MLB Agreement to banish Pete Rose is for sale.

In our weird post of the month, it has been released on ESPN that the document signed by Pete Rose and Major League Baseball (MLB) officials 23 years ago to banish Mr. Rose from the game is up for sale.

Pete Rose was banished for baseball in 1989 after it was found that he was betting on baseball games, something that the league was clearly not happy about, as they forced him to sign this document that would effectively remove him from baseball.  To this point, it has pretty much served as a life ban, though there has been discussion over whether Pete Rose should be reinstated and allowed to be part of the MLB or at least one of its franchises.

Auction officials believe that this is one of the most important documents in history, and believe that the original will fetch more than the approximate $1 million that was paid in 2005 for the contract that was signed by Babe Ruth to play baseball all the way back in 1919.

And for those interested in history, you can read the PDF version of that document on sale right here.

Lost in Translation (Olympics match-fixing version)

Another day, another new controversy.  Let’s see, we’ve covered Badminton, Soccer, and Boxing.  There was also the fencing semi-final with a clock that was stuck on 1 second left in a match long enough for one fencer to score a point and head to the finals.  People ask how an electronic clock can get stuck, well it happens when it is operated by humans, as there will always be an error factor.

The big focus has been on whether it is okay to try to not win during the Olympics.  Everyone has their own opinion, but it would seem smarter for events to be organized so that there isn’t the ability for such gamesmanship.  The newest issue has now come out with the Great Britain cycling team which won gold.  The issue in question came in an early round when one cyclist fell to the ground, which forced the race to an automatic restart.  The cyclist in question is Philip Hindes, a German-born rider for the Great Britain team, who has come out and said:

“So I crashed, I did it on purpose just to get the restart, just to have the fastest ride. It was all planned really,” said Hindes.

In track cycling the rules dictate that in the event of an early crash, teams can restart their race and the UCI, when contacted by AFP, said the result would stand.

British Cycling claims that this is not true, and that what Hindes said was as The Guardian put it: “lost in translation”.

What I see is another sport that allows people to fail in order to get a better shot at gold.  And really, isn’t that what it is all about for many athletes?  Trying to win the competition, no matter what the cost.

More Olympic Corruption?

Seems like it was just yesterday that I was talking about match-fixing in Badminton and Soccer at the Olympics.  For Badminton, the World Badminton Federation has cracked down hard on those who lost matches on purpose, and the Chinese coach is taking the majority of the blame for the two athletes from his country which threw a game, saying that they did so under his orders.  One of those athletes, went ahead and announced her retirement from Badminton on Weibo (the Chinese version of twitter).

Japan soccer, as noted yesterday, will not face any sanctions for purposely not trying to score.

While I was writing about corruption yesterday, there was some more suspicious action going on in London.  This time in Olympic boxing where Japan’s Satoshi Shimizu went into the third and final round of his boxing match against Azerbaijan’s Magomed Abdulhamidov down several points.  Shimizu came out like a raging bull and proceeded to knockdown his opponent six times in the round.  This is where things became fishy, as the referee Ishanguly Meretnyyazov refused to award an eight-count for any of the knockdowns.  The match ended with Shimizu looking happy, thinking he would win on decision, and yet when the winner was announced, Abdulhamidov was named the winner, and the crowd began to boo and jeer.

Japan immediately filed a protest, and after careful consideration it was ruled that Shimizu was indeed the winner of the match, and was given his place back in the Olympics, additionally the referee in charge of the match was sent home.  The focus on this fight grew even more as the BBC noted back in 2011 that Azerbaijan had made a payment of $9 million dollars to World Series Boxing (WSB), which some said were to buy two gold medals for the country in the 2012 Olympics.  From the BBC:

The insiders said Mr Khodabakhsh told them that a secret deal had been done to secure funding from Azerbaijan in return for manipulation of the Olympic boxing tournament to guarantee gold medals for Azerbaijani fighters.

One insider told Newsnight: “Ivan boasted to a few of us that there was no need to worry about World Series Boxing having the coin to pay its bills. As long as the Azeris got their medals, WSB would have the cash.”

So now boxing may be the next big focus in the match-fixing issues that seem to be growing at the Olympics.

Olympic hypocracy? Who should be punished for not trying to win?

The big news of the day in the Olympics is the removal of 8 badminton athletes from the games, including 4 South Koreans, 2 Chinese, and 2 Indonesians.  This year, Badminton was reformatted from a knockout tournament to group play, with teams then qualifying for knockout rounds based on their group play.  Those in the Badminton World Federation (BWF) said that this would be to improve the quality of play, and are already noting that it led to some incredible match-ups that one would not normally see this early into the tournament.  That may be true, but it also led to several teams realizing that the best strategy for them to advance in the knockout stages was to actually lose on purpose in the group stages.  Thus, the 4 pairs mentioned above were kicked out of the Olympics after not giving their all in matches.  The BWF, London Olympic Games Organizing Committee (LOGOC), and even fans pronounced this a great move as they said it went against the laws and spirit of the game.  Specifically, the BWF says that all players must give full effort in matches they play in.  One begs to ask: what exactly is “full effort”?  They also said that this may be a match-fixing mess waiting to happen, as teams found that the best way to avoid tough opponents in the knock-out rounds was indeed to lose.  One game in particular stands out with a Chinese team and South Korean team both trying to lose.  There is clearly a lack of effort, and the Chinese team celebrates with a high-five after losing the match.  The crowd realizing wait they have just seen, responds with very loud booing, and badminton became the headline of the Olympics today, but for all the wrong reasons.

At the same time, the Japanese women’s soccer national team employed very similar strategies in their final group stage match against South Africa.  Japan’s coach Norio Sasaki had already hinted in the Japanese media that 2nd place would be the goal to move through qualification for two reasons: the team would not have to travel for the knock-out round, and they would also be to avoid Brazil most likely.  Japan fielded a squad with 7 new members on the field, and despite enjoying a great deal of opportunities, couldn’t put one in the back of the net.  It was even said that Sasaki gave instructions to just run the match out to a 0-0 draw in the 2nd half when they knew that they were in the clear for 2nd place in their group.  So Japan’s master plan seemed to be working… until the Great Britain women managed a famous 1-0 victory against Brazil.  All of the sudden Japan’s plan has backfired and while they don’t have to travel, they are facing Brazil in the quarterfinals.

In the end, the LOCOG, IOC and FIFA said that Japan will not face any potential charges for not trying to score, as they did not violate any rules of conduct.  So for football (soccer) you don’t need to try, but for Badminton you do.  Someone explain this to me.

The lesson of the day seems to be to put full-effort into your matches as you never know what may happen.  However, it may also indicate a need for better scheduling systems, and further analysis of whether pool play or group stages really are better than knock-out tournaments.  If a federation designs a competition where there is incentive to lose on purpose, is it really the fault of the athletes who understand the system and do their best to try and get as far as they can in the tournament?  Purists would say that the athletes must give their all, but wouldn’t it also make sense to have competition designed to illicit such response from athletes?

Bahrain’s World Cup qualifier win being investigated by FIFA

In our newest potential match fixing scandal, the Japanese sports paper “Nikkansports” has an article noting that FIFA has declared this weeks World Cup qualifier between Bahrain and Indonesia as being “unnatural”.  Coming into the final day of round 3 qualifying for Asia, Bahrain was in 3rd place, 3 points behind Qatar with a goal differential of 8.  With only teams placing 2nd or higher in their group moving on to the final qualification stage, Bahrain had to win by at least 8 goals (and hope for a Qatar loss).  What happened was Indonesia sat most of their starting players, and fielded a rather unknown group.  What ensued was a 10-0 victory for Bahrain, which was then thwarted by Qatar drawing with Iran to get the point they needed to secure moving on to the next round.

FIFA noted that Bahrain and Indonesia have faced each other 6 times resulting in 2 wins, 2 losses, and 2 draws for both sides, and figured something didn’t add up.

So not only was Bahrain eliminated from the World Cup, but FIFA thinks that something fishy was going on.  Did Bahrain payoff/convince Indonesia to take a dive?

This Week’s Football Corruption News

Police in Italy have made arrests relating to a match-fixing scandal in Serie B, the second division of Italian Football (soccer).  Included in the arrests are Cristiano Doni who has played for the Italian National Team and was even on the squad for the 2002 World Cup in Japan/Korea.  While the arrests have targeted mostly Serie B players, the police are said to be investigating at least three Serie A matches.  This is not the first time that such issues have surfaced in Italy, but one of the suspects arrested is claimed to have stated that match-fixing has been prevalent in the league for the last ten years.  Doni’s arrest was no surprise, as he was banned for three and a half years from professional football by the Italian Federation earlier this year.

In other news, Sevilla (of Spain’s La Liga) President Jose Maria del Nido has received a seven and a half year prison sentence for his role in embezzling money from the Spanish town of Marbella.  In a curious set of circumstances, the club’s vice president has said that the sentence is unfair, and that del Nido should be allowed to continue as President of the club.  I wonder if anyone has ever run a football club from prison.

Match fixing in Pakistan Cricket

I’ll admit it, I never understood the sport of Cricket that much.  I’ve watched a few times, and I get the general idea of the game, but have never developed a true love for the sport.  That said, every year I make my students here in the United States watch videos to try and better understand the game as part of an international sport class I teach.

The big news which hit the cricket world today was of match fixing (in this case called “spot-fixing”) during the highly prestigious Lord’s Test match against England earlier this summer.  Those who were on trial for this match-fixing included Salman Butt (the former Pakistan captain) and Mohammad Asif.  Both of these two individuals, along with another bowler for Pakistan are said to have conspired to bowl no-balls during the match.  The BBC’s explanation as follows:

Spot-betting involves gamblers staking money on the minutiae of sporting encounters such as the exact timing of the first throw-in during a football match or, as in this case, when a no-ball will be bowled.

All of this started with a tabloid claiming the players took money to deliberately bowl no-balls (a bowl which is illegal in some manner, and results in the awarding of a point to the opposing team) during the match, and ended with both bowlers being found guilty of conspiracy to cheat by a jury earlier today.

Following this, there was lots of talk of this being a good example to young athletes as to why not to cheat, because the consequences can be quite heavy.  It is said that the bowlers found guilty today were being leaned on heavily by others to bowl the no-balls on purpose.

And yet, I somehow think this may not change things that greatly in the sport.  While young players may see the dangers, there have been similar issues of match-fixing with many sports around the world, and often is the case where we see repeats of similar match-fixing incidents over and over again.  Though in the spirit of the game, I do hope things are cleaned up.

More sport gambling

With the summer sports season in full swing, two interesting articles today on two upcoming major professional tournaments.

The first is an article in The Independent regarding a group of 6 to 12 players male professional tennis players who are on the “watch list” because of their past involvement in suspicious betting matches. The article continues to reveal some past betting action through Betfair.

The second is a post on Darren Rovell’s sports business blog at CNBC regarding betting on the US Open.  He explains that over half of the bettors bet on Tiger to win the tournament.  As a result, this makes every other player in the field a long shot so the bookmakers can balance the action on each side.

Tennis and the potential problems that sport is facing has been discussed in a previous post on this blog.  However, the take away point with professional golf is Tiger is not just creating interest in traditional areas of sport consumption (attendance, TV ratings, sponsorship), but also in these more non-traditional areas (betting, fantasy sport).  As a result, the PGA should be seeing an increase in its revenue and visibility of the sport.

Tennis and Match Fixing

In today’s Wall Street Journal, journalist Hannah Karp details the action of an individual sports bettor and potential opportunities for match fixing in women’s professional tennis. If you recall from a couple of years ago, Betfair found some irregular betting patterns in a men’s tennis match, which prompted the tennis body to launch an investigation.

Tennis is a very popular betting sport throughout the world. This article details Mr. Avilov actions, a concern amongst the tennis’ governing bodies, coaches, and executives regarding match fixing, and how easy it is for bettors to access these lower profile players.

In addition, the International Journal of Sport Finance had a special issue regarding sport finance and gambling (August 2008). Within the special issue, David Forrest, Ian McHale, and Kevin McAuley present some interesting research on this topic (as well as making specific mention to potential issues within professional tennis).