Match-fixing: Student’s PhD paper wins award

University of Otago student Minhyeok Tak  has won awards for his work on studying match-fixing....
University of Otago student Minhyeok Tak has won awards for his work on studying match-fixing. Photo by Linda Robertson.

University of Otago student Minhyeok Tak believes sports organisations and betting agencies need to take more responsibility in curbing match-fixing.

Tak, who is four years into his PhD at the School of Physical Education, won the International Sociology of Sport Association (ISSA) Graduate Paper Award for his latest work on match-fixing.

As a result, the 35-year-old has been invited to present his paper - Too Big to Jail: Match-fixing, Institutional Failure and Contemporary Sports Betting - at the ISSA World Congress in Budapest in June.

It follows his award-winning paper last year, which looked into match-fixing countermeasures.

Tak won the European Association for Sociology of Sports (EASS) Young Scholar Award for the paper, which he presented in Dublin last year.

It has been accepted for publication in an international journal.

Tak's latest paper is based on the match-fixing scandal that erupted within South Korea's football K-League in 2011, but also covers the contemporary nexus between sports and betting, he said.

"I think many people understand match-fixing as an individual ethical motivation, but I challenge this dominant type,'' he said.

"I think it's a result of the consequence of the global sports betting industry. Matches are manipulated by individual players on the spot, but it is the institutionalised sports betting that opens up and gives the potential for match-fixing.

"Sports betting is to relocate sports on the gambling table. In other words, artificial markets that place the same monetary value on losing as winning.''

Tak believes sports organisations do not do enough to protect players from the dangers of match-fixing, something he calls an "institutionalised failure''.

"They shift the blame of match-fixing in individual players. Players are replaceable, so blame [someone] and [kick them] out and someone else new comes in.''

Tak, originally from Daejeon in South Korea, went to school in Seoul.

He has two more papers to complete in his thesis this year.

He and his wife Younjin Kim plan to live in Dunedin for at least three more years.

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