Sports betting and corruption: How to preserve the - SportAccord

Sports betting and corruption: How to preserve the integrity of sport
Three major examples of corruption in sport
linked to sports betting
THE BLACK SOX SCANDAL (1919)
Or how the best baseball team in its time
agreed to lose the final of the World Series
In 1919 Chicago s White Sox team boasted the best players of the day,
including Eddie Cicotte, Chick Gandil and the star, Shoeless Joe Jackson.
Yet in the final of baseball s greatest competition, the team chose to scuttle
itself. Led by Gandil, who had succeeded in enrolling several of his teammates, Chicago allowed the
Cincinnati Reds to win the 1919 championship.
A key factor in the fixing of the game was the players extremely tense relationship with their
Chairman, who had refused to improve their salary conditions.
The deal was agreed on 18 September 1919, when Gandil demanded $80,000 from bookmaker Joseph
Sport Sullivan. Gandil then contacted seven of his teammates, including Eddie Cicotte, who agreed
to rig the game for $10,000 each. Star player Joe Jackson always claimed to have rejected the
proposal, despite the accusations of Gandil who claimed that as the star of the team, Jackson s
involvement was decisive for the match to be properly fixed.
Gandil was to receive the money before the first match (1 October 1919) but Sullivan - who was
unable to advance the money - brought Arnold Rothstein, a professional gambler who was able to
advance the funds, into the loop. On the day before the first match (at that time the final was played
over nine matches), only Cicotte received an advance of $10,000. The following day, he patted one of
the opposing players on the back to signal that the deal was on, and the rigging would go ahead. The
Reds won the first match. Although they had not yet received the money promised for throwing the
first match (apart from Cicotte), the White Sox decided to lose the second match.
That evening Gandil demanded that $40,000 (of the promised $80,000) be handed over for throwing
the final. He only received $10,000, and the player plotters, sensing that they were being swindled,
decided they should abandon the idea of throwing the championship. They then won the third round.
Before the fourth round, Sullivan the bookmaker handed $20,000 over to Gandil and assured him that
a further $20,000 would be advanced if the White Sox lost the fourth match. The money was
distributed, Chicago lost, but the promised $20,000 never arrived. The conspirators then decided to
abandon the match fixing and fought fiercely against the Reds in the sixth and seventh rounds.
Arnold Rothstein, the professional gambler, then took things into his own hands and despatched one of
his men to threaten one of the players with physical violence against him and his wife if the White Sox
won. They duly lost, and the Reds finally carried off the series the next day.
When several newspapers began to spread rumours of rigging, star player Jackson alerted his
Chairman and wrote to him suggesting that the final might have been rigged. Under the growing
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