I recently watched an interesting video where the author claimed that in many cases it is not that difficult to predict the outcome of a sports match, because bookmakers are interested in a certain outcome of the match and implicitly influence the outcome of this match. I will not publish a link to this and other similar videos here, so as not to engage in free advertising.
What is important is something else. In the video, the author claimed that modern bookmakers are so powerful that they are actually the source of players' salaries. Most of the games that are included in the bookmaker's line are not completely honest, although this is not customary to talk about. According to the author, the team as a whole is hinted at how they should play so that the team's funding continues. This mainly concerned football.
By the way, as the author claims, if we take teams from lower divisions that are subsidized by local budgets, then there too it is often easy to predict the outcome of a match. There are local teams that at certain times stop being financed by local municipalities (in poor countries) and the teams simply "dump" the match. After all, what is the point of playing for a victory for a professional team if it understands that the money for financing it was either not allocated or was sharply reduced?
And what do you think - does the bookmaker influence the outcome of sports matches?
Is this situation different for different sports? Is football unique in this sense?
A team having low funding or stopping being financed can affect the team's performance. Yes, I agree with that, but that mostly happens in local leagues, not big leagues we know of because their welfare and salaries are taken care of on time.
Every player in a club is being paid according to how their performance is. A player can't act funny in a match because he's paid less than the other. Instead, he would like to perform much better so that his weekly salary would increase.
Many gamblers don't know or look at what players earn before they make a bet on the matches. What they focus on is the current form of the team, home and away advantage, and head-to-head records. However, I can say that bookmarks don't influence the outcome of a match