Soccer

The league, along with both teams involved, have released statements regarding yesterday’s match-fixing scandal in Finland’s third-tier Kakkonen West division.

If you have not read the first story, please click here for all the details.

The Statement

Earlier this morning, chairman of KaaPo (the team that scored a 90+3′ penalty to win the game as +700 road underdogs on the opening line)  Olli Tuominen released the following statement with regards to the match-fixing allegations:

In his statement, he claims that none of the players on his team had any involvement in any suspicious activity that could have taken place during the game. The problem with this statement is that it means nothing. There was never a doubt that none of the KaaPo players would have any involvement in any potential suspicious activity.

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The rumored five-figure wager discussed in our previous article was placed on KaaPo to win the match at a price between +500 ($500 profit for every $100 risked) and +800 ($800 profit for every $100 risked). They would never enter this match with the intentions of not winning. Involving them in any potential match-fixing scandal would be a bad idea if you needed them to win. Telling their players that you have placed a large sum of money on them and you need them to win would do two things: 1) Give the match-fixer a much higher chance of getting caught, and 2) make the players really fucking nervous. We can pretty much conclude that no KaaPo players had anything to do with this.

If any suspicious activity was to occur, it would have been with the parties who would have the greater impact on the match: The team that was suppose to lose, and the officiating team. MuSa, the team that ended up losing as heavy home favorites, released a statement saying they would be assisting in the investigation.

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How to fix a match

The first rule of Match-Fixing Club is that you do not talk about Match-Fixing Club. If you want to pull off a successful fix, you want to involve the least amount of people possible. Not only does this mean each person involved gets a higher percentage of the money, but there is a less chance you accidentally included a Nervous Nancy who is going to crack under the first sign of pressure.

Lets talk hypotheticals. Remember, I am not accusing anyone of anything. I just started this website, and I would rather not get sued on day one! If I was going to be conducting this fix, where the +800 road underdog was going to be winning straight-up (remember, a draw would equal a loss for betting purposes), who would be the best people to involve in this scandal? Lets make a shopping list.

The first item on our grocery list are eggs, or should I say a lack thereof. We need to ensure that the road team does not lay an egg and get shutout. When you are dealing with a +800 road underdog, there is a very good chance that the home team turns in a clean-sheet, which would mean a guaranteed loss for the bet. While you cannot approach the visitors and tell them to play better (because they are already going to be trying as hard as they can), the best source for goals would be the referee. He has the power to put the road team’s players at the penalty spot, where they are very likely to convert a goal. The referee can also be biased in his distribution of fouls and cards. Involving the second and third officials manning the offside flags would be too much. We will leave them off our hypothetical list.

You might be thinking that you should just involve the home team’s goaltender. The problem with this is that in a soccer game where one team is significantly better than the other, it is entirely possible that the weaker team will not get an attempt on net at all. Its far too risky to leave that up to chance. Even if the goaltender refused to make any attempt to stop the ball, there is a decent chance his defense would still let him turn in the clean sheet.

If the referee agreed to give us goals, we now need to ensure that the home team does not get any for themselves. The strikers are the primary goal-scorers in soccer. If you ensured that they stayed off the scoresheet, you would cut the team’s offensive production by a majority margin. Teams can field anywhere from one to three strikers, depending on the formation they elected to run.

MuSa’s lone goal did however come from a striker (Sami Rantala). This was an equalizer late in the match that would have put a potential fix in jeopardy. I think it is safe to cross him off the list of this theoretical investigation.

Where do we go from here

I am curious to see how the league carries on with their investigation. I believe there are only a small group of people who need to be checked. There are virtually no scenarios where a member of KaaPo would have anything to do with this. However, it is a necessity for the league to do its due diligence to ensure that they find out everything that each player knows, if anything at all.

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Lets get this out of the way first: Finland soccer is not good. Outsiders who do not know any better might think that its a big time soccer country because of the reputation that the other Nordic countries are starting to build. The highest-tier league is hardly professional. So when an insane match-fixing scandal arises in their lower-division Kakkonen, chances are its more likely to be true than not.

The Dirty Money

The Kakkonen is the third-level of soccer in Finland. Their league is divided up into divisions based on location for travel purposes: North, South, East, West. There are no big time athletes in this league who have a reputation to lose.

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Most of the information regarding the game is written in, well, Finnish. At the time that I am writing this article there is only one person employed by Frostbet. Thats me. And the last time I checked, I do not speak Finnish.

Lets play a game of broken telephone with Google Chrome’s Translate Page feature. I am sure nothing will go wrong.

 Tulosmanipulaatiosta!? I am sorry to hear about your diagnosis.

The following exerts are directly translated from MTV.fi’s website. The full article can be accessed by clicking here:

The article details that a five-figure sum was allegedly placed on the large road underdog KaaPo from an unknown location in Asia. The wager was accepted by a very well known bookmaker who wanted to remain anonymous. Considering the size of the wager, the bet would most likely have to be placed with an individual or locally-ran sports-book as opposed to a more well-known online betting site.

If you are not familiar with sports-betting, its important to know that it is very difficult to get down five-figures at once on any given game. It is also much more difficult to get down five-figures on a third-division Finland soccer match that no one knows anything about. Most mainstream sports-books will accept around a maximum of $5,000 US on the major American sports-leagues, and around $2,500 on major soccer leagues. Bet365’s limit for Kakkonen matches fluctuates between $1,000 – 2,000 US. This makes it very likely that the wager was placed with an individual or local establishment.

The Game

The match ended 2-1. The road underdog KaaPo scored an early goal at the 15′ mark of the match. MuSa equalized at 72′. The game looked like it was going to wrap-up with that final score until KaaPo went ahead at the 90+3′ mark from the penalty spot, with the game ending less than a minute later.

Whenever there is a late goal in a soccer match it always causes uproar. To be honest, its actually very common for goals to occur at the end of the game. The defenders are likely to be more tired than the strikers, making for a lower-quality of defense and thus a higher chance of a goal occurring.

The problem is that its hard to draw concrete conclusions without seeing it with your own eyes. I may need to change my cable provider because I do not get Finland’s Kakkonen West matches on ESPN. Wall-to-wall LeBron James coverage is far more important to these peasant americans for some reason. You uncultured degenerates cannot appreciate a perfectly seasoned match-fixing.

There is no footage of this match, so we cannot see what happened on the last play of the match (or with all of the other plays, for that matter). Lets take a look at how the betting odds moved before the game:

The Betting Timeline

All of the sports-books that provided a line for this game followed a similar trend. For the sake of using a reputable sports-book, we will look at the line featured at Bet365, which out of all the presented options would be most likely to receive fair and equal action aside from the dirty money. The line opened up at +600 on July 18th at 5:30 AM EST. The line made its first move on July 19th at 3:38 AM EST. Although this was a 100-cent jump, it is normal given that they are the road underdog. You will always find a few degenerates looking to throw their money on some random home favorite.

After that move, the line went on to collapse to +550 at 7:02 AM EST. Over the course of 3 hours and 10 minutes, it continued down the same path, going all the way to +320. It is always strange to see such a sharp drop on a road underdog in an obscure game. Its hard to think of the people who would be voluntarily betting on KaaPo to such a significant degree. Because the line dropped progressively, we also know that there were multiple people betting on them at this time.

Once the line reached +320, it rose for about half an hour up to +450. Just before game-time between 10:55 AM and 11:29 AM, there was another collapse in the line and it dropped from +450 back to +320. It then closed as the game began at 11:30 AM eastern.

Now that is a suspicious betting trend. The two distinct drops (which are observed at every other sports-book taking action on this game) are constant with what would be expected from a fixed match: Early action when the line reaches its optimal peak, followed by clueless people betting on the favorite just because they are a favorite and the line became more reasonable, followed by late tip-offs of the fix just before the game began. There is a lot of evidence of known fixed matches having an identical trend.

The Verdict

There is definitely cause for concern here. The betting trend, the scoring summary, and the large wager are all consistent with what you would expect from a fixed match. My issue is that if we take away the idea of a five-figure wager being placed on the game, how much attention will this match receive? You have a late goal scored by the road underdog from the penalty spot. It happens.

If all of the information that was released by Finland’s sports media is true regarding the large wager placed on the match, then I would be inclined to lean in the direction of suspicious activity. However, I do have a hard time believing that any individual bookmaker who is successful enough to accept five-figure action on a +700 line would take a wager on a bottom-division Scandinavian soccer match where the entire team are looking to get the game over with so they won’t be late for their dishwashing position that pays the bills.

Something does not add up.

I have presented the facts. I will post a follow-up if any new developments arise.

New Developments

There have been new developments in the Finland match-fixing investigation. Please click here to view the corresponding article.

In last night’s Women’s World Cup elimination round between Japan and Holland, the defending champions conceded a marshmallow of a goal in the 91st minute. This came after Japan was leading 2-0, yielding a 2-1 final score. There have been many parties who have been suggesting possible foul-play, as most soccer matches have their goalscoring totals lined at 2.5. I am going to provide some things to consider as to why I believe this was simply an accident, and not a match-fixing incident that should be investigated.

Before we begin, understand that I am someone who believes that match-fixing does exist. I have seen it with my own eyes on multiple occasions. It can be detected by monitoring betting trends. Generally, when a heavy amount of money comes in on one side in a short period of time, it can call for eyebrows to be raised. In the case of the match in question, there was a steady stream of bets being placed on the under, driving the over 2.5 line to +185 at most notable sports-books.

Even without any suspicious betting trends, there are other factors that would suggest that this was simply an honest error by the Japanese goaltender. Generally, match-fixing will not occur around the exact number mentioned in the big two betting markets (which are spreads and totals). This means that if a team were to purposely concede goals to allow the game to go over or to blow the spread, they would ensure that the over 3.5 or 4.5 would hit in a game lined at 2.5, or that the spread of -1.5 would cover by losing by a margin of 3 or 4. This removes the probability of being caught, as events that directly revolve around the main number will be subject to more scrutiny from the public eye. Regardless of your opinion on the tournament, the Women’s World Cup is a big stage with a lot of viewers. No one would be foolish enough to match-fix around the main number of 2.

As someone who has been able to detect match-fixing through betting trend analysis in the past, I can tell you that the majority of fixed games revolve around half-time/full-time props. These generally will have more lucrative odds, and will allow the better team to directly control what is going on without yielding a suspicious result. These bets allow users to predict what the half-time result will be, and the full-time result. The safest option for a talented team would be to ensure that the half-time score would be a draw (“X”) or the underdog would be leading (“2” – if they were the away-team). Then they would ensure that they won the match (“1” – if they were the home-team). This would have the fixed HT/FT result being X/1 or 2/1. These will typically have high-paying odds, as large underdogs will not be expected to stay competitive during a smaller 45 minute time-frame. I have plenty of examples of HT/FT match-fixing with proof about pre-game knowledge. I do not personally bet on fixed matches (for real), but perhaps it would make for interesting reading material.