Match-Fixing in European Sports: Attitudes and Experiences

ABSTRACT

Over the past years, the scholarly interest in match-fixing has grown. Although several empirical studies have tried to map the prevalence of match-fixing, the scope has often been limited to a given country, sports discipline, level of sports, and/or type of match-fixing. Moreover, match-fixing is often stereotyped as a problem caused by external criminals, while match-fixing by internal stakeholders occurs on a larger scale. When it comes to internal stakeholders, research to date has mainly focused on the vulnerability of athletes and referees to match-fixing. Nevertheless, other internal stakeholders in sports can also be the instigators of match-fixing, and may have different attitudes toward match-fixing. This study aims to fill these gaps by examining match-fixing among various internal stakeholders (n = 4958) involved in different sports across Europe. The results showed that internal stakeholders’ attitudes toward match-fixing were not uniform. Additionally, almost one fifth of the respondents indicated (in)direct match-fixing incidents in the questionnaire. The majority of the cases concerned sporting-related match-fixing, while our results also revealed that sporting- and betting-related match-fixing can happen together. By examining various internal stakeholders’ attitudes toward and experiences with match-fixing in European sports, this study could navigate future match-fixing prevention initiatives.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ In this study, we use the term “internal stakeholder.”

² The term “referee” refers to “referee,” “(video) assistant referee,” “(fourth) official,” and “jury member” in this study.

³ The term “coach” refers to “coach,” “trainer” and “assistant coach” in this study.

⁴ The term “board member” refers to “board member,” “assembly member” and “manager of a sport club” in this study.

Additional information

Funding

The elaboration of this manuscript was co-funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union through the collaborative partnership “Evidence-based Prevention Of Sporting-related Match-fixing” (EPOSM) (project number: 613385-EPP-1-2019-1-BE-SPO-SCP).

Notes on contributors

Stef Van Der Hoeven

Stef Van Der Hoeven (PhD) holds a PhD in the area of sports management and works at the Department of Movement and Sports Sciences of Ghent University, Belgium. His research focuses on exploring, mapping, and understanding match-fixing in sport, with an emphasis on the normalization of (sporting-related) match-fixing. In 2020-2021, he was also the project manager of the Erasmus+ collaborative partnership ”Evidence-based Prevention Of Sporting-related Match-fixing” (EPOSM).

Bram Constandt

Bram Constandt (PhD) is an Assistant Professor in sport management at the Department of Movement and Sports Sciences of Ghent University, Belgium. His research focuses on responsible management and integrity issues in sport, with an emphasis on better understanding match-fixing and the normalization of gambling in sport.

Argyro Elisavet Manoli

Argyro Elisavet Manoli (PhD) is an Associate Professor in Loughborough University, UK. Her research focuses on two main strands: marketing communications management and integrity in sport. Her research on the latter has been awarded funding from the British Academy, the Economic Social Research Council and the European Union and has been published extensively on books, journals and policy reports. She has presented her work on sport integrity in the European Parliament, while she was also invited to deliver opening interventions on all European Commission Expert Group Meetings on Sport Integrity. She is the author of Mapping Corruption in sport in the EU; a report to the European Commission, a policy report commissioned by the European Union.

Maarten van Bottenburg

Maarten van Bottenburg (PhD) is professor of Public Administration and Organisation Science at Utrecht University and coordinator of Utrecht University's focus area ”Sport & Society”. In 2017 he held the Francqui Chair at the Vrije Universiteit Brussels. The common thread in his work is the question of how sport is developing as a social phenomenon, which public values and public issues arise from this, and how and why the organization and management of sport have an impact on those values and issues.

Stefano Caneppele

Stefano Caneppele (PhD) is Professor in criminology and Deputy Director of the School of Criminal Justice, University of Lausanne (Switzerland). His research interests focus on the analysis and comprehension of complex crimes, such as sports corruption, organized crime and terrorism, the exploitation of illicit markets and the manipulation of licit ones.

Annick Willem

Annick Willem (PhD) is Associate Professor in Sport Management at the Department of Movement and Sports Sciences (Ghent University) and head of the Sport Management research group and the multidisciplinary PrOFS (Prevention Of Fraud in Sports) project. Her research is on management and policy in the sports sector, with a particular focus on social issues, such as Sport-for-All and ethics management. Her research is published in high-quality scientific journals in the field of sports management. Annick teaches several sports management courses and is Academic Coordinator of the Belgian Olympic Academy (BOA).