By Ben Nicholson
May 29 – International footballers’ association FIFPro and UEFA and Birkbeck, University of London, have combined to produce a ‘Good Practice Guide’ which will be presented at the closing conference of Don’t Fix it in Slovenia next week.
Dr. Andy Harvey, of the Department of Psychosocial Studies at Birkbeck, University of London, has compiled information from eight countries and nearly 2,000 footballers.
The match-fixing solution offered in the ‘Good Practice Guide’, which accompanies the longer research report, seeks to “form the basis for future action against match-fixing by player associations”.
It is a holistic solution promoting specific tailoring to individual economic, social and cultural conditions. The solution to match-fixing is said to need to be as equally sophisticated as the motivations and incentives that drive the illegal activity. The conclusions are that to win the battle requires national and international cooperation.
The report emphasises that reporting mechanisms are not in themselves solutions.
Dr. Harvey used numerous research methods, “including a detailed literature review, interviews with key stakeholders and project partners, and a large scale survey of player’s knowledge, beliefs and practices around match-fixing and betting” (5), as outlined in the ‘Results and Analysis’ Players’ Questionnaire document.
The questionnaire directly asked footballers about their knowledge and beliefs about match-fixing so as to tackle the problem from an informed standpoint. The idea is to place the student at the centre of education in order to design “effective learning solutions”, and this questionnaire aimed to begin providing this insight.
1585 surveys have been returned, showing a variety of answers between nations. The conclusion states that all nations are susceptible, in different ways, and so “the profile of threats to integrity is best understood at a national level.”
The presentation next week to the Don’t Fix It conference should elaborate on the findings and so provide a step towards understanding what must be done to combat match-fixing from the inside.
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