ICSS and Sorbonne release match-fixing report

The report is the result of a two-year long cooperation between the Sorbonne University in Paris, France and the Qatar-based International Centre for Sport Security (ICSS), during which a total of more than 80 researchers and experts have been contributing to the report entitled 'Fighting against the Manipulation of Sports Competitions'.

According to the press release, the joint project initially set out to map the different forms of sports corruption and to provide a set of recommendations that sports’ stakeholders could use in their work against match-fixing. Match-fixing is an area whose recent developments are worrying, says the press release, with 300 to 700 sports events suspected of being fixed each year since 2010.

The report estimates that the yearly amount of bets is between 200 and 500 billion euro and that up to 80% of this amount is placed on illegal bets. The report also assesses that organised crime launder up to 140 billion dollars each year through sporting bets.

Although states are beginning to understand the scale of this threat, their tools to fight it vary a lot from nation to nation. But according to the report, it should be possible “to establish a classification of the countries according to their policy on sport integrity”, and “to measure their degree of implication and their responsiveness in the face of this scourge”.

The three most important recommendations to be found in the report are, according to Laurent Vidal, Director of the Sorbonne-ICSS Research Programme on Ethics and Sport Security:

• The urgent need for an effective cooperation between all stakeholders without ulterior motives
• The introduction of a subtle balance between the protection of public order, sport autonomy and the functioning of the markets of sports bets and sports spectacles
• An uncompromising fight against organised crime and illegal bets