Ok firstly perhaps not so much for those big matches but those small matches.
In my country of singapore we have our own local soccer scene and i go on another forum and ppl will be discussing odds movements from our local bookmaker. Like for eg odds for team B to score the first goal goes down from 2 to 1.85 for eg and that's the most likely outcome for team B to score 1st.
Then there'll be talks of the bookmaker trying to trick punters with low odds making them think it'll be guaranteed wins and so on.
I'm just curious do bookmakers really fix the matches or in some way know the outcome of the match that an ordinary punter wouldn't? I read from someone else that bookmakers only estimate the most likely outcome of the match therefore reading the odds movement wouldn't help unless the bookmaker somehow influences the match.
I have read countless number of times on that forum on how a heavily favored team is going to lose cos of the huge number of punters on it using it metaphorically as a heavy boat going to sink.
The idea is that the bookmaker which is government owned sees that a huge number of punters have wagered for team A the favourite team to win therefore a huge number of bets are on A and somehow they'll get team A to lose to win over those bets. My country's football league matches are available to be wagered worldwide cos many online book makers have them like Bet365 for eg.
What do you think? Do bookmakers know something about a match and have the ability to influence the match outcome?