In organized
sports,
match fixing,
game fixing,
race fixing, or
sports fixing occurs as a match is played to a completely or partially pre-determined result, violating the rules of the game and often the law. Where the sporting competition in question is a race then the incident is referred to as
race fixing. Games that are deliberately lost are sometimes called
thrown games. When a team intentionally loses a game, or does not score as high as it can, to obtain a perceived future competitive advantage (for instance, earning a high
draft pick) rather than gamblers being involved, the team is often said to have
tanked the game instead of having
thrown it. In
pool hustling, tanking is known as
dumping.
Thrown games, when motivated by gambling, require contacts (and normally money transfers) between gamblers, players, team officials, and/or referees. These contacts and transfer can sometimes be found, and lead to prosecution, by law or by the sports league(s). In contrast, tanking is internal to the team and very hard to prove. Often, substitutions made by the coach designed to deliberately increase the team's chances of losing (frequently by having one or more key players sit out, often using minimal or phantom injuries as a public excuse for doing this), rather than ordering the players actually on the field to intentionally underperform, were cited as the main factor in cases where tanking has been alleged.
Better playoff chances
In the NBA (but not in the NHL, which re-seeds teams after the first playoff round), there have also been allegations of teams tanking games in order to finish in sixth rather than fifth place in the conference standings, thus enabling the team in question to evade a possible playoff match with the conference's top seed until the final round of playoffs in that conference (for more details see
single-elimination tournament). For example, the 2006
Los Angeles Clippers allegedly tanked late season games so they could finish with the 6th seed and play the 8th-ranked team in the league's Western Conference, the
Denver Nuggets, who were the 3rd seed by way of winning their division. Another quirk in the league's playoff system gave the Clippers even more of an incentive to tank. The NBA is the only one of the four
major professional sports leagues of the United States in which home advantage in the playoffs is based strictly on regular-season record without regard to seeding. If the Clippers had finished with the 5th seed in the West, they would have had to face the
Dallas Mavericks, who despite being the 4th seed had the second-best record in the conference, which would give the Mavericks home advantage. However, the Clippers would have home advantage in a series against the Nuggets by virtue of a better overall record. If tanking was indeed their strategy, it worked, as the Clippers easily won their first round series. Following the 2006 season, the NBA changed its playoff format so that the best second-place team in each conference would be able to obtain up to the #2 seed should it have the second-best conference record.
[1] On occasion, an NFL team has also been accused of throwing its final regular-season game in an attempt to "choose" its possible opponent in the subsequent playoffs. For example, in the closing game of the 2004 season, the
Indianapolis Colts faced the
Denver Broncos. With a win, the Broncos would advance to the playoffs as a wild card and face the Colts as their first round playoff opponent. It would seem the Colts had little incentive to win as their loss would ensure that they would play a team they dominated in the 2003 Wild Card game. Sure enough, the Colts rested their starters, lost the game, and went on to blow out the Broncos the following week in the playoffs.
Perhaps the most notable example of this was when the
San Francisco 49ers, who had clinched a playoff berth, lost their regular-season finale in 1988 to the
Los Angeles Rams, thereby keeping the
New York Giants (who had defeated the 49ers in the playoffs in both 1985 and 1986, also injuring 49er quarterback
Joe Montana in the latter year's game) from qualifying for the postseason; after the game, Giants quarterback
Phil Simms angrily accused the 49ers of "laying down like dogs."
A more recent example of possible tanking occurred in the
ice hockey competition at the
2006 Winter Olympics. In Pool B,
Sweden was to face
Slovakia in the last pool match for both teams. Sweden coach
Bengt-Åke Gustafsson publicly contemplated tanking against Slovakia, knowing that if his team won, their quarterfinal opponent would either be
Canada, the
2002 gold medalists, or the
Czech Republic,
1998 gold medalists. Gustafsson would tell Swedish television "One is
cholera, the other
the plague." Sweden lost the match 3-0; the most obvious sign of tanking was when Sweden had a five-on-three
power play with five
NHL stars—
Peter Forsberg,
Mats Sundin,
Daniel Alfredsson,
Nicklas Lidstrom, and
Fredrik Modin—on the ice, and failed to put a shot on goal. (
Sports Illustrated writer Michael Farber would say about this particular powerplay, "If the Swedes had passed the puck any more, their next opponent would have been the
Washington Generals.") If he was seeking to tank, Gustafsson got his wish; Sweden would face a much less formidable quarterfinal opponent in
Switzerland. Canada would lose to
Russia in a quarterfinal in the opposite bracket, while Sweden went on to win the gold medal, defeating the Czechs in the semifinals.
