Sports around the world are in danger: Major League Baseball, National Basketball Association, NCAA, UFC and soccer/football in 33 countries. Here are the facts that no one else will tell you.

“When you want to fix, go to the country where it is easiest.”

It was the day after a major Champions League game. The final round of the old-formatted, group stages where most teams had nothing to play for. I was talking to one of the biggest Asian match-fixers. He told me that one of the top Turkish Premier League teams had fixed their game and lost – well-above the Asian Handicap. I was surprised because they are a massive team. He just laughed, “Don’t bother about other countries, just go to Turkey. There the club owners will help you fix. It is easy.”

This is the headline, on a day when match-fixing dominates the sports news, we are all the Turkish Football League now. Sports, around the world, are either thoroughly corrupted or in danger of becoming so. It is worth counting all the leagues/countries that have been effected just in the last few weeks:

1. Major League Baseball (MLB) – has another scandal. Anyone surprised? Of all the major US sports this is the one that lends itself most easily to corruption. The number of innings, strikes/balls and the overall slow pace of the games makes baseball the easiest target of corruption in US sports.

2. National Basketball Association (NBA) – the FBI Investigation continues with elements of the Chinese, Albanians, and traditional US La Cosa Nostra involved in crooked poker games and, allegedly, parts of the game itself.

4. National College Athletic Association (NCAA) – has announced a possible match-fixing scandal featuring six players.

5. Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC). The UFC management is seemingly struggling to understand that if you exploit fighters they are vulnerable to fixing fights. Who would have known?

4. Indian Football – From sources in Hungarian jails, when some of the Indian section of the Asian match-fixers were jailed, they just kept doing business. Their favourite targets? India, Kenya and, in general, women’s sports. The researchers at the University of New Haven have picked up dozens of odd matches in Shillong, Calcutta, and Goa for years.

Now, it is coming to light and the extent of the issues are much worst then the betting odds showed. The only surprise is the alleged number of Hungarian prison guards and police who, according to my sources, actually participated in financing the fixes.

5. Turkish Football – The Turkish League needs to be suspended and cleaned up properly. This is the only advice possible when corruption has been so endemic, so long in that country. Full marks to the Turkish Football Federation. They started the process that investigates hundreds of their players and referees for betting and potential fixing of their major games.

6. Authorities in Malta are investigating an amateur football game for match-fixing. If it were a professional match, knowing the shambolic levels of corruption in Maltese sports, I would not bother to mention this event. But that corruption has sunk to such a low level, is symbolic of the dark depths of the problem.

7. Here are some more of the countries where the UNH researchers have found odd matches in their countries’ soccer games – Israel (so many fixed matches, that one wonders if any game is played honestly that country. I exaggerate but really the extent of the odd matches is truly eye-brow raising), Brazil, Ecuador, Nigeria, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Argentina, Kazakhstan, Iran, Slovakia, Ukraine, Greece, Croatia, Mexico, Paraguay, Bhutan, Sweden, Montenegro, Indonesia, Germany, Scotland, Moldova, Bulgaria, Algeria, Cambodia, Czech Republic, Norway, Malaysia, Guatemala, The Seychelles, South Africa, and the United States.

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Here is the good news. Many of the above investigations started because of the police or honest sports integrity monitors (despite the challenges to their industry, there are many good people in the business). I have sympathy for officials who when trying to clean up their sports face massive controversy by allowing the true scandal to come to light.

Here is the bad news. Gambling addiction among athletes, players, coaches, team owners and sports league officials is a huge, silent plague. I spoke last week on Capitol Hill in Washington. More of this subject later. For now, here are two key points to understand these scandals:

1. Unions stop match-fixing. Academics take note. There is a strong Marxist argument about preventing sports corruption: the more you exploit the athletes, the more likely they are to be corrupt. Despite the 1919 World Series example – the players hated the owner of the White Sox baseball team – sports officials routinely ignore this fact. Worth remembering when FIFA is doing its very best to destroy the most effective soccer player’s union FIFPro. This will only open the way to more corruption and fixing.
2. Watch the following dynamic in the sports investigations. They always start with big announcements and solemn declarations to “root out corruption wherever it occurs in our sports….” but the more the police allow the sports league to give advice/counsel/help the more minimal will become the investigation – until you have the conspiracy-of-one charges against the lowest person involved.