Sports betting and corruption: How to preserve the - SportAccord

Sports betting and corruption: How to preserve the integrity of sport
order to provide their sport with the appropriate tools, and secondly those at grassroots level, athletes
and referees, who are the preferred targets of the criminals.
More generally, the issue arises of the proper governance of sports organisations. This is a vital
precondition for preserving the values of sport. The shaky situation of some clubs, or some athletes,
facilitates penetration by criminal elements. In parallel and a contrario, the massive injection of funds
in some sports and generally the increased weight of short-term financial thinking are vehicles for
risks to the integrity of sport 94 .
Factoring risk into regulations
It is important that sporting organisations incorporate in their regulations a prohibition against sports
betting by participants who are directly involved in competitions and championships. This category of
participants is broad, it includes all accredited individuals, athletes, judges and referees, employees
and officials of sporting organisations, members of the organisation responsible for the competition
and the entourages of all those people mentioned above 95 .
These regulations must factor in two risks: on the one hand that of conflicts of interest when
participants are in possession of privileged information, and on the other that of corruption in sport
that directly concerns seeking to influence a match.
� The risk of insider information covers information whose transmission could influence a third
party to place a bet. Participants in sport are not always aware of the valuable nature of this
information, which includes, for example, intelligence on the physical and mental state of
players, or on strategies being considered by athletes management. This is all information that
should not be publicly communicated. Participants in sport must be made fully aware of the
reprehensible nature of the act of transmitting information to third parties or profiting from it
themselves by betting on matches.
� The risk of corruption in sport relates more directly to the manipulation of a result and the fact
of having an attitude intended to influence the course or the result of a sporting event with the
aim of deriving profit from it for oneself or a third party.
A common approach by the sporting movement could be based on the following principles 96 :
94 The report by the FATF (Financial Action Task Force) published in 2009 entitled Money Laundering Through the Football
Sector shows the general weaknesses of the football sector in respect of governance, which make it vulnerable to criminal
activities, certainly money-laundering, but also people- and drug-trafficking, corruption and tax fraud. (http://www.fatfgafi.org/dataoecd/7/41/43216572.pdf)
95 According to the definition used in the common standards of SportAccord
(http://www.sportaccord.com/multimedia/docs/2011/08/Model_Rules_on_Sports_Integrity_in_Relation_to_Sports_Bettin
g.pdf). SportAccord is an association grouping together 100 international sports federations and its mission is to promote
their common interests and share best practice in respect of regulating sport.
96 Code of Conduct on Sports Betting Integrity for Athletes and Officials, SportAccord.
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