Match-fixing a threat to the values of sport. Representation of phenomenon among italian League B players

Today, March-Fixing (MF) is a phenomenon of great relevance and, unfortunately, more and more widespread in sport context; it originates from the failing of morality and in the non-application, or the lacking safeguard, of those values that characterize healthy sport (Mcnamee, 2013). Moreover, despite the existence of a significant amount of policy implementation lines related to MF, at both national and European level, the scientific literature from psychological, relational and organizational point of view, is still very limited (Hill, 2009; Huggins, 2017). The aim of this contribution is to present what professional football players belonging to the second division of Italian professional Football League (League B) know and think about MF and their disposition toward it. The purpose of this study, therefore, has been to fill the abovementioned gap in literature, trying to understand 1) player’s personal and socio-relational characteristics, 2) their knowledge about MF and 3) their behaviour toward MF. For this purpose, a structured questionnaire has been developed and proposed to 283 professional players members of the 22 Teams belonging to Italian Football League B. Due to the explorative nature of this project, it has been done descriptive analysis of collected data. Results show that players have a great awareness of MF. However, when players perceive their possible, or effective, involvement in an illegal situation, as “members of a team”, they deal with the situation by keeping it limited into the sport context, without involve others actors from outside this context, generating a situation of “code of silence” about it. This research represents the first step of an ongoing project granted by the European Union, aimed to increase our knowledge of the MF phenomenon and its social and relational dynamics.