By A significant part of the appeal of sports lies in their unpredictability. In the book The Grasshopper: Games, Life, and Utopia by Bernard Suits, the nature of games is explored, delving into their spontaneity and the uncertainty of their development and outcome, which makes them an attractive and pleasurable human activity. But what happens when an athlete deliberately makes a mistake in a match or commits an absurd foul to deliberately alter the score and share the economic benefits with bettors who are more interested in profiting from an artificial result than in the integrity of the sport?
By Sandro Angulo Rincón
In this second installment of Agon&Areté, we continue with the third and fourth objections to online sports betting, that is, we will question the corruption and unscrupulous methods by which some spectators participate in and appreciate sports.
Match Fixing and Money Laundering
Match fixing is investigated by Sportradar, an organization that annually publishes the report Betting Corruption and Match-Fixing in 2023, detailing the extent of this fraudulent practice. How does it do this? It utilizes artificial intelligence (AI) technology through machine learning algorithms designed and trained to detect suspicious betting activities. First, it filters real-time betting data using mathematical models created specifically for various sports and then generates alerts when bets exceed a predetermined threshold specific to a competition. This process relies on market estimates and historical odds movements reported by data science.
In other words, Sportradar classifies a betting activity as “potentially suspicious” when, for example, the amount of money or the number of bettors on a particular outcome deviates from the usual pattern, something commonly observed in the first 15 minutes of a sports event, according to the *Betting Corruption and Match-Fixing in 2023* report.
An accepted definition of match fixing is provided by the Macolin Convention, a legal instrument and the only international law standard on the manipulation of sports competitions: “It means an intentional act or omission aimed at improperly altering the result or course of a sports competition to remove, in whole or in part, its unpredictable nature to obtain an undue advantage for oneself or others.”
The company monitors more than 850,000 matches annually across more than 70 sports. In 2023, it detected 1,329 suspicious cases in 105 countries across five continents, with 667 registered in Europe, 302 in Asia, 217 in South America, 108 in Africa, 36 in North America, and 0 in Oceania. This amounts to a suspected fraud rate in 467 matches, 0.21% of all monitored sports events.
The countries most affected by this crime were Brazil with 109 cases, the Czech Republic with 67, the Philippines with 65, Russia with 55, Greece with 46, Kazakhstan with 43, Vietnam with 43, Peru with 38, Argentina with 36, and Serbia with 36. By sport, the majority of alerts were in football with 880 cases, basketball with 205, table tennis with 70, tennis with 61, e-sports with 46, volleyball with 27, cricket with 13, handball with 12, ice hockey with 8, futsal with 6, and billiards with 1 (see bubble chart).
Curiously, the number of first-division football matches affected increased, rising from 17.5% in 2022 to 24% in 2023. Generally, the top tier of national football is less susceptible to such practices than the second tier, as higher player salaries serve as a deterrent, and preventive measures such as player education and thorough investigations are more common at this elite level.
However, these safeguards are not as prevalent in some regions, countries, and other sports. On April 17, 2024, The Athletic reported the lifetime suspension of Jontey Porter, a 24-year-old center for the Toronto Raptors in the National Basketball Association (NBA). According to the results of a league investigation, Porter provided confidential information about his health to someone he knew was a sports bettor before the Raptors’ game against the Sacramento Kings on March 20.
A third individual, connected to the original recipient of the health information, placed a parlay bet (a wager that combines two or more individual bets for a higher payout) of $80,000 to win $1.1 million. This bet hinged on the prediction that Porter would underperform against the Sacramento Kings. The league discovered that Porter withdrew from the game against the Kings after just three minutes (the first event), claiming he was ill, which impacted his team’s performance (the second event): Kings 123 – Raptors 89. The money was not paid out, and the online betting site where the bet was placed notified the league of the suspicious activity along with Porter’s playing time in that game on March 20, 2024.
It is perplexing that this basketball player, who had earned millions of dollars legitimately while playing in the NBA, would ruin his career in this manner. This season, he had a contract worth $415,000 with the Raptors. As sports agent Leigh Steinberg stated in the New York Times on May 31, 2024, professional sports rely on authenticity and credibility. Fans must believe that the games are fair and that each athlete is making their best effort to win. Thus, any hint that competition is being manipulated or altered will destroy the industry. Steinberg warns that Jontey Porter has just been suspended for life, but he will not be the last.
Sometimes, it is not necessary to publish a report like Sportradar’s to question the transparency of a game, as it is already common for fans in the stadium or watching on television, as well as those closely associated with the sport, to sense when a play is unusual for a professional player. They read the context and body language and deduce—rightly or wrongly—that the footballer, for example, deliberately kicked the ball too softly so it would go over the crossbar in a penalty kick, and they doubt his feigned gestures of frustration shown on TV for missing the goal.
Another associated crime is money laundering in illegal online sports betting, which operates without the supervision of financial industries and states to prevent the occurrence of this crime. According to the Global Report on Corruption in Sport by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, some operators make illicit funds appear legal through (1) acquiring licenses in at least one jurisdiction while accepting bets in jurisdictions where the product is illegal and (2) operating without a license as a betting house in multiple jurisdictions, effectively becoming a transnational organized crime organization.
The threat posed by illegal betting to the integrity of sports is amplified by the increasing amount of laundered money. Various estimates indicate that up to $140 billion is laundered annually, and the money wagered in illegal betting markets ranges between $340 billion and $1.7 trillion.
The Global Report on Corruption in Sport describes how illegal online sports betting is used as a vehicle for money laundering through these actions.
1. The proceeds of the crime are deposited into a betting account, and the winnings from successful bets are withdrawn with a commission deducted by the betting operator.
2. Establishing an unlicensed illegal online betting website where public bets are not accepted, but the proceeds of the crime are placed and subsequently distributed to third parties.
3. Illicit collusion with professional players, through which they bet the proceeds of the crime on online betting sites and receive a commission before returning the dividends.
4. Depositing the proceeds of the crime into an electronic wallet (which does not require a bank account), then using it to transfer money to an online gambling user digitally, and the profits are deposited back into the electronic wallet for other online transactions.
Organized crime groups also place irregular bets using “mules,” individuals whose identities are stolen or who willingly create thousands of accounts—but without exceeding the limit set by regulated gambling operators—from which they bet on fixed matches. Naturally, the modus operandi of money launderers often includes offering financial incentives to poorly paid referees and athletes or those at the end of their careers to manipulate the game. It is worth noting that monitoring these illicit practices is more difficult in regions with tax havens, where clients’ identities are protected (bank secrecy), regulations are more flexible, and cooperation with authorities is limited.
Changes in Sports Participation and Appreciation
The fourth objection, argued by Ned Lis-Clarke and Adrian Walsh in the article “At Odds? Sports, Gambling and Hypercommodification,” posits that online sports betting is of considerable moral concern as it degrades the ideals of athletic competition by transforming how spectators participate in and value sports.
This observation is evident in online micro-betting, which involves specific, repetitive, high-frequency situations where the time to place a bet and know the outcome is usually short. These are minutiae of the development of a game, such as the number of rebounds in basketball or the number of aces achieved by a tennis player in a major tournament, which are not directly linked to the final score. This type of betting changes the visual experience of the bettor by (1) causing distractions, as instead of focusing on the game itself, they are busy checking odds and identifying favorable betting opportunities, and (2) promoting selective attention, meaning that instead of admiring the beauty of the sport holistically, they will have an anxious apprehension to predict minor game incidents, regardless of ethical and moral values. They may wish for one or two massive crashes during a stage of the Tour de France (their bet, even if there is pain and severe injuries to the cyclists) rather than being pleasantly absorbed by the endurance of the competitors, the colorful scenery, and the enthusiasm of the fans along the roadside.
Another ethical and moral argument against micro-betting arises from the reprehensible behavior of people attending NBA basketball games, which is likely already occurring in other sports. As reported in The Athletic on April 2, 2024, players are complaining that fans shout and insult them during the competition when their bets are losing.
Additionally, we must warn about data trafficking. Porter, the basketball player banned for life, provided privileged information about his health, as we mentioned in previous paragraphs. Therefore, it is not far-fetched to think that, for example, an underpaid assistant coach might secretly provide a bettor with the strategy of a national team participating in a world speed skating championship to increase the chances of accurate predictions in the event’s trials.
Finally, athletes, academics, and responsible press conclude that another consequence of viewing athletic competition instrumentally, merely as a means to make money, is that it affects the beauty of great sport and its aesthetic interest, similar to what is appreciated in great art.
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