Sports betting and corruption: How to preserve the - SportAccord

Sports betting and corruption: How to preserve the integrity of sport
For each of these categories the analysis will endeavour to study:
� The specific methods of corruption
� The people involved
� The manner in which the fraud was perpetrated on the sports betting market
� The legal, economic and cultural conditions that facilitate criminal dynamics
The deliberations will be illustrated by iconic cases of corruption. Scandals have multiplied in recent
years and encompass all disciplines, all levels of sport and a wide number of countries. These highprofile
cases provide the information needed to gain a better understanding of the strategies and
mechanisms at work, and the interests of the corruptors. This information has been supplemented by a
substantial number of interviews by the research team, which have helped to refine the analysis of the
criminal s behaviour.
1. Fraud in sport at grassroots level: the first level of corruption
All cases of corruption in sport involve the falsification of a result or aspect of the game at a given
moment. The athlete (or referee) is therefore the first cog in the wheel of corruption. It is their action
(or conversely, their inertia) that is likely to falsify the course of an event and be the substance of the
fraud.
Integrity is the very essence of modern sport. The beauty of competition lies in the uncertainty of the
result, the absolute chance that enables the smallest team to overcome the largest, the lowest-ranked
athlete to beat the favourite. On any sports field, competition brings together athletes who, despite
their different intrinsic qualities, share the same goal of victory. The chance inherent in any sporting
event explains the popularity of sport, and the emotions aroused when athletes win or lose. Rigging an
event deceives the onlookers, and gives them an illusion of uncertainty when the result of the
encounter is already decided. And although some competitions are attentively followed by a large
number of viewers, there are multiple possibilities for athletes nowadays to deceive their audience.
How is it possible to rig a football game?
How is it possible nowadays to rig a football game without attracting the attention of the multitude of
viewers who carefully observe all aspects of the game?
It is obviously not possible to apply scientific rules to describe the behaviour of cheating players.
Recent history and admitted instances of match fixing show that everyone involved in a game may be
concerned: some cases involve both teams in their entirety, sometimes a single team or merely one or
more players, or the match officials, or sometimes a member of the sports management, who may drug
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