An anatomy of Turkish football match-fixing

Abstract

While discussion on corruption in sport is intensifying and football match-fixing in particular is attracting increasing attention, new fixing scandals emerge offering new accounts of actors and corrupt practices within the football industry and the level of the external threat to the sport. The scandal exposure of fixed matches in Turkey in 2011 sheds light on the fixing of 17 matches played in the 2010/11 football season and allowed for insights to the actors, structure and processes behind the fix. Following four criminal and seven disciplinary proceedings, the case is still pending appeal for its final decision, involving a total of 93 suspects and having already resulted in the exclusion of two teams from European competitions. The evidence collected by the authorities points towards a hierarchical criminal organisation led by the President of a football club that arranged and coordinated the fixing in order for his team to win the national Championship. The aim of this article is to provide an account of the organisation and coordination of match-fixing in Turkey, with its actors, specifics and criminal characteristics, while offering an examination of matchfixing for sporting success, the least documented type of match-fixing.

Match-fixing in Greece and Turkey and UEFA’s policy responses to it: a comparative study

“…As the above discussion suggests, a close relationship seems to exist between matchfixing and betting, with the two often being closely intertwined. While much of the existing literature has captured this gambling-related match-fixing (Chappelet, 2015;Hill, 2013), recent research highlights the existence and sometimes prevalence of sporting-related or nongambling related match-fixing (Van Der Hoeven et al, 2019;Yilmaz, Manoli and Antonopoulos, 2018), while Manoli and Antonopoulos (2015) argue that match-fixing can simultaneously occur for both gambling and non-gambling reasons. Their argument is that a sport event's outcome manipulation can be both profit and non-profit driven, guided by motives such as greed, image laundering and political aspirations and pressures, underlining once again the complexity of the issue.…”

“…It is worth noting that in some studies on the topic the existence of a hierarchical, 'mafia-type' structure within sports that is organising and managing the manipulation of sport events is presented (e.g. in Belgian football; see Hill, 2010) 2 , while other studies suggest that matchfixing can be instead managed by corporate structures, flat networks or small un-organised clusters of opportunity driven individuals (Manoli & Antonopoulos, 2015;Yilmaz, Manoli and Antonopoulos, 2018). It is this complexity and the inability to identify a one-fits-all description of the phenomenon that invite additional research on the issue, while underlining the need for adequate and appropriately fitted responses as well.…”

“…Over the course of the last two decades, match-fixing, or the active manipulation of the outcome of sport competitions, has become a major integrity issue posing one of the biggest threats to sport world-wide (Carpenter, 2012). The frequency of the phenomenon in the world of sport, and in particular in football, has been documented repeatedly, with studies investigating its manifestation in numerous contexts, such as professional football in Malta (Aquilina and Chetcuti, 2014), Greece (Manoli and Antonopoulos, 2015;Manoli, Antonopoulos and Levi, 2016), Turkey (Yilmaz, Manoli and Antonopoulos, 2018), the Netherlands (Spapens and Olfers, 2015), Western Europe (Feltes, 2013), and even in grassroots football in Europe (Nowy and Breuer, 2017). Comprehensive accounts of match-fixing scandals in various other sports have been also provided, notably by Carpenter (2012) and Serby (2015).…”

Perceptions of integrity in sport: insights into people’s relationship with sport

“…doping in cycling, running, etc -Solberg, Hanstad and Thøring, 2010), to club scandals (e.g. match-fixing in Greece, Italy, Turkey, etc -Manoli and Antonopoulos, 2015;Yilmaz, Manoli and Antonopoulos, 2019) and federation-wide corruption (e.g. bribing in the IOC and FIFA -Jennings, 2011), in both commercialised, professional and elite sports (such as the examples mentioned above), and in noncommercialised, amateur sports (e.g.…”

Understanding match-fixing from the perspective of social capital: A case study of Taiwan’s professional baseball system

“…Scholars of law and criminology (e.g. Blackshaw, 2012;Rodenberg et al, 2016;Van Rompuy, 2015;Yilmaz et al, 2018).) as well as scholars of history and culture (e.g.…”