Should football care about its fans’ trust? A study into the consequences of a large-scale fraud scandal on sports fans’ integrity perceptions

ABSTRACT

Purpose

In this empirical study, we assessed the reputational consequences of a large-scale football fraud scandal by measuring fans’ integrity perceptions. More specifically, we targeted inherent, personal, organizational, and procedural integrity.

Methodology

We used a cross-sectional survey distributed through a Belgian sports newspaper to reach our respondents (n = 1693), that were divided into non-football fans, average, and loyal football fans.

Findings

Our results show that average football fans reported more lenient perceptions towards all four aspects of integrity, and loyal football fans were the most disillusioned with football. Additionally, we show that players, coaches, and referees were the most trusted sportspersons within football, despite being frequently involved in fraud cases.

Practical implications

This study suggests that although the derived demand for football might not be affected by fraud scandals, the direct demand is more at risk, as is the reputation of football.

Research contribution

This study adds empirically informed knowledge on the scarcely researched topic of fraud in sports, and its consequences on the reputation of sports.

KEYWORDS:

• Match-fixing
• financial fraud
• integrity in sports
• 'operation zero'
• football fans

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the newspaper “Het Nieuwsblad” for publishing our questionnaire, and Jolien Martens for her help during the first phases of this research (i.e. survey construction and data collection).

Disclosure statement

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