Match Fixing and Sports File corruption

The sporting industry generates billions of dollars once a week. There are many people who make a good honest living from the proceeds of sport. In fact, if sport had to disappear from the landscape, millions of people will be unemployed and in desperate trouble. It is therefore critical to eradicate any scenario that threatens the integrity of sport. There are unfortunately those iniquitous characters who employ nefarious methods to leverage ill-gotten financial gains from the naive public by convincing sportsmen and directors to become complicit in match-fixing and spot-fixing. They use the lure of money to ensnare their affected individuals — sportsmen and directors alike — using sports playing outlets as their playgrounds. While it is sort of impossible to evaluate the best way far this cancer has spread, it is almost certainly a far bigger problem than we anticipate. One thing is clear, they are inflicting irreparable damage the sporting industry.

There are currently two high profile cases of match fixing doing the rounds.

The first case is the supposed spot-fixing by four Pakistan bowlers who were required to bowl no projectiles in established overs for substantial amounts of money in their matches against He uk. The bowlers were withdrawn from the tour. The investigation is ongoing and has soured contact between He uk and Pakistan resulting in the Pakistan chief, Ijaz Butt, slamming John Strauss’s men as match-fixers claiming that He uk were paid to lose the third one-day international football fixed matches at the Oblong, which Pakistan won by 23 runs. Butt claimed: “There is loud and clear talk in the bookies circle that some English players have been paid enormous amounts of money to lose the match. “No wonder there was total collapse of the English side. We won the match and are under suspicion. He uk lost, their players should be investigated”.

The second case of match fixing involves three time world champion and current world no. 1 snooker player John Higgins. In May, what is this great of the World supposed that Wishaw-born Higgins and his manager Dab Mooney had agreed to fix frames in a World Series of Snooker event in Ukraine for £261, 000. I am pleased to report that Higgins has been cleared of the match-fixing charges brought against him and you will be free to resume his snooker career in December. They have, however, been handed a back-dated six-month ban and fined £75, 000 on the lesser charges of breaching rules by discussing playing and failing to report a blueprint from a party trying to instigate file corruption in the game. He was also ordered to pay £10, 000 in costs.

There is also the ongoing case of supposed match fixing during Steven Maguire’s match against Jamie Burnett at the UK Great in Telford on November 15.

Match fixing or spot-fixing is a scourge that has tainted sport for many years now. The first big scandal to kick or punch the cricketing world was the Hansie Cronje match fixing scandal in The indian subcontinent regarding green decade ago. Hansie said to spot-fixing, but never to throwing a match, which seems to indicate that players think that spot-fixing is not as serious as throwing an entire match and are therefore more open to suggestions of this nature. This is absolutely naïve and certainly not well thought through, because these actions have the same dire ramifications.

It automatically leads one to wonder the best way endemic these surreptitious purchases actually are. How deep and how wide have the tentacles of file corruption infiltrated sport?

The best way many sporting codes have been or are affected by file corruption? Since sports-betting is such a massive industry, it is hard to see any (especially the big money spinners) getting away from the clutches of the dodgy operators.

Could this phenomenon be altered to the extent that a sportsman could buy his way to the no 1 spot, or worse even, a country pay its way to the top ranking in a particular sport?