Article: Biggest Sports Betting Scandals
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By Jonathan Lewis | 27th Jul 2022
Misconduct is a trait that human beings are unable to avoid, seemingly. Normal everyday people get arrested for theft and an array of other crimes. Celebrities cheat and the media hangs up their personal lives like dirty laundry for all to see.
Sports players from Premier League football players to basketball players are not exempt from that kind of drama. From Tiger Woods and his 12 mistresses to Tom Williams biting on a blood-filled capsule during a rugby match to stop the game, the scandals are many. Let’s take a look at how our attraction to outrageous behaviour has affected sports betting by peeking into 3 top scandals in the industry. All of these stories are at least a few decades old, but fixed sports bets still happen in today’s online casino era.
Lifetime ban for betting
They banned Pete Rose for life in 1989 for betting on matches. At the time, it was illegal to wager in sports. The all-time hit mogul denied it for an entire decade and a half. This is not surprising, as he was most likely doing it to protect his reputation.
Eventually, when he came out with the truth while being a manager for the Reds, he added that he’d never done it while he was still a baseball player. Turns out that was another lie. Evidence came up showing that the man was betting around $2000 on a daily basis in 1987.
The American Mafia bribes college basketball players
In 1978-9 some Boston college basketball team members took part in a point-shaving scandal, which was run by the mafia. 32 Boston Eagles men’s basketball players were recruited and bribed by a gang of criminals to secure a loss by the team. The goal was to ensure that the team did not win by a certain margin, and therefore not cover the stipulated point spread.
From that, they allowed particular individuals in on the fact so that they would wager against the team and win the bet. The players were from seven different schools, and the scheme hit four New York schools, Kentucky and other out-of-state teams. Among other repercussions, Kentucky was banned from playing for a full season. The scandal is mentioned in the movie Goodfellas.
1919 World Series
The Chicago White Sox received a thrashing in the 1919 World Series in the opening game, and it was all staged. Eight players from the team were involved in corroborating the throw for gamblers. How exactly, has been a contentious issue for nearly a century.
One of the eight-team players, Joe Jackson, carried on to hit a .375 and a .956 OPS through the duration of eight games and didn’t make a single mistake. It doesn’t add up. Jackson later confessed to having accepted money.
Turns out, the secret wasn’t very well kept as the commissioner’s office was said to have found out before the game, but chose to look in the other direction. Only it was not until a year later, when an unrelated case came up, did the truth about the fix surface. Of all the players involved in the scandal, none of them was found guilty but was banned from playing baseball for life.
Martin Graham is an MFF sports writer
