Author: Graham Brooks, Azeem Aleem and Mark Button
ISBN No: 9780 230 299788
Review date: 26/04/2024
No of pages: 206
Publisher: Palgrave
Publisher URL:
http://www.palgrave.com/products/title.aspx?pid=504671
Year of publication: 22/05/2014
Brief:
http://www.palgrave.com/products/title.aspx?pid=504671
Fraud, Corruption and Sport: by Graham Brooks, Azeem Aleem and Mark Button. Published 2013 by Palgrave. Hardback, 206 pages, £55, ISBN 9780 230 299788. Visit www.palgrave.com.
price
£55
We like to think our sporting heroes are different – it turns out they are not, according to a book on fraud and corruption in sport.
This book comes from academics at the University of Portsmouth, a city that has seen its football club drop from the first to the fourth tier, as it’s entered administration (twice) and had points deducted. As stewards know from securing matches, people get worked up about ‘their’ team in a way they don’t about a cinema, or a bank. Talking of banks, as with the general banking crash, it’s a moot point where bad business decisions end and wrong-doing begins. Whereas banks have a regulator, sports don’t co-operate over common problems of elite athlete doping and match-fixing, a problem early on identified in this book. It covers a good range of sports besides the obvious football and cricket – horse racing, basketball, baseball and boxing. While fans may find it hard to accept that ‘their’ club is a business, the book makes plain that sports share the risks of fraud and corruption of staff faced by any business. Why do fraudsters do it – above all, well-paid sportsmen, risking their careers and reputation? It makes a welcome change to read about sport without enthusiasts getting passionate and one-sided, and to apply study of fraud in general to the sports sector. The parallels abound. For instance, do sports bodies really want to hear about corruption, and risk losing sponsors? And as sports become ever more international, who’s in charge? Take cricket – the international cricket body the ICC’s anti-corruption unit was set up and staffed by former UK police; but do national bodies want to know of wrongs on their patch?! Certainly whistle-blowers feel that they have to resort to what the authors term the ‘nuclear option’ of leaking to the media, ‘which has a record of exposing corruption and often seems a far more effective regulatory body than many sporting institutions’ internal integrity processes’.
Fraud, Corruption and Sport: by Graham Brooks, Azeem Aleem and Mark Button. Published 2013 by Palgrave. Hardback, 206 pages, £55, ISBN 9780 230 299788. Visit www.palgrave.com.
