Corruption in Olympic Sports: Prevalence Estimations of Match Fixing Among German Squad Athletes

Abstract

Although match fixing threatens the integrity of competitions in sport, studies on the prevalence of match fixing are scarce. We measured the prevalence of competition manipulation by German elite athletes and the total percentage of these athletes who had been asked to participate in match fixing by using the randomized response technique. Approximately 8% of the athletes were asked to participate in match fixing, and approximately 7.5% were actually involved in competition manipulation during their careers. More than 30% of athletes reported an attempt to illegally influence referees’ decisions, but only 4.9% had ever directly participated in such attempts. Only the parameter of the financial status provides a different perspective. In general, this study shows that the dissemination of deviant behavior is not extremely high.

Too much at stake to uphold sport integrity? High-performance athletes’ involvement in match-fixing

“…Despite the limitation, however, some parts of the results can provide several points of discussion given the common questions asked -such as the rates of approach for, involvement in, and awareness of match-fixing, as well as key instigators and motivations for involvement, etc. For instance, compared to the average rate of experienced approach from the six surveys (10.02%), our results show more or less the same rate of approach (10.12%), which may intimate that South Korean high-performance athletes are not particularly more vulnerable to the temptation of match-fixing [13,[16][17][18][19][20]. However, actual involvement of match-fixing amongst those approached varies from 1.2% to 7.47% (average 4.2%), while in our result, 4.5% (n=33) of respondents were involved in matchfixing [13,[16][17][18][19][20].…”

“…For instance, compared to the average rate of experienced approach from the six surveys (10.02%), our results show more or less the same rate of approach (10.12%), which may intimate that South Korean high-performance athletes are not particularly more vulnerable to the temptation of match-fixing [13,[16][17][18][19][20]. However, actual involvement of match-fixing amongst those approached varies from 1.2% to 7.47% (average 4.2%), while in our result, 4.5% (n=33) of respondents were involved in matchfixing [13,[16][17][18][19][20]. Perhaps the information about the awareness of others' match-fixing approach or involvement is the most unreliable given that it is about perception that can be based on rumours.…”

“…The pervasiveness of non-betting-related fixing is supported by recent empirical research conducted in several different countries (See Table 1). Although these surveys vary in their target groups, sample sizes, sporting disciplines, and types of questions asked, the results collectively offer a brief picture of how widespread the problem might be [13,[16][17][18][19][20]. According to these works, between 4% and 15% of the surveyed athletes reported that they had been approached, while from 1.2% to 7% of the participants had confessed their involvement of match-fixing.…”

A Scoping Review of the Causes and Consequences of Fraud in Sport

“…FIFA, for instance, has the ability to punish states that attempt to hold their national football federation accountable to good governance principles by excluding them from qualifying for the next World Cup (Boudreaux et al, 2016). Additionally, international sport federations benefit from their social position and social power in society, which further complicates the task of accountability holders (Nelson & Cottrell, 2016). Moreover, in the Balkan countries, a recent study indicated that even the media is unable to hold the sport sector accountable, even though accountability holding is often regarded as one of its most important roles (Manoli & Janečić, 2020).…”

“…The opportunity structures for competition manipulation according to those sources were, however, highly similar to those mentioned in studies that did distinguish between both types. Namely, likely offenders are financially motivated (Carpenter, 2012;Doewes, 2020;Frenger et al, 2019;Gardiner et al, 2012;Huang et al, 2018;Trumpyte, 2016). Social ties, pressure, and duress (Carpenter, 2012;Gardiner et al, 2012;Kihl, 2019;Lee, 2017;, and conflicts of interests related to multi-club ownerships (Breuer, 2018) are also mentioned as contributing factors.…”