If you read newspapers or watch the news, there’s a very good chance that you’ll have heard the term ‘spot-fixing’ at one point or another. If you weren’t paying much attention then you might have thought that it was something that teenagers do their acne before going out on the town, but if you had been listening or reading closely then you’ll know that it is to do with sports. More specifically, it is when a player or players involved in a sporting even choose to fix certain aspects of an event in order to win a bet or earn money. It generally does not involve fixing the overall result but instead manipulates a certain aspect of an event.
When spot-fixing works best, those watching wouldn’t even know that it was happening. It can be the likes of kicking the ball out for a throw-in, getting booked on purpose or giving away a free-kick in football matches, or bowling a wide in cricket. The sort of thing that happens naturally in games and matches anyway and so can be made to look entirely natural. The only difference is that people or even groups of people have placed large sums of money on the event happening at the specific time that it does, thereby winning themselves money via illegal methods.
Defrauding Bookmakers
The whole point about sport, any sport, is that it is supposed to be fair. Whether you’re a fan of cricket, tennis football or rugby, you watch the games and matches that take place in the belief that what you’re watching is fair. The only thing that should determine the outcome of any given event is the skill and ability of those involved. It is why football fans get so annoyed with refereeing decisions that seem to be controversial, given that the officials are supposed to be there to ensure that the rules are obeyed by both teams.
The problem with spot-fixing is that it removes that sense of fairness. The fact of the matter is that spot-fixing involves a player or players doing something deliberately in order to win themselves or others money. This ‘something’ could then lead to the other team or players involved in the contest gaining an advantage that changes the course of the game. Whilst doing something like giving away a throw-in or bowling a wide might not seem like much, it can become more than just a small thing if the others involved are able to make something of it.
From a bookmaker’s point of view, spot-fixing defrauds them when those involved are able to make money out of the situation. Imagine watching a football match and knowing that a throw-in was going to be given away at a specific time in the game. You can use that information to place bets, either ahead of the game, if you’re able to, or via a bookmaker’s In-Play feature, winning money that other people watching the event wouldn’t have been able to win because they don’t have the information that you’ve got available to you.
Equally, bookies would lose money because they can’t change the odds in order to account for the event happening. It is different from match fixing, because that is about the overall outcome of an event. Spot-fixing, on the other hand, is about a specific thing happening within the match that shouldn’t, in theory at least, affect the overall outcome. That, of course, makes it much more difficult to detect, which is where the idea of fairness comes in. Most of us dislike bookmakers because they take money off us, but we do at least expect everyone involved to be working on a level playing field.
Tackling The Act Of Spot-Fixing
Though it is very difficult for spot-fixing to be spotted, it isn’t impossible. There are numerous different bodies involved in each major sport to try to stop spot-fixing before it even occurs, such as the Fédération Internationale des Associations de Footballeurs Professionnels. The body for professional footballers is tasked with identifying examples of spot-fixing as well as eradicating it from the sport of football. The general feeling within football is that spot-fixing goes against the ethics of the sport and players are against it.
Of course, just because players aren’t happy with the idea of spot-fixing as a general concept doesn’t mean that none of them get involved with it. Whilst the biggest players on the planet can earn wages of hundreds of thousands of pounds every week, with even the less effective Premier League players still earning enough money to retire happy, those that are involved in the lower leagues aren’t as lucky. As a result, someone coming up to them and saying that they can be paid £10,000, say, in order to kick the ball out of play at a specific time will be tempting.
At the same time, other sports don’t earn anywhere near as much money as football. A county cricketer, for example, or a lower league rugby player can be easily tempted to do something for a bump in their pay. This means that it is very difficult to tackle the subject of spot-fixing in all sports, meaning that those involved can get away with it. More and more is being done with each passing week, but that doesn’t mean that the notion of spot-fixing will ever be completely eradicated. Only if those that are approached to do something turn to the authorities can it be spotted in most cases.
What About My Bet?
One of the questions that you might want an answer to is what, exactly, will happen to your bet if you place a wager on something that turns out to have been spot-fixed. Betting companies are becoming better and better at identifying examples of possible spot-fixing, largely thanks to the ability to monitor suspicious betting activity via in-house traders and computer software. There are also independent bodies like the International Betting Integrity Association, which are tasked with the job of monitoring betting markets around the world.
If there is a suspicion that a market might be at risk of spot-fixing then operators will usually suspend them. If you were involved in the spot-fixing at question then you are obviously liable to face criminal action, whilst if you’re an innocent bystander then things will work slightly differently. The chances are that your stake will be returned to you, although it is also possible that your wager will be paid out as a winner as long as the bookmaker in question is confident that you weren’t part of any sort of conspiracy around it.
Which Sport Is Most At Risk Of Spot-Fixing?
Though all of the major sports have seen examples of spot-fixing take place over the years, there is no doubt that football is the one that is most at risk of it. Between April 2020 and October 2021, for example, more than 1,100 cases of fixing something within a football match were detected. Sportradar Integrity Services, which partners with more than 100 football federations as well as leagues, runs the Universal Fraud Detection System to monitor bets and find suspicious activities in as many as 12 sports taking place around the world.
The organisation believe that football is the sport most at risk from corruption, with 500 football matches flagged for suspicious betting in 2021 alone. Interestingly, 40% of the domestic matches that were of concern were in the lower leagues, coming in the third-tier or below. Youth football was also targeted, with the thinking being that many people believe that they’ll make huge sums of money if they’re good at football but then struggle to make it and need to find alternative methods to make themselves some cash for the future. Here is the breakdown of where the matches were taking place:
- Europe: 382
- Latin America: 115
- Asia Pacific: 74
- Africa: 43
- Middle East: 10
- North America: 9
Famous Examples
Now that we know what spot-fixing is, the sport most likely to fall victim to it and the places that are most commonly found to have examples of spot-fixing taking place, it is worth having a look at some famous cases of spot-fixing that have occurred over the years. The chances are that at least some of these will ring a bell if you tend to follow sports and sports news. It is, of course, worth bearing in mind that this list is far from exhaustive and is instead just a series of good examples.
Matt Le Tissier
Long before he became an absolute crank and conspiracy theorist chatting complete and utter nonsense on social media, Matt Le Tissier was a semi-decent footballer. When he retired, having spent the majority of his career at Southampton before turning to lower league football, Le Tissier admitted that he had done a bit of spot-fixing during his time. Writing in his autobiography, Le Tissier confessed that he had tried to deliberately kick the ball out of play during a match that he was playing in in 1995, working with some friends who had placed a bet on it.
It was during a game against Wimbledon, with Le Tissier and a teammate conspiring to ensure that they could win their bet by kicking the ball out of play straight from kick-off, thereby confounding bookmakers that had said it would take a minute or longer for the ball to go out for a throw. The problem was, Le Tissier was never as good as he thought and he mis-kicked the ball, failing to get it out for a throw-in and thereby losing the bet. Not the first time that Le Tissier would become incorrectly obsessed with a conspiracy.
Spot-Fixing In Rugby
In 2008, Ryan Tandy was playing rugby for Ireland during that year’s World Cup. Whilst doing so, he earned a contract to play for Melbourne Storm the following season. From Melbourne Storm he moved on to play for the Canterbury Bankstown Bulldogs, but only lasted a year before he was given the drop-kick for his involvement with a spot-fixing scandal. The scandal came to light after a match that he was involved in against the North Queensland Cowboys, with the Totalisator Agency Board saying that 95% of bets placed on the first scoring play were unusual.
The bets were wagered on a Cowboy penalty goal, with friends and associates of Tandy being revealed to have wagered enough to win more than AUS$100,000 on that outcome. Tandy was involved with an action that led to North Queensland getting the chance to score a penalty goal within the first two minutes of the game. The problem was that the Cowboys chose to attack to score a try rather than score the penalty they were awarded when Tandy committed an offence. He denied the accusations but was later found guilty.
Pakistan’s Spot-Fixing Scandal
When it comes to spot-fixing, there is perhaps no better known example than that of the Pakistan cricket team in 2010. In May of 2010, Shahid Afridi was made the captain for the Series against Australia, but he resigned when they lost the first Test. Salman Butt was appointed as his replacement and it was he, alongside Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Amir, that was convicted of taking bribes from a bookmaker named Mazhar Majeed. The plan was for all three of them to bowl no balls against England during one of the Tests that summer.
Undercover reporters at the new defunct News Of The World discovered the story, videotaping Majeed accepting money from the reporters and telling them that no balls would be delivered at specific moments in the Test. Criminal investigations followed, with all three players as well as Majeed found guilty of conspiracy to accept corrupt payments and conspiracy to cheat at gambling. Though Asif denied his role in it at the time, he admitted that he had been involved in the spot-fixing two years later.