Knowledge bank: Sports federations need to consider ethical guidelines and other precautionary measures against an escalating culture of match fixing. Otherwise match fixing will replace doping as the biggest threat to the credibility of sport in a few years.

So argues Henrik H. Brandt, director of the Danish Institute for Sports Studies (idan.dk) and in this article he provides an overview of a number of recent match fixing scandals.

At Play the Game 2005 you will get a rare first-hand account from a top athlete on why she took performance enhancing drugs. The athlete is Kelli White, former World Champion sprinter, who was felled in the BALCO scandal and is now serving a two year ban from competition.

When it comes to Beijing 2008, China’s human rights record is not the only thing worth talking about. At Play the Game 2005, the debate broadens its scope from human rights to including the Chinese concept of humanistic Olympics and how China might change our idea of Olympism.

A floating Olympic Stadium is not only a technical possibility but also a necessity if the world wants to live up to the ethos embodied in the Olympic Charter, argues a team of researchers from Technion at Israel Institute of Technology.

ATP, the governing body of the men's professional tennis circuit, has covered up a major doping scandal involving seven positive doping tests, claim Swedish tennis journalists, Jonas Arnesen and Patrik Cederlund, and former tennis star, Magnus Norman, in a new book "Tennis off the record". The book also gives other examples of how professional tennis pays only lipservice to its own doping policy.

Knowledge bank: The popular perception is that the same clubs from each country compete every year as cash from the Champions League fuels greater domination of domestic European competitions by a handful of clubs. Yet research shows this is not the case in Switzerland, Sweden, France or even Germany, where a variety of different clubs regularly enter and are competitive in the Champions League.

Knowledge bank: Europe’s minor nations can breathe a sigh of relief as doomsday has been temporarily averted. At the April 2005 congress in Tallin, UEFA changed procedures for replacing President Lennart Johansson. This delayed Franz Beckenbauer’s seemingly inevitable advance to European football’s top job with his suggestions for preliminary rounds before international qualifying tournaments.

Knowledge bank: The breakaway republic of Northern Cyprus is set to host the first ever world cup for nations that don't exist. Recognised only by Turkey, which invaded the Mediterranean island in 1974, Northern Cyprus will host the 16-team Viva World Cup in November 2006.