Education
D.Phil., Oxford University
B.A, University of Toronto
About Declan
Declan Hill is a journalist, academic and consultant. He is one of the world’s foremost experts on match fixing and corruption in international sports. In 2008, Hill, as a Chevening Scholar, obtained his doctorate in Sociology at the University of Oxford.
His book ‘The Fix: Organized Crime and Soccer’ has appeared in twenty-one languages. Hill was the first person to show the new danger to international sport posed by the globalization of the gambling market and match-fixing at the highest levels of professional football (soccer) including the Champions League and FIFA World Cup tournaments. Part of the book details his involvement with an Asian match-fixing gang as they travelled around the world to fix major football matches.
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Hill has also published a number of academic articles, was a reviewer for Global Integrity and has probed the impact of the Russian mafia on professional ice hockey in the NHL. In 2011, he pioneered the first on-line anti-match-fixing education course for Sport Accord that was eventually used by Interpol – the International Police Force.
Declan is also the host of the Crime Waves podcast, along with his students, as he interviews people at the center of the biggest investigations in the world: prosecutors, criminals, professors, corruptors, journalists, undercover investigators, policemen, Olympic Gold Medalists, and mobsters — all primary sources, all experts, and all people with firs t-hand knowledge of the criminal world.
www.crimewavespodcast.com
In his spare time, Hill is a keen amateur boxer and martial arts enthusiast. He leads groups of recreational and competitive fighters to train in Havana, Cuba. On March 31, 2012, Hill won a charity boxing match that was part of the historic Trudeau-Brazeau night – as part of Fight for the Cure in support the Ottawa Regional Cancer Foundation.
Hill speaks four languages – English, French, Spanish and (poor) Italian.
Publications
Declan Hill has written journal articles, book sections and an academic book Insider’s Guide to Match-Fixing in Football to explain the new phenomenon of globalization and match-fixing in professional sports.
Hill’s other academic interests are corruption studies, organized crime and ‘informal governance’ – or the analysis of power structures in societies that are outside formal governments.
Hill is driven by evidence-based work: research methods should fit the topic that is being examined, rather than shaping the topic to use a favourite research method. Therefore, Hill uses both qualitative (interviews, text analysis) and quantitative methods (statistics) in his research.
Hill, D., Rasmussen, C., Vittorio, M., Myers, D., "Red-flagging the leagues: the U.S. Sports most in danger from match-fixing", Sport in Society: Cultures, Commerce, Media, Politics, Volume 23, Pages 1774-1792, (2020), https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17430437.2020.1804114
Hill, D., "Jumping into Fixing", Trends in Organized Crime, Vol. 18, pages 212–228, (2015), https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12117-014-9237-5?sa_campaign=email/event/articleAuthor/onlineFirst
Hill, D. "A critical mass of corruption: why some football leagues have more match-fixing than others", International Journal of Sports Marketing and Sponsorship, (2010), https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/IJSMS-11-03-2010-B005/full/html
Hill, D., "How Gambling Corruptors Fix Football Matches", European Sport Management Quarterly, Volume 9, Pages 411-432, (2009), https://doi.org/10.1080/16184740903332018
Hill, D., "To fix or not to fix? How corruptors decide to fix football matches", Global Crime, Volume 10, Pages 157-177, (2009), https://doi.org/10.1080/17440570802543524
Books
Declan Hill. (2013). The Insider’s Guide to Match-Fixing in Football. Anne McDermid & Associates Ltd.
Declan Hill. (2008). The Fix: Soccer and Organized Crime. McClelland & Stewart Ltd.