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This illegality does not stop at straight-forward betting on
games. It invariably leads to illegality within the games.
According to one New York Times article, basketball is one of
the easiest sports to inf luence. Because there are only f ive
players per team, an artif icial dip in performance by just one
team member can undermine the entire performance.
The two most common methods for corruption within sports
is shaving the spread and
match-f ixing.
Point shaving is the most
common method in America. In
gambling terms, the spread is
the amount of points by which
one team should beat another,
weaker team. The concept was
originally intended to protect
bookies from uncertainty and
to give texture to bets, but the result is that players can
get bribed to miss the spread. Sometimes players will miss
throws so that the score hovers just below this number.
The article cites research into the NCAA basketball
competition and found many games ended with scores just
under what was required to beat the spread: more, in fact
than was statistically feasible. This suggests that one in one
hundred games were points-shaved.
Match-f ixing is more common outside the USA, and has been
rampant in India, where sports betting is heavily controlled
to the point of illegality.
One of the key arguments used by supporters of legalising
sports betting is that it removes the
underground element that makes cheating
such a major problem. In an article for The New
Yorker, we see evidence of the self-regulation
that legal gambling would bring to sport.
According to James Suroweicki “one of the
biggest college point-shaving scandals of
the past twenty years was uncovered when
Vegas bookies noted unusual betting activity
on certain games and reported it to the
authorities.”
Of f icially sanctioned gambling businesses such as Britain’s
Ladbrokes have no interest in rigging matches, and cheating
hurts them because their algorithms are based on form
and expertise. Their odds get thrown if there is a f ixed
match. They also have the statistical number-crunchers
to determine when something is f ishy. So-called boutique
“ YOU CAN GAMBLE
FROM HOME ,
PR I VATELY, WI THOUT
ANYONE KNOWING
THAT YOU ’ RE DOING I T.”
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ISSUE 20 | MARCH 2015