Match fixing

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In organized sports, match fixing (also known as game fixing, race fixing, or more generally sports fixing) is the act of playing or officiating a contest with the intention of achieving a pre-determined result, violating the rules of the game and often the law. There are many reasons why match fixing might take place, including receiving bribes from bookmakers or sports bettors, and blackmail. Competitors may also intentionally perform poorly to gain a future advantage, such as a better draft pick^[1] or to face an easier opponent in a later round of competition.^[2] A player might also play poorly to rig a handicap system.^[3]

Match fixing, when motivated by gambling, requires contacts (and normally money transfers) between gamblers, players, team officials, and/or referees. These contacts and transfers can sometimes be discovered, and lead to prosecution by the law or the sports league(s). In contrast, losing for future advantage is internal to the team and very difficult to prove. Often, substitutions are made by a coach, designed to deliberately increase the team's chances of losing (such as having key players sit out, often using minimal or phantom injuries as an excuse), rather than ordering the players who are actually on the field to intentionally underperform, are cited as the main factor in cases where this has been alleged.

Match fixing includes point shaving and spot-fixing, which center on smaller events within a match that can be wagered upon but are unlikely to prove decisive in determining the game's final result. According to Sportradar, a company that monitors the integrity of sports events on behalf of sports federations, as many as one percent of the matches they monitor show suspicious betting patterns that may be indicative of match fixing.^[4]

Games that are deliberately lost are sometimes called "thrown games", especially when a team has nothing to play for (either having already qualified for the next stage of competition or is arithmetically unable to qualify for the next stage of the competition, or is in the process of being eliminated.) In contrast, when a team intentionally loses a game or does not score as high as it can, to obtain a perceived future competitive advantage, the team is often said to have "tanked" the game instead of having thrown it. In sports where a handicap or ranking system exists and is capable of being abused (including sports such as racing, grappling and golf), tanking is known as "sandbagging". Hustling, where a player disguises his abilities until he can play for large amounts of money, is a common practice in many cue sports, such as nine-ball pool.