Match fixing?

Nothing, and I mean nothing, gets my attention in the world of sport like a good match fixing story. 

There is something dark about the human personality that is attracted to destruction wreaked on mankind by a hurricane, tornado, earthquake, or tsunami. Why do you think we slow down at the scene of an automobile accident? It's more than just making sure we don't drive over broken glass. 

So when I saw this story on my newsreader this week, the scroll bar came to a screeching halt and I rubbernecked my way into the details.

As reported on 22 July by The Independent, The Guardian, the BBC, and Reuters, three players of the English club Accrington Stanley and one player for Bury have been suspended and fined for betting on a match – a match between their clubs played on 3 May 2008 that Bury won 2-0. The players and their fines and suspensions are as follows.

• Jay Harris (Accrington) - banned for 1 year and fined £5,500. Harris played the entire match.
• David Mannix (Accrington) – banned for 10 months and fined £4,000. Mannix did not play.
• Robert Williams (Accrington) - banned for 8 months and fined £3,500. Williams did not play.
• Andrew Mangan (Bury) - banned for 5 months and fined £2,000. Mangan did not play.

The case against the Accrington captain Peter Cavanagh, who also played the entire match, will be heard at a later date.

Suspicion is that the match may have been fixed, but the players were not charged with anything other than betting on the match. However, the four Accrington players were charged with betting thousands of pounds on their team to lose (and they lost 2-0). The Bury player was charged with staking £3,500 on his side to win (which it did).

The interesting thing to me is how wired the watchdog is with the gambling scene, and what they did when their wires got hot. Apparently the English Football Association (FA) were alerted after bookmakers reported unusual betting patterns in the lead-up to the match with unusually high amounts being staked in particular areas of the country. The bookmaker Betfair took £281,000 on Accrington to lose, approximately 14 times more than normally expected.

The FA changed the referee and assistants at the last minute to ensure no shadow of suspicion would affect them. The FA's statement on the matter can be found on their website.

Also, just today, euFootball.BIZ posted a story that the Association of European Football Leagues (EPFL), comprising 28 member leagues and 932 affiliated clubs, is supporting a draft bill of the French Parliament addressing online gambling and betting. The story states that "the EPFL Executive has stressed how the exponential growth of sports betting and new types of betting services and prodicts on sports competitions could represent a significant threat to the game's reputation through increasing allegations of match fixing and growing influence of illegal gambling syndicates.

The Bigger Picture

Have you ever felt that the game you are watching is not exactly on the up-and-up? I'm not talking about professional wrestling. I'm talking about the stuff we get so emotional and irrational about - soccer, football, baseball, basketball, and even tennis and golf.

Well, I've never really had that experience. Sure, it enters my thoughts when I read any history of any sport with a history of match fixing, and most do. And, to be honest, I thought about it while watching the second half of the Chelsea vs. Barcelona Champions League second-leg match this past spring - not seriously, but it did cross my mind.

Match fixing is hardly anything new. The Accrington Stanley-Bury affair isn't known to be match fixing, yet, so it may be just some players engaging in some pretty low rank stuff on the totem pole of illegal game management.

Here's my totem pole, from petty activity to high crimes and misdemeanors:

1. Players betting on their team to win and acting alone (with no organized entity involved).
2. Players not betting but deliberately losing a match ("tanking") to gain some future competitive advantage or to grant a favor to another club.
3. Players betting on their team to lose under similar isolated circumstances (so far, the pigeon-hole for the Accrington Stanley-Bury matter).
4. Players not necessarily betting on the match but involved in a point-shaving scheme involving an organized betting ring.
5. Players betting on their team to lose and connected to some sort of organized betting ring.
6. Players not necessarily betting on the match but complicit with a wide-spread organization that includes club management or other administrative entity to alter match events.
7. Players not involved in the match fixing but are unknowing participants of a scam involving club officials in cahoots with the league's organization such as referees.

American sport has a long and sordid history with such stuff. Because of the Black Sox Scandal of 1919, Major League Baseball (MLB) has taken a very hard line on gambling (note the more recent sad saga of baseball player Pete Rose). More recently, the National Football League (NFL) and the National Basketball Association (NBA) has adopted a very hard line on gambling. Also, because betting scandals involving college sports have surfaced from time to time, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) prohibits athletes and coaches from gambling on any sport in which the NCAA holds a championship. But there have been recent scandals in the U.S. In July 2007 it became known that NBA referee Tim Donaghy had gambled on games which he refereed. And just this year, on 6 May 2009, a federal grand jury indicted six former University of Toledo athletes, football and basketball, on charges of conspiracy to commit sports bribery in relation to their alleged involvement in a point shaving scheme.

European football, where football clubs wear sponsor logos, including betting companies, on the front of their jerseys, has had its fill. In 1964, the great British football betting scandal of the 1960s was uncovered - a betting ring involving several Football League players had been fixing matches. Elsewhere in Europe, scandals have been rather common, even in the last decade. The German football league was rocked in 2005 on the eve of the World Cup with the widespread Bundesliga match-fixing scandal involving players, coaches, and officials. And most recently, the Italian Serie A was the scene of the scandal known as Calciopoli, a particularly insidious mess where top clubs were accused of rigging matches by being able to influence the selection of referees favorable to their cause.

So, I'm not too distressed about the Accrington-Bury matter, as undesirable as the behavior is, unless it's just the tip of an iceberg leading to a higher place on the totem pole.