Gambling has emerged as a double-edged sword for contemporary sport: it serves as a key source of revenues, while simultaneously posing serious challenges. This chapter provides a critical understanding of the social forces, regulations, and discourses around today’s sports under the influence of gambling. The chapter starts with a brief historical overview of the fluctuating relationship between sports and gambling. It outlines how the financial-ethical trade-offs have governed the relationship between sports and gambling and continue to raise integrity and public health issues. Narrowing the focus to the issue of match-fixing, the chapter also reviews diverse approaches adopted: economic, investigative-journalistic, sociocultural, and institutional perspectives. Finally, it discusses how the ongoing policy discourses of sport integrity constitute potential debates surrounding the ethical codes of conduct in sport.
This is a book chapter that has been published by Oxford University Press in the book The Oxford Handbook of Sport and Society edited by Lawrence A. Wenner, published in 2022. Reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780197519011.013.51