Crime in the Boardroom: Extending the Focus beyond Football Fans

Abstract

In highly professionalised sports, with substantial financial rewards for success, the pressure to bend and sometimes break the rules is always a potential problem. However, it is the duty of the regulatory body — national and international — and those involved in the sport, such as players and referees, to protect the integrity of their sport. The criminological focus on football, however, has primarily been con- cerned with the behaviour of fans (Trivizas, 1981; Frosdick and Marsh, 2005; Stott and Pearson, 2006; 2007; Pearson and Sale, 2011; Ayres and Treadwe11, 2012; Hamilton-Smith and Hopkins, 2013) rather than those running the football clubs. The sociological and criminological litera- ture tends to focus on low-level criminality and disorder and/or the policing and punishment of that disorder. This is understandable, as the impact of televised crowd disturbances and acts of violence secure criminological interest far more than isolated cases of football club cor- ruption. Furthermore, access to the field of football crowd violence is open and available for observational and ethnographic research far more than crime in the boardroom. This criminological disinterest in white- collar crime in football, even from those with an interest in white-collar crime (Box, 1983; Braithwaite, 1984; 1985; Slapper and Tombs, 1999; Tombs and Why te, 2003), is partly down to a focus on more visible, high-impact crime(s), but also due to lack of access to the research ‘field’.