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Match Fixing and Sports Betting in Football: Empirical Evidence from the German Bundesliga

Christian Deutscher et al.

Public Finance Review2025https://doi.org/10.1177/10911421251334175article
ABDC B
Weight
0.43

What the paper says

Corrupt behavior by regulators occurs frequently and imposes costs on society. Corruption can take many forms and corrupt regulators try to hide their actions, making detection difficult. We use a unique data set to analyze variation in bet volume on Betfair, an online betting exchange, for evidence of abnormal patterns associated with specific regulators (referees) enforcing regulations in football matches. An analysis of betting on 1,251 Bundesliga 1 football matches over five seasons reveals evidence of systematically higher bet volume for two referees relative to matches officiated by all other referees, indirect evidence that corruption, in the form of match fixing, occurred. Results from a randomization experiment using Fischer exact p-values, a novel method for detecting corruption, confirm these results.

3 citations

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https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1177/10911421251334175

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@article{christian2025,
  title        = {{Match Fixing and Sports Betting in Football: Empirical Evidence from the German Bundesliga}},
  author       = {Christian Deutscher et al.},
  journal      = {Public Finance Review},
  year         = {2025},
  doi          = {https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1177/10911421251334175},
}

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Match Fixing and Sports Betting in Football: Empirical Evidence from the German Bundesliga

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Evidence weight

0.43

Balanced mode · F 0.40 / M 0.15 / V 0.05 / R 0.40

F · citation impact0.32 × 0.4 = 0.13
M · momentum0.50 × 0.15 = 0.07
V · venue signal0.50 × 0.05 = 0.03
R · text relevance †0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20

† Text relevance is estimated at 0.50 on the detail page — for your query’s actual relevance score, open this paper from a search result.