The Big Fix by Brett Forrest Page A

you see?” There are tables full of what appear to be businessmen in the midst of congenial lunch meetings. There are a few romantic ­couples sharing their little moments. At other tables, friends speak loudly with one another, then laugh. It is the usual steakhouse crowd, but for one missing element. “No booze,” Jay says. He’s right. Plates of steaks and potatoes cover the tabletops, but no single glass of beer or whiskey accompanies them. “These ­people don’t spend their money on alcohol. They gamble.”
    C hina’s market reforms of the late twentieth century incited one of the most remarkable periods of localized economic growth that the world has ever experienced. Throughout the 1990s, the Chinese economy grew at a rate of roughly 10 percent per year. In rapid fashion, this swelling generated both great personal wealth for some individuals and general liquidity in Chinese society.
    While this miraculous event was unfolding, so was an episode of even greater global significance and revelation. During this period, the Internet was growing from a computer engineer’s curiosity into the world’s primary means of commerce and communication. At the moment that many millions of Chinese ­people all of a sudden possessed disposable income, there was a new place to play with it. When these fortunate Chinese considered how they might float their new wealth for the enjoyment and risk that had long been a central part of their culture, they were presented with a growing number of gambling options online.
    The emergence of the Internet not only precipitated the growth of online betting sites, but also improved options for the gambler. Before the Internet, the corner-­store bookie, such as Ladbrokes, had little incentive to offer its clients competitive odds. It possessed a quasi-­monopoly, defined by location and the immobility of the gambler. Internet betting introduced choice to the betting market. A new catalogue of gambling sites began dropping odds and commissions in the competition to attract business.
    In China, the new bourgeoisie within this population of 1.3 billion ­people flooded the Internet gambling market. As the millennium turned, European sportsbooks followed the lead of their Asian counterparts, establishing online portals. Eventually the European and Asian markets began to work in concert, online, following each other’s price and line movements, bookies on one continent laying off bets with bookies on the other as part of their risk management strategy. Asian books established European-­registered subsidiaries under different names, the client none the wiser. As happened with other industries as they migrated online, in gambling, national borders dissolved. In short order, the Internet enforced global regulation, of a sort, on a largely unregulated, gray-­market, underground industry.
    â€œThe Asian and European betting markets have come together and created one giant pool,” says David Forrest, an economics professor at the University of Salford, in Manchester, England, who specializes in the study of sports gambling. “It’s now one huge liquid market. And liquidity is the friend of the fixer. You can put down big bets without notice, and without changing the odds against yourself.”
    The Internet altered what ­people bet on, as well as the way that they bet. Twenty years ago, roughly 15 percent of bets on the international sports market were placed on soccer. But as the Internet enabled betting houses to offer continuous propositions based on the various factors of a game in progress—­including the time remaining, the score, the players on the field, and the intuition of the bookie adjusting the line and the odds—­the rise of in-­game betting enhanced the popularity of soccer as a gambling proposition. The game now accounts for roughly 70 percent of the international sports betting market, according to