Football matches are fixed on a regular basis by criminals, an EU law enforcement official told Play the Game this morning, because for them it makes economic sense. While the rewards are often great for the fixers, Nick Garlick, a Senior Specialist at Europol’s Organised Crime Networks, said that a broad network of agents and middle men help shield them from the law.

Match-fixing is the "most serious threat to sport as we know it today," former Interpol match-fixing investigator Chris Eaton told the Play the Game conference.

When professor Gerhard Treutlein from Heidelberg University wants to get young people to discuss doping and the rights of athletes, he tells a true and quite disturbing story from the 1970s in West Germany.

“You can deliver the best test on earth, and the system will turn it into complete nonsense in three years,” a German doping expert told the Play the Game conference this evening.

“As you will understand and as this week will show, the noise of democracy has not yet reached every corner of international sport. Nevertheless, I insist that the situation has changed fundamentally over the past years. It is now legitimate to ask for democracy, transparency and freedom of expression, such as Play the Game has done since 1997.”

At Play the Game 2013, taking place in Aarhus 28-31 October, former professional footballer, Croatian Mario Čižmek told his personal tale of how he was driven to fix matches while he was playing in the Croatian first league. Below you will find his speech.

Mario Čižmek knows his English is not very good. Regardless, he struggles through a conference presentation in English about something he is deeply ashamed about, and he does it in front of a big international audience.

This is the full opening statement by Jens Sejer Andersen, international director of Play the Game, from the opening session of Play the Game 2013, taking place in Aarhus, Denmark on 28-31 October 2013.