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.