Wherever there is a competition, there’s a desire to win. Wherever somebody has a chance to win something, others want to profit off it. This leads us to an unfortunate connection between sports and illegal match-fixing. Unfortunately, sports and result fixing always went hand in hand.
We are not talking about one specific sport. This example is seen in almost every sport in the world. People are able to reap enormous rewards out of fixed events. Knowing the results beforehand has enabled some people to get filthy rich.
Nevertheless, we are here to mention just a few infamous examples of match-fixing made famous in the world of sports.
Calciopoli Scandal in Italy
Probably one of the most infamous scandals that shook up the world of football was the one that involved match-fixing in the Italian Seria A promptly nicknamed Calciopoli.
The scandal involved some of the most prominent Italian teams (Juventus, Lazio, Fiorentina, and Milan). These teams influenced the referees picked for their games that eventually went in their favor. This went on for two years and once it all came to light Juventus, probably the greatest team in Italian football history was relegated to Seria B and had its two titles stripped from them. While other teams had a major point deduction for the start of the upcoming season.
Tim Donaghy’s NBA Betting
Tim Donaghy is a former NBA referee who became famous for betting on games that he refereed in 2007. Of course, he directly influenced the scoreline and benefited directly from those results.
Things became suspicious when officials realized that the games that Donaghy officiated had much larger score lines than the others. An investigation revealed that there were suspicious bets made on these games and it led them directly to Donaghy. After being caught, Tim was given a lifetime ban from the NBA in officiating any games.
He served 15 months of prison time and three years of probation.
The Pakistan National Team Scandal
Major sports are not the only ones that were afflicted by match-fixing. In 2010, it was revealed that Cricket took a major blow and had its reputation dwindling with a few scandals that were made public. But probably the most infamous one was that of three Pakistani national team members fixing the result of the Test game against England.
The three players got involved with a bookmaker and betting syndicate run by Mazhar Majeed. After they were found out, the three players were not only banned from Cricket for life they also had to serve some jail time as well.
Stephen Lee’s Snooker Match Fixing
Stephen Lee was considered as one of the brightest upcoming stars of snooker. He actually had a great career and earned £2 million to his name by the time of the scandal. Making his motive for doing this unknown.
Stephen was found guilty of fixing a total of seven matches between the period of 2008 and 2009 that he played on. The revelation of his wrongdoings came in 2013 and he was immediately issued a 12-year ban from competing in snooker. It is a blow for the sport that many did not anticipate happening.
