Global Criminal Networking in Sport: Online Betting-Related Match-Fixing

Abstract

With economic globalisation and the Internet, online sports betting has become predominant and created a betting environment that has raised risks to the integrity of sport. Now bettors can shop around bookmakers worldwide and bet at any second of time. Complexity of the huge global online sports betting market offers opportunities for new rigged betting behaviour in particular on those illegal segments of the market. New fixing opportunities emerged with product differentiation online: in-play betting, handicap betting, proposition betting, and betting exchanges. The empirical evidence covered in this chapter shows that fraudulent online sports betting is now a big business and may even be used by criminal networks for money laundering.