Examining the fabrics of match-fixing: The underground sport betting system

Abstract

This study aims to examine the very fabrics of underground sport betting system that is associated with match-fixing. Mafia, syndicates, and bookmakers are the three levels of actors in the hierarchy. Having grassroots bookmakers as our particular focus, we examine their roles and networks, what regulates the system, and how the system functions. Thanks to our academic links with the mafia, we had access to bookmakers to carry out observations and 25 interviews. We rely on the social capital model in which structural, relational and cognitive dimensions are identified. Findings reveal that actors are empowered by their social capital to streamline their underground business. Far from the stereotype of a competitive market under the control and coercion of very powerful mafia, our observations of bookmakers, mainly women, show that they cooperate, trust each other, and have great autonomy in their activities. Because of their strong shared culture and networks, betting activities are considered acceptable in their own small community.

Globalization or Glocalization? The Emerging Scholarship on Sport Match-Fixing in Light of Asian Context

“…Compared to the quantitative work on match-fixing, there are several examples that follow the qualitative tradition. To gain a better understanding of how countries deal with match-fixing in various sports, relevant studies have employed a qualitative, interpretive, multimethod approach encompassing the case-study approach [9,[20][21][22][23][24], contextualization [17,18,43], and sociohistorical analysis [27][28][29]. The above suggests that theoretical work on match-fixing in sports has become more abundant by drawing on various qualitative methodologies involving the analysis of official discourses, ethnography, interviews, and content analysis.…”

“…In the international sports field, while most studies on match-fixing have focused on European sports, the geographical and social context of Asia appears to have recently become of interest [9]. With respect to the global match-fixing phenomenon in sport, an Asian investigation has shown incremental growth in the following countries: Bangladesh [26], China [27][28][29], India [30,31], Indonesia [32,33], Japan [34,35], Malaysia [36,37], Pakistan [38]; Singapore [5,36,37], South Korea [8,14,17,18,[39][40][41][42][43][44], and Taiwan [9][10][11][21][22][23][24]45]. Except for Canadian expert Hill's investigation in Malaysia and Singapore, and Duggan and Levitt's [34] study in Japan, the rest of the scholarship comes from Asia itself and involves region-based match-fixing case analyses.…”

“…Given the nature of the core concern and the themes expected to be revealed, academics from sports management, sports sociology, economics, and criminology are among the most active in match-fixing studies [3]. Asian-related scholars have made important contributions through their theoretical analyses of match-fixing, and different theoretical approaches have been applied, such as criminological analysis [40,43], governance theory [24], the institutional approach [18][19][20]43], social capital theory [21,22], and social network theory [5,8,9,14,23,36]. Sports, as a social phenomenon, can be regarded as an entry point for a better understanding of sociology and the application of sociological knowledge.…”

“…In addition to the above Korean case studies, a series of sports corruption studies focusing mainly on match-fixing and paying specific attention to scandals in Taiwan have also been published recently [9][10][11][21][22][23][24]45]. Using approaches based on governance theory and strategic relations analysis, Lee's [24] study launched an empirical evaluation of the behavior of actors in the corrupt governance of the professional baseball system in Taiwan.…”

“…The study investigated how both individual agendas and organizational interests were served in match-fixing and argued that the relational attributes possessed by actors embedded in social networks are involved in the cognitive process of actors' decision making. Tzeng and Ohl [22] examined the fabrics of an underground sport betting system that is associated with match-fixing in Taiwan. The study analyzed to understand the three stakeholders' (Mafia, syndicates, and bookmakers) roles and networks, what regulates the system, and how the system functions.…”