In November last year, the German football referee Robert Hoyzer was sentenced to 29 months in jail for taking bribes to fix the outcome of a number of matches in the German football league. But now Hoyzer may avoid going to prison altogether.

Match fixing has been around as long as sport itself and the cost of fixing a match is not significantly greater today than it was 90 years ago. What is different is that has become much easier to profit by betting on a loser.

Have you ever left a football match feeling that the result was so unfair or bemusing that it must have been fixed?

Knowledge bank: Sports federations need to consider ethical guidelines and other precautionary measures against an escalating culture of match fixing. Otherwise match fixing will replace doping as the biggest threat to the credibility of sport in a few years.

So argues Henrik H. Brandt, director of the Danish Institute for Sports Studies (idan.dk) and in this article he provides an overview of a number of recent match fixing scandals.