Combatting the manipulation of sports competitions is a key theme in FINCIS’ research activities. For a long time, research into competition manipulation has primarily approached the phenomenon through corruption. Only in the past decade has the research on manipulation of sports competitions started to form a separate field of research.
Strengthening the knowledge base is a concrete part of the efforts to prevent manipulation of sports competitions. The aim of the research is to provide the entire sports community and society’s stakeholders with information to support decision-making. One of the main objectives is to make all sports stakeholders aware of the manipulation of sports competitions as a phenomenon, its risks and means to prevent it. Measures based on scientific information help reduce opportunities for criminal activity associated with international sports betting in Finland.
FINCIS’s role
FINCIS’s mission is to raise discussion and produce information on ethics-related phenomena in sports. The aim is to identify the phenomena and use the information in the sports community when developing operating models to strengthen an ethically sustainable sports culture.
In 2019, FINCIS produced the publication Sopimaton lopputulos? (‘Inappropriate final result?’; in Finnish only) on combatting the manipulation of sports competitions. The report extensively covers issues behind manipulation of sports competitions, such as corruption, organised crime and the growth of international betting markets. In 2019, a research review was published on the number of publications addressing competition manipulation in research reference databases.