ABSTRACT
Limited academic attention has been given to the nexus between football corruption and its impact on fandom. Consequently, the purpose of this qualitative study was to better understand the experiences of current or former highly identified football fans living through this era of football match fixing. Social networking site Twitter was utilized to recruit participants from Africa, Europe, and North America – based on submissions to the site in response to a perceived fix from a high-profile March 2013 match. A total of 12 semi-structured interviews were conducted with current or former highly identified football fans in accordance with Funk and James’s (2001) PCM. Despite two-thirds of all participants feeling skepticism about the purity of football today, half the participants’ fandom remained unchanged. However, many speculated that future match fixing may diminish their fandom, while two suggested match fixing has already negatively affected their fandom.
