Gevolgen | sportmanagement24

CONSEQUENCES

Intro

To analyze the consequences of fraud in sports, we used the Harm Assessment Framework (Greenfield & Paoli, 2013; 2022). We focus specifically on the victims, or rather, ‘damage bearers’, and the forms of damage they experience as a result of sports-related fraud.

Damage bearers

Greenfield and Paoli (2022) define harm as ‘an infringement of the legitimate interests of a legitimate interested party’, and distinguish four ‘classes’ of damage bearers, namely: individuals; private sector entities; public sector entities; and the social environment. In the sports context this leads to the following classification:

This category mainly includes athletes, including athletes who participate in competitions at some level. In addition to athletes, other individual stakeholders also fall within this category, such as referees and members or employees of sports clubs or sports governing bodies.
This category includes private sector entities active within the sports sector, such as sports clubs, sports governing bodies, sponsors and other relevant entities. In addition, organizations that do not operate directly in the sports sector, but are dependent on an ethical sports environment, such as media companies or NGOs, also belong to this group.
This category refers to the various government institutions and the public sector as a whole.
In the sports sector, the social environment refers primarily to fans and the organised sports world. However, the social environment also includes society in a broader sense.

Application of the model to non-sport-specific fraud

Table 1. Consequences of non-sport specific fraud

X = applicable; n/a = not applicable.
a Functional integrity refers to physical, psychological and intellectual integrity.
b Functional integrity refers to operational integrity.
c Functional integrity refers to physical, operational and aesthetic integrity.

Application of the model to sport-specific fraud

Table 2. Consequences of sport-specific fraud

References:

Abeza, G., O'Reilly, N., Prior, D., Huybers, T., & Mazanov, J. (2020). The impact of scandal on sport consumption: do different scandal types have different levels of influence on different consumers segments? European Sport Management Quarterly, 20(2), 130–150. Amenta, C., & Di Betta, P. (2021). The impact of corruption on sports demand. International Journal of Sports Marketing and Sponsorship, 22(2), 369–384. Buraimo, B., Migali, G., & Simmons, R. (2016). An analysis of consumer response to corruption: Italy's Calciopoli scandal. Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, 78(1), 22–41. Carpenter, K. (2012). Match-Fixing-The biggest threat to sport in the 21st century? Sweet & Maxwell's International Sports Law Review, 2, 13–24. Chadwick, S., Roberts, S., & Cowley, R. (2018). The impact of sports corruption on organizational stakeholders. In L. Kihl (Ed.), Corruption in sport: Causes, consequences, and reform (pp. 110–125). Routledge. Duvinage, C. (2012). Referees in sports contests: their economic role and the problem of corruption in professional German sports leagues (1st ed.). Springer. Forrest, D. (2012). The threat to football from betting-related corruption. International Journal of Sport Finance, 7, 99–116. Gotelaere, S., & Paoli, L. (in press). A novel typology of frauds in sports: scripts, perpetrators, and bearers of the associated harm. In P. Duncan, D. Bociga, & J. Davies (Eds.), White-Collar and Organizational Crime: New Ideas, Directions and Perspectives. Greenfield, V., & Paoli, L. (2013). A framework to assess the harms of crimes. British Journal of Criminology, 53(5), 864–885. Hardyns, W., Vanwersch, L., & Constandt, B. (2022). Should football care about its fans' trust? A study into the consequences of a large-scale fraud scandal on sports fans' integrity perceptions. Managing Sports and Leisure. https://doi.org/10.1080/23750472.2022.2148721 Harvey, A., & McNamee, M. (2019). Sport integrity: ethics, policy and practice: an introduction. Journal of Global Sport Management, 4(1), 1–7. https://doi.org/10.1080/24704067.2018.1542606 Manoli, A. E., Antonopoulos, G., & Levi, M. (2016). Football clubs and financial crimes in Greece. Journal of Financial Crime, 23(3), 559–573. Manoli, A. E., Bandura, C., & Downward, P. (2020). Perceptions of integrity in sport: insights into people's relationship with sports. International Journal of Sport Policy and Politics, 12(2), 207–220. Nelen, H. (2022). Ostrageous: How greed and crime eroded professional football and we all looked the other way. Eleven. Paoli, L., & Donati, A. (2014). The sports doping market: understanding supply and demand, and the challenges of their control. Springer.

Interest dimensions

Each category of damage bearers may experience damage to one or more ‘dimensions of interest.’ These dimensions are functional integrity, material support, reputation, andprivacy and autonomy, and can be described as follows:

The meaning of functional integrity can differ per class of damage carrier. For individuals, this refers to physical, psychological and intellectual integrity. For organizations in the private and public sectors, it is about operational integrity. For the social environment it includes physical, operational and aesthetic integrity.
This dimension mainly concerns the direct, financial consequences of fraud, such as losses on balance sheets, negative effects on profit and loss accounts, or adverse effects on budgets.
This dimension relates to the image or good name of a person, organization, sector or brand. Reputational damage can ultimately lead to a loss of credibility or trust among different classes of damage bearers.
Privacy and autonomy are closely linked. A violation of autonomy limits an individual or organization's ability to function independently and may be associated with a violation of privacy. Consider, for example, athletes who have to share their location with the authorities in the context of doping controls.