The World Cup promises to be the most-watched event in the history of sport. As a consequence, it will also be one of the most lucrative events on which bookmakers have ever offered odds.
With huge betting markets already established in East Asia and Europe, and the astonishing rise of prediction markets in the United States, games at soccer’s most prestigious tournament will invite wagers on everything from who will score the next goal to who will emerge the overall winner.
With the vast sums of money involved in these betting markets, there is the risk that the World Cup will be targeted by spot fixing, the practice of manipulating events within a game — rather than the overall result — in order to cheat the bookmakers. An example might be a player deliberately receiving a yellow card in a particular window of time in a game.
How serious is the threat of spot fixing at the tournament? The Athletic can reveal that at least two players at the World Cup, representing different nations, have been reported by independent integrity experts to the national federations where they play their club football on suspicion of spot fixing.
