain who bear all the risks.
In a way, we’re lucky there hasn’t been enough cricket played to make this viable. I think.
With the proliferation of T20 leagues, especially in countries with underground gambling, sketchy law enforcement and a dysfunctional judiciary, match-fixing in cricket is only going to get worse. At the same time, the England and Australia often market cricket as though it’s a sport purpose-built for betting.
Cricket Australia is reviewing whether this is a good idea. And the ECB works with Betfair to monitor the betting markets.
But in my mind, it’s a question of when, not if, cricket will face it’s next major betting scandal.
Deep Backward Point 
Just too many meaningless games. In all sports. International football friendlies, mindless T20 dead rubbers, agonizingly long and relatively meaningless regular seasons…etc. Meaningless games are ripe for spot and match fixing.
I agree. Even within tournaments that have meaning, there are a *lot* of games where the result doesn’t matter to at least one opponent.
One of the interesting things about the Europol announcement, and the information coming out of Play The Game and similar sources, is that the fixers are sophisticated enough to basically organise their own matches. Pay associations to play, organise some referees to fix the result, or substitute one of the official teams by a fake one who’ll lose badly.
You can see where I’m going with this. I follow associate and affiliate cricket as closely as anyone, but if the matches were fixed on a grand scale, I doubt I would notice. It is just another score in the book, maybe some unknown players (there always are a few), a match report by a local journalist who hasn’t seen much cricket. And the players are 99% amateur, so the risk to their livelihood is non-existent.
Perhaps there aren’t many bets being lain on low-level international cricket games. But then, I can’t think that there would be too many bets lain on low-level international soccer matches; but apparently there is. And there are precedents
I’m not sure anyone would care if some of the T20 leagues were fixed, isn’t the rub of the problem that fixing deprives fans of the knowledge that their team is playing to the best of their ability? With no sentimental attachments to corporate entities such as the Kolkota Knight Riders or the Melbourne Stars, are the fans really missing out on anything?
That argument certainly wouldn’t hold true when international teams play though, those games have to be completely above board. I suppose a taint at one level of the sport contaminates every level too, but I wonder if its a case of picking the right battles for those looking to fight corruption and fixing.
[…] Gambling and sport have had a long relationship, from the Black Sox scandal to Pete Rose. But lately, it has come out that the relationship is far deeper than anyone (other than the FBI, it seems) suspected. Read Deep Backward Point‘s post about gambling and soccer and cricket: Soccer is in Trouble (and so are we). […]