Corruption and Sport (960M9)

15 credits, Level 7 (Masters)

Spring teaching

All sports are now faced with the challenge of dealing with potentially corrupt participants (understood in the widest sense). These can be:

• players actively participating
• administrators organising sporting competitions
• third parties trying to use sport for a wide range of other reasons.

Given the global nature of the business of sport and given the huge sums of money that are now involved, serious thought needs to be given to how best to counteract attempts to undermine sporting competition via corrupt practices. Addressing four key themes, this module:

• outlines the different forms that corruption in the context of sport can take
• considers theoretical approaches suitable for understanding the drivers of corrupt practice in sport
• unpacks how a number of sports have tried to react to the challenge of dealing with corruption, comparing and contrasting their approaches
• evaluates the success of initiatives to limit the impact of corruption on sport.

You’ll finish the module with a sound understanding of how corruption and sport interact. You’ll also be able to critique attempts to tackle corruption in a variety of sporting contexts.

Contact hours and workload

This module is approximately 150 hours of work. This breaks down into about 22 hours of contact time and about 128 hours of independent study. The University may make minor variations to the contact hours for operational reasons, including timetabling requirements.

We regularly review our modules to incorporate student feedback, staff expertise, as well as the latest research and teaching methodology. We’re planning to run these modules in the academic year 2023/24. However, there may be changes to these modules in response to COVID-19, staff availability, student demand or updates to our curriculum. We’ll make sure to let our applicants know of material changes to modules at the earliest opportunity.