One of the realities of sports betting is the fact that every once in a while there are problems with match fixing. In the history of organised sport point shaving has been carried out on a number of occasions by individuals who attempt to prevent a specific team from covering their published point spread. It is a simple fact that sports betting will involve point shaving at some point or another, especially when there are millions being bet on the outcome. It usually involves a sports gambler and an insider on the team who will ensure their team does not cover the point spread in exchange for a bribe. The result is that the gambler makes a wager against the team and walks away with a significant amount of money. This practise is also be known as throwing a game and is a highly publicised downside to sports betting that has been found at all levels of professional sports, from amateur all the way up to the Olympic Games.

The overall intention of point shaving is to manipulate the score so that the result is within a specific range of points based on a predetermined outcome and the wager that the corrupt gambler has made. Given the fact that human nature is what it is, a sports game will always have a level of randomness surrounding it. In simple terms, the exact final score of the game can never be predicted with absolute certainty, because there are always underlying factors that can swing things one way or another. The only way to predict the outcome with absolute certainty is to cheat.