MATCH-FIXING is as old as sports itself, having existed since man first learned to organise competitions and wager on their outcomes.
Rigging sports results for profits is fast becoming a serious global problem. And it’s only now that sports governing bodies are waking up to the presence of irregular bettings that influence competition results.
An expert on the topic, Warwick Bartlett, director of Global Gaming and Betting Consultants, said with the nature of modern sports gambling, the fixing of matches had become easier, especially for teams to lose.
“For the sports gambling industry, match fixing is a serious problem and the fight against it is a fight for survival of sports and the betting companies,” he noted.
Warwick stressed the need for strong laws to support the exchange of information and impose penalties heavy enough to “fix” the fixers.
Any pundits will tell you football is all about scoring goals and winning.
The official agenda has always been for teams to play to win but in recent times, a hidden agenda has started to surface.
It’s not about winning but achieving a fixed result for the game.
In 2005, FIFA president Sepp Blatter described a case of match-fixing as “one-off” after German referee Robert Hoyzer was convicted of rigging a cup match.
But a review of articles about match fixing published in the international media (from January 1, 2005 to April 1, 2006) told quite a different story.
Over 25 cases of match fixing allegations were reported and police investigations led to convictions from more than 20 countries and four different continents.
Match fixing is not used as a shortcut to a title or promotion. Rather, it is eyeing the huge sums of betting money placed with Internet bookmakers.
For instance, over four billion pounds a year pass through English bookmakers alone and 40 per cent involve football.
Match fixing is an ill wind that blows nobody any good – except the fixers – and the FIFA World Cup 2014 in Brazil is not spared with the finger of suspicion pointing at especially Cameroon.
According to a German news magazine (Der Spiegel), a convicted match-fixer from Singapore (Wilson Raj Perumal) predicted Cameroon would lose all their Group A games, including a 4-0 defeat by Croatia.
The magazine reported that Perumal correctly forecast Cameroon’s result with Croatia and also the explusion of a Cameroonian player during the match – Alex Song for fouling Mario Mandzukic.
However, Perumal has disputed the allegations, saying he gave the interview to the magazine after the match had been played, and apologised to the Cameroon FA and its fans if he had “inadvertently offended them.”
He pointed out that the magazine should also apologise since “they placed words in my mouth that I did not utter.”
Betting industry sources said there had been no “suspicious betting activity around Cameroon’s games – or any other at this World Cup.”
FIFA has also asked Der Spiegel to substantiate its claims by producing documents the magazine claimed it got from Perumal, purportedly containing proof that the Cameroon-Croatia match had been fixed.
Apparently, Cameroon is not the only team making the headlines for all the wrong reasons. Fellow African nation Ghana is also involved in allegations over corruption.
The country’s FA has asked the police to probe the claims although Ghana FA president Kwesi Nyantakyi is to take legal action against a newspaper which claimed he agreed for the national team to play in matches “others were preparing to fix.”
Most people can only wonder how a football match is fixed.
According to Canadian journalist and academic Declan Hill who has spent years researching the subject, “fixing a match without getting caught takes expert knowledge of human nature in order to convince players or referees to help get the right result.”
He said getting an effective result involved “establishing a personal bond with the victim, isolating him or her from the rest of the team and posing the right type of threat in order to force the victim to work for the match-fixer.”
Hill noted that in the early 1990’s when match-fixing was reported in Malaysia, the perpetrators were successful in rigging up to 90 per cent of matches in the national football league.
“There are half a dozen master fixers, and these guys are brilliant. If you want experts on human nature, these guys are really good,” he said.
Although match fixing has so far affected mainly the lower divisions and less prominent leagues, the problem is steadily creeping up to the very top of the heap.
Indeed, the problem has become a big menace to the world of football and as there is no way of wiping it out altogether, the sport could end up paying a big price for it.