Football and integrity: a legal enforcement investigation based on three cases (violence, racism and matchfixing)

At a time when football is not only a game but also a social phenomenon, attention needs to be paid to the relationship between sport and the law and the associated challenges. Football is plagued by several integrity issues, including violence, racism and match-fixing. Managing integrity and consequently creating a safe, inclusive and fair environment is essential for the future of any sport. Crucial to this is preventing problems in law enforcement.

Given the social function of sport and the value overlap that characterises integrity problems in the sports world, they appear to be the subject of enforcement mechanisms by both the government and the football sector (enforcement pluralism). Thus, a problematic overlap may be forming between the different competing enforcement mechanisms.

An in-depth analysis of the current approach to three chosen cases - violence, racism and match-fixing - shows that the convergence of the normative and sanctioning action of the government and the football sector (public-private cooperation) has already developed meaningfully, but needs to be further developed. Indeed, a central premise of, and also the challenge to, ‘proper legal enforcement’ of integrity problems in football, requires having a coherent and consistent set of different enforcement mechanisms in a way in which they reinforce and do not interfere with each other. This research shows that public and private actors need each other to be able to tackle integrity violations and thus give meaning to the social function of sport. This simultaneously leads to further refinement, adaptation and improvement of enforcement, in which legality and specificity, coherence, coordination and cooperation, but also (and especially) legal protection, are important elements.

In order to capture (but also demonstrate) the complexity, the present study developed an enforcement matrix that identifies the focal points and bottlenecks regarding the enforcement of integrity problems in football, with the aim of formulating recommendations for improved law enforcement in the light of football's integrity.