Match fixing In organised sports, match fixing, game fixing, race fixing, or sports fixing occurs as a match is played to a completely or partially pre-determined result, violating the rules of the game and often the law. Where the sporting competition in question is a race then the incident is referred to as race fixing. Games that are deliberately lost are sometimes called thrown games. When a team intentionally loses a game, or does not score as high as it can, to obtain a perceived future competitive advantage (for instance, earning a high draft pick) rather than gamblers being involved, the team is often said to have tanked the game instead of having thrown it. In pool hustling, tanking is known as dumping. In sports where a handicap system exists and is capable of being abused, tanking is known as sandbagging. Thrown games, when motivated by gambling, require contacts (and normally money transfers) between gamblers, players, team officials, and/or referees. These contacts and transfer can sometimes be found, and lead to prosecution, by law or by the sports league(s). In contrast, tanking is internal to the team and very hard to prove. Often, substitutions made by the coach designed to deliberately increase the team's chances of losing (frequently by having one or more key players sit out, often using minimal or phantom injuries as a public excuse for doing this), rather than ordering the players actually on the field to intentionally underperform, were cited as the main factor in cases where tanking has been alleged. Contents [hide] 1 Motivations and causes o 1.1 Agreements with gamblers o 1.2 Getting a better draft pick o 1.3 Better playoff chances o 1.4 More favorable schedule next year o 1.5 Match fixing by referees o 1.6 Match fixing to a draw or a fixed score o 1.7 Abuse of tie-breaking rules o 1.8 Individual performance in team sports o 1.9 Effect of non-gambling-motivated fixing on wagering 2 History o 2.1 Japan 3 Match fixing and gambling today 4 Match fixing incidents 5 Outside of sports 6 See also 7 References [edit]Motivations and causes The major motivations behind match fixing are gambling and future team advantage. [edit]Agreements with gamblers There may be financial gain through agreements with gamblers. The most infamous example of this in North America was the Black Sox Scandal of 1919, in which several members of the Chicago White Soxconspired with gamblers to fix the World Series. [edit]Getting a better draft pick In the National Hockey League (NHL), National Basketball Association (NBA) and Australian Football League, teams near the bottom of the standings have sometimes been accused of throwing games at the end of the season to finish with the worst record in the league—thereby gaining the first draft pick. To deter this behavior, these leagues now use a draft lottery which does not guarantee the first pick to the team at the bottom of the standings. Other leagues such as the Australian Football League and the National Football League (NFL) do not make use of a lottery, which leads to suspicions of match fixing, especially since top draft picks can have top careers. Like the NFL, Major League Baseball (MLB) does not conduct a draft lottery, but credible allegations of thrown games in the MLB are uncommon due to the historically weak correlation between draft order and major-league success (baseball draftees generally do not play immediately for their major league club, but rather start playing for a farm team). [edit]Better playoff chances In the NBA (but not in the NHL, which re-seeds teams after the first playoff round), there have also been allegations of teams tanking games in order to finish in sixth rather than fifth place in the conference standings, thus enabling the team in question to evade a possible playoff match with the conference's top seed until the final round of playoffs in that conference (for more details see single-elimination tournament). For example, the 2006 Los Angeles Clippers allegedly tanked late season games so they could finish with the 6th seed and play the 8th-ranked team in the league's Western Conference, the Denver Nuggets, who were the 3rd seed by way of winning their division. Another quirk in the league's playoff system gave the Clippers even more of an incentive to tank. The NBA is the only one of the four major professional sports leagues of the United States in which home advantage in the playoffs is based strictly on regular-season record without regard to seeding. If the Clippers had finished with the 5th seed in the West, they would have had to face the Dallas Mavericks, who despite being the 4th seed had the second-best record in the conference, which would give the Mavericks home advantage. However, the Clippers would have home advantage in a series against the Nuggets by virtue of a better overall record. If tanking was indeed their strategy, it worked, as the Clippers easily won their first round series. Following the 2006 season, the NBA changed its playoff format so that the best second-place team in each conference would be able to obtain up to the #2 seed should it have the second-best conference record.[1] On occasion, an NFL team has also been accused of throwing its final regular-season game in an attempt to "choose" its possible opponent in the subsequent playoffs. For example, in the closing game of the 2004 season, the Indianapolis Colts faced theDenver Broncos. With a win, the Broncos would advance to the playoffs as a wild card and face the Colts as their first round playoff opponent. It would seem the Colts had little incentive to win as their loss would ensure that they would play a team they dominated in the 2003 Wild Card game. Sure enough, the Colts rested their starters, lost the game, and went on to blow out the Broncos the following week in the playoffs. Perhaps the most notable example of this was when the San Francisco 49ers, who had clinched a playoff berth, lost their regular-season finale in 1988 to the Los Angeles Rams, thereby keeping the New York Giants (who had defeated the 49ers in the playoffs in both 1985 and 1986, also injuring 49er quarterback Joe Montana in the latter year's game) from qualifying for the postseason; after the game, Giants quarterbackPhil Simms angrily accused the 49ers of "laying down like dogs."[2] A more recent example of possible tanking occurred in the ice hockey competition at the 2006 Winter Olympics. In Pool B, Sweden was to face Slovakia in the last pool match for both teams. Sweden coachBengt- Åke Gustafsson publicly contemplated tanking against Slovakia, knowing that if his team won, their quarterfinal opponent would either be Canada, the 2002 gold medalists, or the Czech Republic, 1998 gold medalists. Gustafsson would tell Swedish television "One is cholera, the other the plague." Sweden lost the match 3-0; the most obvious sign of tanking was when Sweden had a five-on-three power play with fiveNHL stars—Peter Forsberg, Mats Sundin, Daniel Alfredsson, Nicklas Lidstrom, and Fredrik Modin—on the ice, and failed to put a shot on goal. (Sports Illustrated writer Michael Farber would say about this particular powerplay, "If the Swedes had passed the puck any more, their next opponent would have been the Washington Generals.") If he was seeking to tank, Gustafsson got his wish; Sweden would face a much less formidable quarterfinal opponent in Switzerland. Canada would lose to Russia in a quarterfinal in the opposite bracket, while Sweden went on to win the gold medal, defeating the Czechs in the semifinals.[3] [edit]More favorable schedule next year NFL teams have been accused of tanking games in order to obtain a more favorable schedule the following season; this was especially true between 1977 and 1993, when a team finishing last in a five-team division would get to play five of its eight non-division matches the next season against other last-place teams. [edit]Match fixing by referees In addition to the match fixing that is committed by players, coaches and/or team officials, it is not unheard of to have results manipulated by corrupt referees. Since 2004, separate scandals have erupted in prominent sports leagues in Portugal,[4] Germany (Bundesliga scandal), Brazil (Brazilian football match-fixing scandal) and the United States (see Tim Donaghy), all of which concerned referees who fixed matches for gamblers. Many sports writers have speculated that in leagues with high player salaries, it is far more likely for a referee to become corrupt since their pay in such competitions is usually much less than that of the players. [edit]Match fixing to a draw or a fixed score Match fixing does not necessarily involve deliberately losing a match. Occasionally, teams have been accused of deliberately playing to a draw or a fixed score where this ensures some mutual benefit (e.g. both teams advancing to the next stage of a competition.) One of the earliest examples of this sort of match fixing in the modern era occurred in 1898 when Stoke City and Burnley intentionally drew in that year's final "test match" so as to ensure they were both in the First Division the next season. In response, the Football League expanded the divisions to 18 teams that year, thus permitting the intended victims of the fix (Newcastle United and Blackburn Rovers) to remain in the First Division.