Bookies: The Strangest Institution in Sports
A bookmaker, or bookie, is a person or an organisation that takes bets from gamblers on agreed upon odds. A large proportion of them are legal and controlled by the government, but some of them are also very dodgy and engage in various illegal activities surrounding sports. Bookmakers in the US specialise in only college and professional sports but those in the UK take bets on a number of different sports and even various events to take place such as the weather, the outcome of a political event or even the result of a television show. Over the years, bookies have come under intense scrutiny for their involvement with match fixing and the criminal world. The need for more regulation arises here and unless it takes place the problem of bookies will get completely out of hand.
Bookmakers have been around for almost as long as sports have, but they really got a boost when horse racing and greyhound racing were introduced. These sports became less about the actual skill of the jockey or the horse but more about which horse or dog won at the end of the race. Bookmakers then started appearing all over with increasing frequency. It seemed they had found a way to make some serious money by taking bets on sporting events. People are prone to wanting to make money from sports and a great way to do it is to gamble on them. Recently the internet has provided a new avenue for sports gambling and the industry has skyrocketed in popularity.
There is another side to bookies and sports gambling; the illegal and dodgy side. Bookmaking took a very bad turn when those taking bets realised they could make a lot of money from trying to fix the result of the match they were taking bets on. If they could influence the outcome then they would essentially make free money. It was not really free because they would have to pay off the players to actually fix the result they wanted, but a large amount of money could still be made. Match fixing, although also present in other sports such as football, is the bane of modern cricket. It has tainted the sport by a huge margin and has turned all bookies into shifty and contemptible characters in the eyes of fans.
Cricket fixing first started out as doctoring the results of a match by bribing a few players who would then perform poorly and the match would be won by the other team. This type of thing was very hard to prove but needed the collusion of numerous players on the team. Over time, with increased scrutiny on match fixing, a new type of fixing emerged that was just as profitable for the bookies; spot fixing. This is where a particular aspect of the game is bet on and then a player is paid to do just that. Examples here include no-balls, wides and bouncers. By paying a player to perform a wide at a particular time in a match can lead to huge profits for the bookie who makes money for himself and for his clients while scamming a legitimate betting organisation in the process.
With the increase in the flow of money to bookies and illegal gambling dens all over the world, the criminal underworld started to get involved. They wanted a cut of the action and they started to use bookies as a money laundering vehicle and they used match fixing to increase their profits. This started a very dangerous trend in gambling and once the underworld got involved, there was no stopping the spread of illegal practices. Cricket has been the hardest hit because of the sheer number of things that people can bet on. It is also the most popular sport in the Sub-Continent and as most of the illegal gambling dens are based in this part of the world, it looks like it will be very difficult to fix this endemic problem.
Even though international task forces have been made and the police of different countries are working together, it will be extremely hard to eradicate fixing and illegal betting from sports today. We should all hope that the greed of bookies does not get so out of control that it ruins some of our favourite sports.
Tags: