Catching Sports Cheaters: An Example of Successful Police Operations

Economists examining the ‘rational’ dimension dominate existing explanations for match fixing, yet we need to know more about how match fixing occurs. This chapter examines the actors, vehicles and processes of match fixing by applying the case of match f

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Abstract Economists examining the ‘rational’ dimension dominate existing explanations for match fixing, yet we need to know more about how match fixing occurs. This chapter examines the actors, vehicles and processes of match fixing by applying the case of match fixing scandal in Turkey to a framework extracted from Hill’s (The Fix Soccer and Organized Crime. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2008) text on the subject. This analysis finds that the actors, vehicles and processes of a match fixing case in Turkey perfectly fit the characteristics identified by Hill.

Introduction Soccer (interchangeably used with the word “football”) has become a global phenomenon that has significant impacts on social life, politics, economy, fashion and culture (Kuper 1996; Foer 2004). In fact the exorbitant public interest in the game has been converted not only into cash but also social and political benefits. The Fascist regime in Italy, for example, recognized the great public interest in the game and tried to construct a fascist national identity via football (Martin 2004). The first

I. Demir, Ph.D. (*) Istanbul Emniyet Mudurlugu, Gokalp Mah. Prof. Dr. M. Aksoy Cad., No:1 Kat: 6 (Egitim Sube Md.), Zeytinburnu, Istanbul, Turkey e-mail: irfandemir25@yahoo.com K. Karademir, Ph.D. İstanbul Emniyet Mudurlugu, EKKM Sube Mudurlugu A blok Kat 5 Adnan Menderes Bulvarı (Vatan Cad.), Fatih- Istanbul, Turkey e-mail: kutluerk@hotmail.com

M.R. Haberfeld and D. Sheehan (eds.), Match-Fixing in International Sports: Existing Processes, Law Enforcement, and Prevention Strategies, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-02582-7_17, © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2013

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president of Ghana, Kwame Nkumrah, aimed higher in taking advantage of the interest in football to harvest political fruits. Nkumrah struggled to unite the entire African continent by creating an “African Personality,” which stands for a new African generation which can stand on their own feet and independently compete with the rest of the world, using football as the cement (Rosbrook-Thompson and Armstrong 2010). Nevertheless, neither Mussolini nor Nkumrah were able to realize their goals because football invigorates local and regional identities yielding in the long run more separation than unification (Martin 2004; Rosbrook-Thompson and Armstrong 2010). Observing that most of effort spent by politicians to obtain political outcomes via football could not reach their target, the next question might be: is the turnover created by the ‘football industry’ being distributed, as it should be? The scandals of match fixing that occurred even in the most prestigious tournaments indicate that, it is not easy to answer this question. Match fixing is the purposeful under-performing by players or manipulation by coaches to affect the outcome of individual matches or tournaments in return for incentives (Preston and Szymanski 2003). Shedding some light on how match fixing is put into practice, we examine a recent case of match fixing in Turkey. The football