Football Match Fixing
Detecting fixed football (soccer) games.
There is a certain buzz of expectation, because Oscar, one of the fraud analysts, has spotted a game he is sure has been fixed.
“We’ve been watching this for a couple of weeks now,” he says.
“The odds have gone to a very suspicious level. We believe that this game will finish in an away victory. Usually an away team would have around a 30% chance of winning, but at the current odds this team is about 85% likely to win.”
[…]
Often news of the fix will leak so that gamblers jump on the bandwagon. The game we are watching falls, it seems, into the second category.
Oscar monitors the betting at half-time. He is especially interested in money being laid not on the result itself, but on the number of goals that are going to be scored.
“The most likely score lines are 2-1 or 3-1,” he announces.
This is interesting:
Oscar is also interested in the activity of a club manager – but his modus operandi is somewhat different. He does not throw games. He wins them.
[…]
“The reason he’s so important is because he has relationships with all his previous clubs. He has managed at least three or four of the teams he is now buying wins against. He has also managed a lot of players from the opposition, who are being told to lose these matches.”
I always think of fixing a game as meaning losing it on purpose, not winning it by paying the other team to lose.
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Phillip • December 3, 2010 12:45 PM
“The odds have gone to a very suspicious level. We believe that this game will finish in an away victory. Usually an away team would have around a 30% chance of winning, but at the current odds this team is about 85% likely to win.”
They away team must be playing the Detroit Lions — at home. The Lions can’t beat anyone, home or away.