Croatia – Declan Hill – Investigative Journalist & Academic

11JunJune 11, 2026

The Seven Secrets of Why There Will be Match-Fixers at the World Cup: Part 3 – No one is stopping them

The match-fixers were at the last men's FIFA World Cup in America. They will be back. There are more teams. The gambling market is larger. And no one is stopping them. Match-fixers approached players on the Swedish team before the 3rd place match in the 1994 FIFA World Cup Finals It was - theoretically - the second most important game at the tournament: The 3rd place match on July 16,1994. The game was between Sweden and Bulgaria. It was a...

’Sometimes we fixed more games than we could bet’

In an exclusive interview with Play the Game, a former match-fixer tells how effectively criminal syndicates are still manipulating sports results despite all initiatives against it. The whole approach against match-fixing could be wrong, Declan Hill reports. This was first printed at: https://www.playthegame.org/news/news-articles/2019/0584_sometimes-we-fixed-more-games-than-we-could-bet/ ** The knock came late at night. Marko Stanovic – whose name has been changed to help protect him from the mob – was in one of the world’s great match-fixing gangs. A group whose criminal ties stretched deep into...

The ‘Sports’ Farce in Washington

To my American colleagues who went to the seminar on ‘sports integrity’ at the National Press Club on June 24th, You saw a presentation by a man with little credibility in sports integrity and two other men who have failed. You attended a presentation sponsored by the Qatari sports establishment. This is a group that is suspected by sports fans around the world of corruption in securing the rights to the World Cup tournament of 2022. This is a group that Amnesty...