With the increasingly sophisticated integration of modern professional sport and the sports betting industry, match-fixing is no longer merely an incidental deviation by a handful of athletes or a simple breach of sporting rules; it has evolved into a...
With the increasingly sophisticated integration of modern professional sport and the sports betting industry, match-fixing is no longer merely an incidental deviation by a handful of athletes or a simple breach of sporting rules; it has evolved into a serious risk that occurs repeatedly and persistently. In recent years, incidents involving match-fixing, in-game manipulation, and illegal betting have continued to surface across traditional professional sports and various competitions closely linked to sports betting. These developments not only directly undermine the fairness of sporting contests and the uncertainty of outcomes, but also steadily erode the societal foundation of trust in the sports system as a whole. In this context, existing criminal-law frameworks that have been shaped primarily around the protection of proprietary interests increasingly reveal limitations in scope and inadequacies in normative assessment. For example, the traditional offense of fraud focuses on protecting others’ proprietary interests and therefore struggles to fully capture the unlawfulness of match-fixing and the risks it poses to sport; moreover, difficulties in application and proof have been criticized as obstacles to effective investigation and tracing. Likewise, where match-fixing intervenes in sports betting–related cases, the outward form of wagering property may remain unchanged, yet the offender’s manipulation of results eliminates the contingency of winning or losing; as a result, a core constitutive element required for gambling offenses is lacking, making the attribution of liability under gambling provisions also inappropriate. Furthermore, even from the perspective of the legally protected interests, traditional general offenses such as fraud and gambling are structured primarily around proprietary interests or social-administrative order, and thus cannot sufficiently encompass the fairness and authenticity of sporting competitions, nor the social trust in the competition system that is formed and maintained on that basis.
To respond to the risks posed by match-fixing, some countries have already begun to regulate such conduct through specific criminal legislation. Germany, for instance, introduced distinct offenses—“sports betting fraud” and “manipulation of professional sports competitions”—through Sections 265c and 265d of its Criminal Code, thereby clearly bringing within independent criminal evaluation manipulative conduct that violates competition rules and infringes the integrity of sport. South Korea, likewise, has established a relatively systematic structure of prohibitions and punishments for match-fixing–related conduct through special statutes such as the National Sports Promotion Act. By contrast, China’s Criminal Law has not yet created an independent offense that directly targets match-fixing, and judicial practice largely relies on traditional offense definitions—such as bribery and gambling—only indirectly. This situation makes it difficult to fully assess the harm that match-fixing inflicts on the fairness of competitions and institutional trust, and it has been criticized for leaving a legal gap in which even serious manipulation may escape criminal regulation. Accordingly, this thesis conducts a comparative legal analysis centered on German and South Korean legislation, systematically examining the structure and institutional features of criminal regulation of match manipulation. On that basis, it critically reviews the limitations of China’s current regulatory approach and argues both the necessity and the institutional feasibility of establishing an independent “match-fixing offense” in China’s Criminal Law. It further proposes concrete directions for legislative design—focusing on the protected legal interest and the elements of the offense—in order to explore a regulatory model that respects the subsidiarity of criminal law and the principle of sports autonomy while remaining consistent with the operational realities of modern professional sport.