Sporting events can be a breeding ground for conspiracy theories - new research might reveal why…
Throughout the history of football World Cup tournaments, people have shared conspiracy theories about things that happened. For example, in the men’s tournament in 1998, a conspiracy theory circulated that Brazil’s star player Ronaldo had been forced to play the final match by his sponsors Nike, despite having suffered a seizure the night before and being declared unfit by his team’s medical staff. Then, at the following men’s tournament in 2002 there were conspiracy theories that the games played by South Korea against Italy and Spain had been fixed, and that South Korea had received favourable decisions from match officials, to allow them to progress to the semi-final stage because they were hosting the competition.
Off the pitch there have been conspiracy theories surrounding the fairness of the selection process for host nations, with both the Russia 2018 and Qatar 2022 bids for the men’s events being dogged by corruption rumours and stories of malpractice among FIFA officials.
At the time of writing, the 2022 men’s football World Cup competition in Qatar was underway, and there had already been conspiracy theories suggesting that both Spain and Argentina lost matches on purpose (apparently to get an easier run to the final), that Qatar had paid civilians to pose as ‘fake fans’ to demonstrate the success and popularity of the competition, and that Germany had been forced out of the tournament early as a result of the team’s outspoken views on same sex relationships (Germany failed to make it through the group stages of the competition for the second men’s World Cup in a row).
According to recent research which looked into the rise in conspiracy beliefs following the introduction of the VAR system in the 2018 men’s World Cup finals, there may be a number of explanations for the spread of conspiracy theories during sporting tournaments.
Firstly, the research revealed that conspiracy beliefs served as a short-term identity management strategy for fans following a country’s elimination from a tournament. That is, people used conspiracy theories as a way of reducing the negative emotions associated with being knocked out of the competition. The research also suggested that conspiracy beliefs could be the expression of ingroup bias towards what are considered as team-based threats, a way of rationalising past suffering, and defending the poor performance of a team. On an individual level, this research also found a more general tendency toward conspiracy theorising amongst sport fans, which may go some way to explaining why so many conspiracy theories circulate during World Cup competitions. Whatever the explanations are, it’s clear that when seemingly random or unexpected results occur during sporting events, conspiracy theories usually follow!