Match-Fixing and MLS

What, a tournament where the heavy odds favor the U.S. and Mexico meeting in that un-fixed championship? What exactly is he fixing?

 

I was impressed that he'd arranged to rig the whole tournament before the participating teams (and referees) were known! Or were the qualifiers fixed too?

 

He has his hands in many soups...

 

With the quality of officiating i see in MLS on a routine basis, i'd be surprised if fixing wasn't happening.

 

Hanlon's razor

 

And you can rest assured that Phil Anschutz has read that book cover to cover.

 

I'm not saying this isn't a big scandal and very serious but is it endemic and have any meaningful games been rigged?
I know one was CL game but could well be one of the teams had already qualified so the result did not affect the competition - again not saying it makes it okay, it doesn't. Just trying to get a perspective.

680 games sounds like a lot and it is but how many professional soccer matches take place around the World every single year? It must be around 100k or something if you take every league in every country and all their cup games and then all the other inter country club and national competitions.
So since this investigation covers several years the figure of "suspect " games is probably a fraction of 1%

Not only that but the term match fixing is misleading because I have no doubt a lot of this will involve spread betting. You can also bet on everything from the minute of the first corner or how many seconds before the ball first goes out of play to the first goal scorer to the amount of bookings and the list is endless. (I think they stopped the ball out of play when a retired pro footballer admitted to kicking the ball straight out of play from kick off in a book and he didn't even think of it as match fixing! Still he was never charged lucky fellow.)

The "evidence" of match fixing is very hard to prove as well which is why they say number games suspected of match fixing and this will come from suspicious betting activity such as;
first yellow card after 75th minute is heavily wagered upon, for example, and the ref seemingly ignores tackles until suddenly booking someone for picking their nose in the 75th minute.

Actually fixing the result or scoreline of a game is far more difficult and costly and the odds would need to be long to make it worthwhile. You would almost certainly need at least 6 players and a couple of officials for correct scorelines and even then you are not on a cert. Results you would need less and the obvious targets are goalkeepers, strikers and match officials.
But for many spread bet scams you may only need one, usually the Ref and if you have a Ref for one game you have him for all the games he referees.
Therefore I suspect the majority of these are manipulating spread bets, under/overs but that said if you did want to manipulate a result using just the Ref you could do it but it could well be massively suspicious.

There are some 425 suspects and these include criminals, match officials, club personnel and some players but only 50 arrests have been made thus far and 15 charged.
From BBC;
"German police described a global network involving couriers ferrying bribes of up to £86,000 per match around the world, paying off players and referees."

Now that means the very maximum bribe was 86k separated between those involved. Just about every professional in a top league would laugh in your face if you offered him that. It is like me offering you $50 for a criminal act that could see you lose your lucrative job and even jailed.
The only person involved in any high level game therefore must be an official since these are not well paid and the greatest influence on results.
Therefore it is highly unlikely any player in a top league is involved unless they were being blackmailed instead of bribed or perhaps they may have a gambling problem or other issues.

Bribes and fixing will have happened in every sport in the US where big money is involved, to think otherwise is just incredibly naive. The US is not immune to corruption and nor are its sports.
In a league where revenue is shared the fix could come from the inside and unless somebody turned whistle-blower nobody would ever be any the wiser.

The irony may be that this very public airing of the investigation into the scandal and its aftermath may make soccer the cleanest sport in the world.
I hope MLS is not involved and it seems like it is in the clear but if a Ref was outed as fixing would that still put you off MLS and the sport?
It seems a bit of an over reaction to me though if I thought a league was rigged or several games rigged I would never watch it again for sure.
Doesn't put folk off Wrestling though.

 

Supposedly , from what I heard about the Last Bet betting in Italy, it wasn't just the outcomes of games and/or tournaments that were being fixed but how many total goals one or both teams amounted. I think that was why Cristiano Doni got banned with the Atalanta team scandal.

 

This necessitates a sharper cutting instrument.... say, Machiavelli's Razor: "Never attribute to Stupidity that which is adequately explained by Malicious Intelligence"

 

Remember this? Well...
http://espnfc.com/news/story/_/id/1496982/belize-players-reject-offer-fix-gold-cup-game?cc=5901

Some dismissed the claims as BS, but it appears as though there may be a bit of truth into what was said.

 

Yeah they were throwing cash at the players. Sounds about right....

 

Wait a minute. Let me see if I've got this straight. Belize players, whose team consists partly of semi-pros, were offered money to throw the match against the US? The match the US won 6-1? The match that was never seriously in doubt? Why on earth would an organized crime figure bother to fix a match like that? That's like paying Glass Joe to take a dive against Mike Tyson!

Was it the margin? Was he trying to get them to lose by 7 or 10 goals instead of 5?

None of this makes sense. It almost seems like the Belize team is trying to make themselves look good by claiming they were such a threat to the US team that a bookie tried to pay them to lay down. It's just laughable.

------RM

 

Actually, you answer your own question- it's not a question of who would win, but by how much. If the US was a 4 goal favorite, maybe you and your friends put down some big money and say the US will win by 6. You or your friends then offer a bribe to the underdog to make sure the difference is met.

 

That's how match fixing works. And how gambling works, for that matter.

Betting on a heavy favorite can pay, but it's also risky, because sometimes the favorite loses and the long shot comes through. If you can turn that long shot into no shot, you can pretty much print money.

For example: The US was reportedly at -2000 to beat Belize. What that means is that if you bet $2,000, after the U.S. win you could have collected $2,100--your stake, plus a small profit. On the other hand, you have to risk a big stake to make any money--and sometimes the long shots do win.

Turn that long shot into no shot by bribing a few of the Belize players, or the ref in one of their knockout games, and you can put $100,000 on the field and walk away with $5,000 of profit.

Remember: you don't make money in sports betting by picking winners. You make money in sports betting by playing the odds. If you can tilt the table in your favor even a little--even if it's making a long shot a little bit longer--you can print money. If the bookies have a team at a 4:1 shot, and you know they're really a 3:1 shot, you make the most money, in the long run, by betting the 3:1 shot--even though you think that they'll probably lose.

And it's much safer to nudge safe bets to make them safer than it is to try to rig an upset--at least in part because of people who think the whole idea is "laughable" because the team didn't need any help to lose.

 

Internationally, point spread betting is a fairly recent phenomenon. I'm not saying match fixers don't try to fix spreads, but it's easier to fix results--and you can still make a profit even at long odds.