While this post should be interesting enough by its own merits, however, you could always check out the previous parts

Part 1

Part 2

Italy alone had 7 major match-fixing scandals, Napoli 1948, Totonero 1980 with Lazio, Totonero 1986 which was six years later, and yeah, it included Lazio. The Calciopoli, which you guessed it, had Lazio. There are a few more major ones in Italy but they don't include Lazio, so fuck it. Europe is no different as each country it had its own history of corruption.

Most if not all were based on betting. Which is normal because

Betting on football is a global industry

England alone adds 14.5 billion pounds a year to this betting pool. The size of sports betting is 1.5 TRILLION euros, 70% of which is football based. 950 Billion euros come from Asia. Not because Asian sports are so popular but because you can bet on any sporting event, anywhere in the world. Europe is quite popular in Asia and that's where lies the disaster, as there are three factors making it easy for global betting companies to influence football.

1- Referees are underpaid

At least compared to the size of the industry of football. Referees deal with most hate in their careers, and it takes being at the very top of the pyramid to have a good income and protection. That's why Robert Hoyzer, who fixed 23 matches for the Croatian gang, was willing to accept a total of 45,000 euros and television while the Croatian gang made around 1.5 million.

2- The amount of money is unreal.

We're talking about an industry with a cash flow that is over a TRILLION euros! The opportunity is always there to make money. With so much money to be made, many people will be open to taking that risk and conspiring.

3- You don't only bet on the final score

You could bet nowadays on players getting red cards, yellow cards, getting injured, subbed out or in, and/or causing a foul or a penalty. This allows referees to affect matches with things that don't seem important but are bet on while small enough that the referee doesn't get exposed or under surveillance.

It is very easy for a referee to stop you from scoring after getting the ball from a defender under the guise that it was a foul or could easily intimidate your team with yellow cards while not doing the same for the opponent. Many more examples that seem to be just part of football. Many referees are excused when making mistakes or certain decisions because they get intimidated by the supporters of a team or a big team. There are many studies that prove referees' unconscious bias toward big teams for example.

So, what can we do?

Well, the answer is simple enough: Data.

In September 2017, Senegal played South Africa in a decisive World Cup qualification match where Ghanaian referee, Joseph Lamptey gave South Africa an imaginary penalty insisting that he saw it with his own eyes.

This incident would have gone unchecked if it weren't for someone in the audience named Tom Mace, a Global Director of Operations and head of "Integrity Services" department at Sportsradar, a multinational corporation that collects and analyzes sports data for bookmakers, national and international sports federations, and media companies.

Mace has software able to check out search engines to get you to match results from everywhere, he uses that software to keep on taps on over 550 betting companies across the world. That software managed to detect over four thousand match-fixing actions worldwide between 2009 and 2019.

Anyway, Mace's software managed to spot an unusual amount of activities around the time the goal was scored from that fake penalty, specifically between the 13th minute all the way to the 43rd minute. Obviously, the operation is way more complicated than my simplified explanation to avoid getting sidetracked.

Mace informed FIFA and CAF who took action against the referee who got a life-long suspension with the match was replayed later the same year and Senegal earned their place in the 2018 World Cup.

In Conclusion

There is a lot of match-fixing in the world, but most don't happen for the reason many seem to believe. Most of it seems to fall down to random circumstances and what certain people think about when it comes to picking a winner or a loser, or simply just certain events happening.

As far as when it comes to certain teams winning a certain way or over a certain opponent most/all of the time, for example, Germany never won over Italy, we could conclude that if betting could influence at such a high level, then it would have changed those outcomes long ago as people influencing this level of football would benefit more from Germany ending their losing streak against Italy.

So, I wouldn't really worry about betting companies influencing the top level of football. Unless, of course, we start seeing referees in the English Premier League making silly mistakes still despite having VAR technology.

Wait! What? Just kidding.