The role of governments in the fight against corruption in sport

Rigged matches and sports results have recently emerged as a new threat to sport, even worse than doping. In Lausanne alone, three conferences are being organised by the International Sports Press Association, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the IDHEAP during the first half of this year.

Last January, the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe adopted a recommendation to fight against match-fixing which will eventually become a convention between the 47 member states of this international organisation of which Switzerland is a member. The threat is not new but has become topical since the match-fixing scandals of football in Italy (2005), Germany (2009) and a dozen other European countries.

Not only football is concerned, but in principle all sports, most recently for example athletics, baseball, cricket, cycling, Formula 1, sumo and tennis. Even the Olympics have been affected, such as the boxing competition in Seoul in 1988, figure skating events in Salt Lake City in 2002 and some taekwondo fights in Athens 2004, mentioning only the documented cases.

Minor competitions have also been targeted such as an under-17 football tournament in Finland. Athletes and their entourages are the most concerned, together with referees (especially in sports where refereeing decisions may be fixed) and officials (who sometimes make controversial decisions behind closed doors).

Match-fixing is closely related to legal sports betting (which funds sports policies in many countries) or illegal betting (which is highly developed in countries like China where betting is prohibited). Effectively, mafias/criminal groups want to be sure of the result of a particular sporting bet to pocket the gains and, in the case of legal betting, launder their huge winnings.

It is not necessarily the final outcome of a competition that is rigged, but also all kinds of intervening events or statistics more or less linked to sport events. In fact, it is easier to rig expected results or matches of little significance because this attracts less attention.

The online betting has aggravated the situation because it facilitates last minute betting. The European Commission, which has greatly promoted the liberalisation of the gaming industry, is furthermore announcing a Green Paper on online betting in March this year. International sports organisations are mobilising against this scourge as it affects the very integrity of sport and thus its funding through bettors, fans, broadcasters and sponsors who expect credible competitions.

FIFA and UEFA have put in place sophisticated monitoring systems. (29,000 games were monitored by UEFA in 2010, out of which 0.7% showed abnormal betting patterns.) To monitor the Olympics, the IOC commissioned the International Sports GmbH Monitoring in Meilen (ZH). Through their member association SportAccord, international sports federations have established a unit dedicated to this problem.

The Association of European Elite Athletes has just adopted a code of conduct on betting. However proving whether a sporting event has been fixed is much harder than analysing a case of doping. For example decisions taken by a football referee are highly subjective and it is indeed easy to voluntarily miss a sporting gesture or to knowingly make a mistake.

There are no tests against fixed results equivalent to testing a urine sample for a prohibited substance in doping. Therefore, there is a need to investigate, gather evidence, cross-check statistics, obtain wiretaps etc. in order to corroborate the evidence. Governments are of course called in because of their investigative powers.

But what are the root causes of such a threat? The proliferation of mafias? The development of the internet? The decline of ethics? Without doubt, but also the economic model of elite sport itself where athletes, unless you belong to the top in certain sports, are now often the last to benefit financially from their activities after federations, organisers, media and sponsors. It is sad to say, but it may be more lucrative for an anonymous athlete to lose than to win!

Historically, this is what happened in England in the 18th century during the rise of some modern sports such as rowing, boxing and running where the results were arranged by the professional athletes that attended. In response to this the idea of amateurism developed, meaning the segregation between those who, at that time, were practising sport for a living and the gentlemen who preferred to compete with each other.

What do we do now? Some – including me since 2001 - call for the creation of an international agency against corruption in sport, like the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). But who should fund and lead such an agency?

WADA’s model of parity between governments and the sports movement is probably not the best.  A third type of actors is actually fundamental here: companies that manage the legal betting market estimated at several hundred billion Euros a year. These companies should co-finance this international agency together with the sports movement because they have, as have sports organisations, a vital interest in preserving a clean sport.

Governments are also interested in a clean sport. They have the necessary legitimate force to fight against the criminals, but they may have other financial priorities. Nonetheless they should be closely associated with the management of a future international agency which must rely on intergovernmental bodies such as FATF (Financial Action Task Force) who fight against money laundering; Interpol, which coordinates the fight against organised crime; the Council of Europe who adopted a criminal convention against corruption in 1998 (ratified by Switzerland) and who is preparing a specific convention on match fixing.

We are currently in a situation much like the doping situation in the 1980s, namely a succession of close-profile cases affecting the credibility of sport and a range of approaches lacking commonality between the various public and private stakeholders. The most insightful sports organisations have recognised the issue and are proposing ideas. Will they be followed by all the others who still feel somewhat concerned and afraid to have new constraints imposed on them?

Above all, will international sport adapt its structures and its business model in order to fight against this scourge and to better regulate the growing commercialisation of high performance sport? Switzerland, where so many transnational sports federations’ headquarters are located, can help answer these questions and play an important role in defining a new governance of sport for the 21st century.

This article first appeared in Swiss news paper Le Temps and has been translated from French and republished on www.playthegame.org with kind permission from the author.