joe king said:
NoOneLikesUs said:
MLS will be affected, if it already hasn't. The Asian gambling cartels have influence everywhere.
And this is not about outcomes. It's about victory margins and the long odds that go with them.
Read the book by Declan Hill on the matter.
Someone bets on MLS games?
That is a real cry for help.
It's amazing what people bet on. A couple years ago, there was a scandal in cricket after several players for Pakistan were found to have conspired to rig spot bets on no-balls. Essentially, it would be the equivalent of betting on something like a pitcher going to a 2-0 count on the seventh batter in a game. Something utterly pedestrian and extremely easy to fix.
The Champions League game in England found to have been rigged was Liverpool-Debrecen, a group stage game. Debrecen were from Romania, I think, and would have been heavy underdogs, so any attempted fix would have likely surrounded the final score, or a particular event within the game. The report I've seen is that they suspended a player for failing to report having been approached by a fixer. That may be the extent of it.
There's nothing quite so jarring when you're accustomed to the American approach to gambling as the ads you see at halftime of games here, which generate live odds on the game you're watching, generally something like "Rooney to score next" or "Man United to win 4-1" when they're up 2-0. You also get betting windows inside stadiums.