Quality of Sportsmanship and Viewer Interest
For fans watching sports is all about rooting for the best player or team. When doping is exposed in sports how does it change how viewers feel? A study done by Daniel K. Walco revealed that people viewed using PEDs in sports is very wrong (Walton, 2017). He created a fictional story about a man named Joe, an armature weightlifter using steroids for the first time. These drugs would give Joe an apparent advantage over other in a competitive situation. Using a 1-9 scale 9 being very wrong and 1 being not wrong at all participants were asked to rate Joe’s use of PEDs level of unethicality. Results showed that the average answer was 8. A Norwegian research marketing team (Norfakta Markedsanalyse) collected data on what supplements are acceptable in sports (925 interviews were conducted)
Table 1 reveals that most people are more accepting of food supplements
for health to help with injury recovery but a drastic change in opinion
occurs when banned/ illegal PEDs are discussed
(Solberg et al., 2010).