What pro sport is most likely fixed ?

Last years boston marathon.

Last years NCAA basketball tournament elite eight and final four.

American elections.

And WoW. Those guys hardly move at all. "Fixed" get it

Thoroughbred Horse racing...no lie.

Anything that has voting and "subjective calls by officials"

Ice skating and dancing

gymnastics

those new skiing events and snow boarding

diving

Vegas McBet wrote:

Anything that has voting and "subjective calls by officials"

Ice skating and dancing

gymnastics

those new skiing events and snow boarding

diving

Bingo^

Even if officials make bad calls the players still have to execute, so while I'm not saying it isn't fixed, they can definately try to help one side over the other.

With the subjective sports it can be 99% predetermined before anyone even even gets to the auditorium. Big star does a move "OMG! IT'S A 10.0!!!" some no name slouch does the exact same thing.. 9.5.

If you count pro wrestling as a sport that's the obvious answer but it really isn't a sport because it's always fixed.

A few years back when the Celtics were still good they had a game with San Antonio in Boston where they were favored by a point and a half. They had a one point lead with less than two seconds to play and Ray Allen, among the best free throw shooters ever, was at the line for two shots. Allen could go a whole season without missing two free throws so if you had money on Boston you were reaching for the phone to call your bookie to collect. But Allen missed both shots and Boston didn't cover.

I cannot believe there wasn't a fix in that game. But the counter argument is to ask what someone could offer Allen, or any NBA player really, to get him to miss both free throws in that situation given the massive salaries they make. Fifty years ago when NBA players needed off season jobs to make ends meet I can see where you could get a guy to throw a game for a thousand bucks but now I can't imagine you could get them to do it for any amount that would make it profitable for whomever is trying to fix a game.

But I can believe that you can get to officials. That wouldn't explain that Celtics-Spurs game but that could just have been an oddity. The other angle on fixing that I think is more common than gamblers getting to officials is that league offices try to manipulate outcomes to maximize TV ratings so teams from bigger markets or with higher national recognition will get favorable calls. Dallas remans "America's Team" despite years of mediocrity and I'm convinced the NFL would rather have them go deep into the playoffs than have Detroit do it.

Horse racing, for sure.

John Clendon wrote:

Thoroughbred Horse racing...no lie.

The thoroughbreds can't hold a candle to the buggies.

Much of the NFL is clearly fixed. Not outright, in the way wrestling is and boxing often is. However, the officials involved know -- without being told in so many words -- which outcome is best for the enterprise as a whole. They get benefits for doing what's expected of them. The NFL's head of officiating was seen on the Dallas Cowboys "party bus"? That's what they in the NFL call "normal day-to-day operations".

There are billions of dollars involved; of course there's going to be corruption. It's just human nature.

Ever since Roger Goodell claimed that the Patriots' cheat tapes were simply "accidentally destroyed" because the NFL offices "clean out our vaults" once in a while, the whole sport should be under total suspicion. They'll do whatever it takes to maximize the money that's rolling in.

Vegas McBet wrote:

Anything that has voting and "subjective calls by officials"

Ice skating and dancing

gymnastics

those new skiing events and snow boarding

diving

We are talking about real sports here. Judged sports are so easy to fix that they aren't even worth discussing in this context. Fixing a major team sport game such as basketball, baseball, football, soccer requires some actual skill.

BTW I would add Boxing and MMA to your list.

Football isn't fixed. That is ridiculous. Every game has many miscalls or missed calls. People need to watch the NFL the entire season and not watch one game and think it is fixed. Leave it to Americans to overreact because they see one thing and don't do any research. The research here requires watching games all season for several years. Better call off work and flip the tube to NFL Films for a few days.

The Dallas game last night was fixed.

Boxing is real, but many of the decisions seem corrupt as hell

Not a sport, but, NASCAR...

Dereder wrote:

What sport do you think is fixed ?

Worlds Strongest Man

Has to be either pro bowling or the world series of poker. Oh, wait, these aren't even real sports.

The NFL even sets up the schedule in a "fixed" way and nobody ever thinks about it. The teams with the poorest records play all the other teams with the poorest records from the previous year. The only games they don't control are the division games they have to play. The divisions are now so small, a team like Cleveland only has to play 6 division games. The other 10 games will be against all poor teams. Conversely, all the good teams are playing each other. The end result is that more teams are going to have a record close to even.

It is extremely easy to make calls in most sports to favor one team.

If one team gets a 20 point lead in the NBA, the refs just have to call every close foul on one team and let the other team foul every play with a no call. Add in a few "moving screens" and holding fouls off the ball (that nobody would have been watching) and that lead goes away in very little time. The other thing I have noticed they are doing to make it easier at the end of games is the "foul to give". They might only call one foul on a team the whole quarter, but as soon as the game is under 2 minutes, they blow a cheap foul to take away that foul to give. That means the other team gets to shoot free throws on any foul after that. It makes the refs job a lot easier in controlling which way they want to try and make certain possessions go.

Of course there are still going to be blowouts in these games. The refs can only do so much and if one team is hitting 60% of their 3s the whole game, it isn't going to make much difference.

I hope people remember that finals travesty when they called enough fouls on Boston the last quarter that the Lakers shot over 20 free throws while slowly taking the lead. If you don't remember, here is the play by play.

http://www.basketball-reference.com/boxscores/pbp/201006170LAL.html

Obviously wrestling is fixed.

15 examples of fixing in soccer.

1. "A possible 680 soccer matches fixed according to an investigation

European police warned on Monday that the integrity of football was at stake, as they revealed they had smashed a criminal network fixing hundreds of matches, including in the Champions League and World Cup qualifiers."

2. Wilson Raj Perumal says he would sit on team benches giving players orders

The Singaporean, 49, admits to rigging up to 100 football matches

He boasted that his success rate was about 70 to 80 per cent

He says that he has gambled away the fortune he made from match-fixing

3. Juve, Lazio and Fiorentina relegated - The nation that won the World Cup saw its world cave in yesterday. Six days after Fabio Cannavaro lifted the trophy, three Serie A clubs were relegated for their part in a match-fixing scandal that has torn apart Italian football

Juventus, 29-time winners of the Serie A title were most severely punished.

They were relegated for the first time in their 107-year history, banished to Serie B, and must now start next season with a 30-point deduction, aimed at keeping them down for at least two seasons...Fiorentina and Lazio have also been relegated to the second division. AC Milan, the fourth club involved in the scandal, will stay in the top flight, but will begin the season with a 15-point deduction and have been stripped of their Champions League place.

4. Romania

Many football club owners, especially outside Bucharest, agreed to create an informal association between 3 or 5 owners with the aim of helping each other and involved other teams to join this "gang". That method consist in letting each of the involved teams to win the home matches, accepting to lose the away matches.

5. A writer posted the outcome of a Japanese soccer league game prior to the game taking place.

6. Bulgarian bookies stopped taking bets on several games in the nation’s soccer championship for fears of games being fixed. A game that had already taken place was suspected of being fixed when a specific result (a 3-1 victory) was heavily bet upon. The game ended in that exact score.

7. Four men went on trial in Germany accused of fixing perhaps as many as 270 soccer matches across Europe and Asia by bribing both players and referees. According to police sources, the amount of the bribes totalled over $2 million, with the amount bet on the matches much more than that. The matches potentially influenced spanned from 2009 through 2010.

8. In July 2014 a total of 15 people were indefinitely suspended by the Sierra Leone Football Association over allegations of match-fixing.

9. "Sixteen reportedly charged in Greek football match-fixing investigation"

10. Six people, including three current players and ex-player Delroy Facey, were arrested in November 2013 on suspicion of match fixing. Two Singaporean men were later charged, while two non-league footballers for Whitehawk were also charged in December 2013. As a result of this investigation, three people were jailed in June 2014.[

11. In November 2014, the presidents of Ligue 2 clubs Caen and Nîmes were amongst several arrested on suspicion of match fixing. The arrests followed a 1–1 draw between Caen and Nîmes in May 2014, a result very beneficial for each club.

12. In June 2014, it was announced that 13 games were believed to have been fixed in British football during the 2013–14 season.

13. Unusual betting patterns were reported for a match between Accrington Stanley and Bury on the final day of the 2007–08 season. A Football Association investigation resulted in five players, four of whom played for Accrington Stanley and the other for Bury, being charged with betting on a Bury win.

14. The floodlights went out – and an Asian betting syndicate raked in a fortune.

On a Monday evening in November 1997 Frank Lampard had just struck an equaliser for West Ham United against Crystal Palace when the floodlights at Upton Park failed, plunging the ground into darkness and forcing the abandonment of the game. A month later the syndicate – who had "arranged" for the lights to go out – repeated their scam during a Wimbledon vs Arsenal game. But, when they tried for a third time, at a Charlton vs Liverpool match, their plan was foiled.

15. Four men went on trial in Germany accused of fixing perhaps as many as 270 soccer matches across Europe and Asia by bribing both players and referees. According to police sources, the amount of the bribes totalled over $2 million, with the amount bet on the matches much more than that. The matches potentially influenced spanned from 2009 through 2010.

Fixing is known to be rife in other European countries such as Greece, Turkey and many countries in Asia.

sbeefyk1 wrote:

Football isn't fixed. That is ridiculous. Every game has many miscalls or missed calls. People need to watch the NFL the entire season and not watch one game and think it is fixed. Leave it to Americans to overreact because they see one thing and don't do any research. The research here requires watching games all season for several years. Better call off work and flip the tube to NFL Films for a few days.

It's actually been years and years of watching the three "major" sports that make me think they're "manipulated," rather than out and out "fixed," to maximize TV ratings.

Basketball: not even close