To be honest, the biggest factor is probably that you can’t really shave points in hockey. I don’t think that you there is a spread that you can bet against – you just get odds on the outright winner. Match fixing is way easier to detect than point shaving.
Plus players at the NHL level make enough that bribing them to fix a match is unlikely, and I would assume that there is very little gambling activity on the college or minor pro level so any fixing and associated large bets would be quite obvious.
I suppose that it could happen at the Major Junior level in Canada, where the players are paid practically nothing and there probably is enough gambling activity, but I wonder how many major junior players would be willing to risk looking bad in front of an NHL scout and miss out on being drafted.
You’re probably right but back to my original point is that hockey has been peculiarly immune from accusations of game fixing. I have heard of cases in Europe where in playoffs the players were being paid on the number of games played and they would extend a series. Can’t prove it, just heard it from a player that played in a European league. Of course, none of that is any indication that results were predetermined.
Just look at the way these sports play out and you can imagine a lot of possibilities where a match-up that didn’t happen would be far more marketable than what actually transpired. To accuse someone of a crime it helps to be able to establish a motive.
A few players have been suspended for gambling on matches, including at least one who was banned for life. But that was for gambling - some of it very low-stakes - and not for fixing matches.
In addition to all the other reasons that have been mentioned, consider illegal gambling. Do you really think the mob would sit by and let the owners decide who was going to win and lose competitions when they have millions of dollars of bets riding on the outcome? And if the mob was in on the fix, why would they accept bets on both sides? They’d just accept bets for the side they know is going to lose.
Another thing I forgot to mention is that it would make no sense for a coach to allow his team to lose, only to get fired after a string of bad results.
It’s apropos to the rest of the conversation, but who said the mob was accepting bets on both sides? They’re the mob.
When I lived in the UK, I played on a cricket team with a couple of Pakistanis who were absolutely convinced that every single international cricket match, everywhere, was fixed. Pakistan loses a game in the World Cup? Fix. Australia wins? Fix. Namibia beats Nepal in the ICC qualifiers? Fix. Mind you, this was before the Hansie Cronje scandal and the spot-fixing arrests, so maybe they were onto something after all.
It’s worth noting that there is a significant difference in difficulty between fixing an individual sport and fixing a team sport. Boxing, MMA, and what have you are realtively easy to fix because you only have to convince one or two people to throw the match. But a team sport is vastly more difficult. You could bribe a goalie or a quarterback, but if they’re sufficiently bad
A) They’ll get yanked, and
B) It’s still no guarantee they’ll lose.
In major pro sports you’d need to convince many, many people to cheat, like they did with the Black Sox, and hiding that conspiracy would be nearly impossible. Plus the fact, also pointed out, that a guy making millions of dollars a year to win is going to be damned hard to buy off.
I think we need to distinguish between the real amount of fixing that goes on and the amount of fixing the OP was asking about. Yes, there are certainly individuals who are trying to throw a competition they’re playing in*. But there isn’t any sport (outside of pro wrestling) where everyone’s involved and they’re all basically following the script.
*I once read about a boxing match in which both fighters had been bribed to throw the fight by two different groups, both of which were unaware that the other side was also trying to fix the fight. So when the fight started you had two boxers who were each trying to let the other guy win. The crowd was supposedly upset but I’m thinking it must have been a spectacle worth watching.
One of the top international soccer leagues, Italy’s Serie A had a major scandal: Calciopoli - Wikipedia, involving manager’s manipulating referee selection to influence matches. So it’s clear that some things can indeed happen even at the highest level of professional sports.
I’m surprised no one has raised one of the most implausible issues. Buying off a baseball pitcher to suck for a game is fairly plausible, but take the NFL for example. How many games come down to an incredible play where a receiver snatches a one handed grab while falling backwards over the sideline? Or the opposite - where one corner makes an incredible leaping play to break up that same pass? Do you think those sorts of things could be staged reliably at will? So many games come down to extraordinary athletic plays, or the luck of the bounce of a fumbling ball, or whether or not a kicker can make a 57 yard field goal - how could you possibly plausibly fake that?
I’m also reminded of a story Jim Bouton told in Ball four about pitching to an opponant who was friends with Bouton’s catcher. The batter asked his buddy for help (I recall he was one short of a home run goal) and the catcher let the batter call the pitches. Bouton, on the mound, is sweating his guts out, blissfully unaware.
The kicker was that the batter only went 1 for 3, with a single. Bouton noted something like “Hell, if they’d asked me I might have grooved one for him just for the hell of it”.
Even in the HR Derby, with their own pitchers trying to ‘groove one’, what percentage of pitches swung at are homers?
Tell that to the Texans. I am not even sure how you would fix an NFL game without being totally obvious. Maybe you could do point shaving by kicking FGs rather then going for a TD, but if you do it late in game with a lead it is called “sportsmanship” and if you do it othertimes it is going to attract a lot of attention.
Also, don’t you think that certain teams would demand that they be allowed to win a title every once in a while? If the NFL was fixed, wouldn’t the Detroit Lions have a better record,?
“Pro Wrestling” is not an officially santioned sport. I know a lot of [del]idiots[/del] genius entrepreneurs make a lot of money of off [del]redneck idiots[/del] clever sports fans who thoroughly enjoy the [del]ruckus[/del] sport, but to try and stretch the fabricated farce that is wrestling to any of the many legitimate, and especially the four “major” American professional sports, is ridiculously naive and shortsighted.
If you couldn’t convince your friend of that, either you’re incapable of doing so, or he’s incapable of understanding. Either way, it’s a null deal.
I am not even sure how you would fix an NFL game without being totally obvious. Maybe you could do point shaving by kicking FGs rather then going for a TD, but if you do it late in game with a lead it is called “sportsmanship” and if you do it othertimes it is going to attract a lot of attention.