I've never really understood why match fixing or throwing a match would be a crime. It takes what is a private matter between competitors and a league organizer and makes it a public matter that the courts supposedly can deal with.

If it was a private matter leagues would be inclined to either self-police the behavior or just admit the whole thing is rigged. I mean, WWE seems to do just fine with a completely fixed system.

"WWE seems to do just fine with a completely fixed system."

Exactly, that's what I don't get. Is the criminal act that it's a 3rd party person and not the league itself?

corruption is a team sport

You cannot legally wager on WWE anywhere in the US, currently (or I imagine anywhere outside it either). [https://www.forbes.com/betting/novelty/wwe/] I didn't know anyone took it seriously as a sport, let alone would want to bet on it. But apparently yes. It's hilarious to hear the term "Academy Awards... a fixed entertainment event". (Waiting for cynics to mention elections.)

> According to a March 2023 CNBC report, WWE—which produces fixed sports-style events such as WrestleMania and Royal Rumble—wants to quell gambling regulator concerns by reducing the chances that high-profile match outcomes leak to the public.

> WWE is “working with” the accounting firm EY, better known as Ernst & Young. EY and rival PwC have helped safeguard results for the Academy Awards, a fixed entertainment event available for wagering in select sports betting states. As it stands, betting operators like DraftKings Sportsbook, FanDuel Sportsbook, BetMGM Sportsbook and Caesars Sportsbook have offered limited wagering on the Oscars.

> WWE, which agreed to merge with UFC... is reportedly pursuing regulated wagering in CO, IN, MI. However, multiple state gambling regulators disputed the CNBC report that used anonymous sources.

> I've never really understood why match fixing or throwing a match would be a crime.

It's institutionalized fraud, and a fundraising method for organized crime.

> WWE seems to do just fine with a completely fixed system.

Nobody is currently permitted to wager anything on those fixed WWE matches.

As with all other regulations intended to protect idiots from themselves, the industry is looking to repeal it.

I'm fine with banning all forms of gambling in the United States

Me too. But how do we differ economic gambling vs sports? Only allowed to do it through a broker and not a casino?

I don't know what you mean by economic gambling

Speculation. Stock markets, futures, options, etc.

'financial speculation'

Prediction Markets come to mind as an egregious example.

Let's say we have a game with time running out and the winning team has the ball. They can take a knee and win by 10 or they can kick a field goal and win by 13. They can dribble out the last 7 seconds and win by 8 or they can shoot a 3 and try to win by 11.

If they are good sports and just kill the clock, is that fraud? If somebody pays them to kill the clock and not cover the spread, is that fraud?

Is risk of somebody manipulating the outcome like this just part of what makes it a gamble?

> If somebody pays them to kill the clock and not cover the spread, is that fraud?

Yes. It’s called point shaving and it is fraud.

It was pretty confusing that you switched to a second example and second sport mid-paragraph without saying so or switching pronouns. It sounded like the team had four options for its final point total until the end makes you ask, what kind of sport has both field goals and shoot a 3?

Would prohibition really work? It's not like there isn't already a large network of illegal betting in place for all the bets that can't happen legally... it would simply make them thrive even more.

Making things illegal/banned might feel good at first, but if it's barely enforceable and/or the demand for that thing remains very high all you are doing, as a state, is foregoing on a lot of taxes while not even diminishing harm often (sometimes even causing your own harm... I'm looking at you "war on drugs"... and before that the alcohol prohibition).

Prohibition of 'any' financial activity is easier than ever now.

Financial institutions have required reporting already, watching for large transactions is already in place.

Coming up with penalties and sentences for violations would be the trickier part.

I think the problem is that, historically, leagues claim to self-police but then the amounts of $ involved ends up meaning enough individuals can be bribed/threatened/etc. that "fair" matches end up fixed. In the best case, this ends up as fraud and so ends up in the courts anyways, in the worst case, the amounts of $ at play mean people turn to violence and...well that ends up in the courts. So think the idea is that we're better off just making it a public matter from the start, rather then waiting till things escalate into other forms of crime.

It is a 'crime against sports'!

It should be handled by civil law. The leagues sell tickets to fair competition. If the players fix the match, then the league is selling a defective product, and common sense suggests they should refund the ticket sales. And the players were presumably contracted to provide fair play, so if they damage the league by breech of contract then common sense suggests the league should be able to sue the players responsible for the cost of the refund. They could require players to take out insurance to ensure they'll always be able to pay.

Making it a criminal matter is just a subsidy to the gambling industry.

>Is this really a crime?

Looks like it is: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/224

Why would you answer a question about the legality of match-fixing in Belgium at Belgian/European sports betting operators, with a citation from US law?

The question asked "Is this a crime", not "Would this be a crime if done in the US?"

(Counterfactual: "Why Kinder Surprise Eggs are Illegal in the U.S.": https://www.distractify.com/p/why-are-kinder-eggs-illegal)

Fair point! When I wrote that the archive link hadn't been posted, so I saw Washington Post, and assumed.

I'm grateful for your response, because it brought me back to the post, and the story is fascinating.

The second sentence of the article is

> A strange tip had arrived from Belgium’s gambling commission.

I can't speak to Belgium specifically, but in many areas one of the responsibilities of the gambling/gaming commission is ensuring "fair" gambling. So they probably care more about the impact of match fixing on the "fairness" of sports betting rather than the reputational (I assume that's what you meant rather than "repetitional") risk to any particular sport.

When betting is involved, I don't see match fixing as all that different from someone bribing a casino employee to use dice loaded in their favor or help them cheat in a game of cards. Or depending on who's involved, maybe it's more like the casino using dice loaded in the casino's favor.

In any case I think it basically amounts to fraud. The published odds are inaccurate because the outcome has been fixed, allowing the people aware of that to make money at the expense of the people unaware. Fraud is generally a crime, so as long as the match fixing isn't reflected in the published odds IMO it isn't all that surprising that it's a crime.

The sports contest is not a gambling game though or even inherently part of one. The players are not casino employees of any kind.

The fact that a person can bet on anything that doesn't make influencing the outcome of events generally a crime.

Influencing outcomes is a natural response to wagering on outcomes. If that's fraud and unsavory then maybe the problem is the actual institution of gambling and not the manner in which people choose to participate.

(I'd also apply this argument to whether insider trading or stock manipulation should be illegal.)

> So they probably care more about the impact of match fixing on the "fairness" of sports betting

Not the 'fairness' of sports betting, but the impact on the sports betting industry. If people think sporting matches are fixed, they will stop gambling which is bad news for the gambling industry. It's why the NFL, which is now in bed with the gambling industry, is so paranoid about players gambling. It not only is bad for the NFL, but especially so for the gambling industry they are partnering with.

Yes, it is a crime. First, the money being paid out to the fixer doesn’t appear out of thin air. There is a counterparty to the transaction that is literally being stolen from when the fixer fixes a match. But more importantly, this is likely being done to launder money. Dirty money goes to the players and clean money comes to the fixers in the form of gambling winnings.

> There is a counterparty to the transaction that is literally being stolen from when the fixer fixes a match.

Not really. Almost no real persons bet on obscure low rank tennis matches... the betting companies know exactly what their role in all of this is, they won't bat an eye unless you completely screw over their financials or draw attention to them - all in all, they still make a fuckton of money.

Most importantly, the "gamblers" usually hedge their bets in the case of something going wrong unexpectedly. That keeps the risk low on average for the "gamblers", the loss from the betting service's profit and taxes (aka the spread between win/loss quotas) is way cheaper than other commonly used forms of money laundering.

Hell, you can launder money with gambling just fine even if you're not involved in fixing matches. Been a decade ago since I had someone explain this to me (I worked in a bar/slot machine joint, adjacent to a betting place), but in general it works by having a ton of people, immigrants from the mastermind's network, using combination bets (e.g. 4 out of 6) with "safe" bets (i.e. pay-outs just an inch above pay-in). They would get 1000€ in the morning, spend all their day at the betting place, and return the money and betting slips to account for it. Even if they'd lose a few hundred, the bosses didn't care as long as they got the slips to back it up. Cops can't do a thing as the bets are all legit and taxes been paid.

I don’t get it. If this is true why don’t the betting companies just not offer low ranking matches?

Because you'd have to fund a create a betting body that organizes this data and determines when it's low ranking or not. We don't need an SEC for tennis; what a colossal waste of taxpayer resources.

The betting company already analyses for suspicious bets and so on. If certain betting markets look more trouble than they are worth they can independently decide not to offer them. The tax payer is not involved.

That (betting pattern analysis) certainly happens in snooker betting and snooker has only around 100 to 200 pro players.

This doesn’t really make sense for a number of reasons. This investigation began after reports of suspicious betting. Those reports must have come from bookmakers who felt they were being ripped off. And the bookmakers only stand to lose from this behavior because they’re the ones who have to pay out.

And yes, you can launder money through a casino. But you lose a lot.

I thought bookmakers are delta-neutral. Otherwise, they are gamblers and not really bookmakers?

They try to be, but I think they have to put some of their own cash into the pot with small markets to establish initial odds

They’re market makers. They can’t be entirely delta neutral. There are things called betting exchanges where you can buy and sell bets with other people, and those can be neutral if the operator doesn’t act as a market maker but then there are many situations where people won’t be able to place bets.

How do the players explain the income? Or is it just not noticed?

I would imagine they accept the cash and never let it touch their books. $10-15,000 isn't much money to hide.

Tennis players make like no money unless you are top 80 in the world so yea I imagine it wouldn't cost much to get a match thrown