It is time to rank the most important sports political cases of 2011 and to offer a list of prophecies – what will be the most important cases in 2012?

Doping is a bigger threat to sport than match-fixing claims a recent report from Coventry University that Play the Game reported on last month. In this comment piece, match-fixing expert Declan Hill questions the conclusions as well as the methodology of the report that has been sponsored by the European private gambling industry.

A new report from the British Coventry University’s International Centre for the Business of Sport (CIBS) finds that corruption in sport is dominated by doping, equating to nearly 96 per cent of all cases, and that betting and non-betting related match-fixing make up less than three per cent of corruption cases.

Bringing change to the heart of sport was the slogan for the 2011 Play the Game conference. Judging from media coverage of the conference, there is little doubt that the heart of sport lies in football, and its main affliction is corruption.

Match fixing is going through the same transition as popular music sales went through in the 1990s when it went online, author Declan Hill told delegates at the 2011 Play the Game conference. Asian sport is already much destroyed, he claimed, and if allowed to continue unabated, match fixing “will destroy modern sport” across the world.

A few days before Play the Game starts in Cologne, Play the Game’s International Director, Jens Sejer Andersen, gave his opinion on how corruption in sport could be fought when on September 28th he was invited to speak at a hearing held by the Sports Committee of the German Parliament, Der Bundestag.

The Council of Europe has adopted a recommendation to its member states against match-fixing and other sorts of manipulation of sports results.