Presented by Wray Vamplew at the SpLeisH International Sport & Leisure History Colloquium 2017 

This paper will offer an economic history perspective on match-fixing based on economic models which explain corruption as a rational decision-making process in which a potentially corrupt athlete weighs up various probabilities. Examples will be taken from sport worldwide including American college sports, NBA basketball, British horseracing, Australian Rules football and sumo wrestling in Japan where large data bases of actual results over time, have allowed possible patterns of match-fixing (as opposed to individual instances)to be identified by the use of probability theory.