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Fixed Football Matches
by Jason Ong

Asian bettors are conspiracy theorists.

Most of them believe that football matches are fixed.

For the rest of us, the thought sometimes enters our heads and we kind of just wonder.

The fact is, conspiracy theorists are really not that far off. There certainly is enough evidence to suggest that fixed matches occur more often than we think they do.

Just look at some of the cases that have been reported in the news over recent years:

• 1999 - EPL
  Malaysian betting syndicate members were caught trying to fix a remote-control contraption to stop the floodlights at The Valley, EPL's Charlton Athletic's homeground.
  They were planning to get the match abandoned after half-time when the result and bets would have stood. Subsequent investigations showed they were also responsible for similar incidents at the grounds of West Ham and Crystal Palace.
• 2005 - Bundesliga
  Referee Rovert Hoyzer was the target of several probes by the German Football Association (DFB) for fixing matches to which he later confessed to the charges. He was a part of Croatian gambling syndicated and also implicated other referees as well as players in the scheme. He was given a lifetime ban from football by the DFB. During the investigations, it was uncovered that the syndicated he was involved with also had access to UEFA's referee assignments for Champions League, UEFA Cup and other international matches several days before UEFA publicized them.
• 2005 - Serie B
  Serie B champions Genoa was discovered to have bribed their opponents, Venezia, to throw the match in order to secure their promotion to the Serie A. They were subsequently condemned to relegation to Serie C1 following this relevation.
• 2005 - Campeonato Brasileiro
  Two football referees, Edilson Carvalho (a member of FIFA's referee staff) and Paulo José Danelon, were reported to have accepted bribes to fix matches. Shortly afterwards, sport authorities ordered the replaying of 11 matches in Campeonato that had been previously fixed by Edilson. Both referees were banned for life from football.
• 2006 - Serie A
  Several Italian heavyweight clubs, AC Milan, Juventus, Fiorentina and Lazio were deemed to have rigged games by influencing the selection of favorable referees for their matches. Italian World Cup team goalkeeper Gianluigi Buffon was also charged for betting on football games. Juventus was stripped of their title and relegated to Serie B. The others had points docked but remained in the Serie A after appealing.

Some of this cases might seem innocent enough - teams influencing the appointment of partial referees for key matches. But the fact is, there are far more cases involved with betting syndicates than are reported.

I personally know of a Singapore bookmaker who went to Germany some years back to fix a German Div 2 match. This involved paying off the referee and 4 players. The operation was successful.

If you'd want a rundown on the whole football-match fixing scene, this is what it looks like:

There is no monopoly that is single-handedly responsible for all or most of the fixed matches. At best, there is a fragmented cartel structure dominating the football betting market made up of different parties and for various reasons.

Such parties would include, betting syndicates, bookmakers, football associations (like UEFA) players, managers etc. How so UEFA? It has been insinuated that they would have referees likely to have Italy progress in the Euro 2008 because the team would garner more interest and other political reasons.

How does match-fixing affect you as a punter?

Well, recognizing it when it happens proves most useful for raking in the profits. Because there is the possibility that someone or some group of people know to a good extent what's going to happen for certain matches and will likely stake a sizeable sum of money on this, we can look for signals of this in the markets using Market Analysis.

Combining Scenario Analysis with Market Analysis is a good way of identifying exploitable bets and the Silver Circle incorporates this as part of its handicapping process.

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