Sports betting and corruption: How to preserve the - SportAccord

Integration of resources
Sports betting and corruption: How to preserve the integrity of sport
� Coordination within a unit dedicated to combating fraud in sport attached to the international
federation.
� Establishment of a network of points of contact (sports betting integrity officers) responsible
for coordinating action, relaying information within their organisation and linking up with the
public authorities.
� Establishment of protocols to follow in the event of an approach or suspicion, both within the
sports organisation and in conjunction with the authorities.
It is vital - a prerequisite - that the sports movement formally acknowledges the major, pernicious and
diffuse nature of the threat. Sports organisations must therefore make combating corruption in sport a
priority objective and a key stone of governance.
This prerequisite leads to one overriding recommendation
Establishment of a “corruption in sport monitoring centre” common to all sports. A database
could be centralised at international federation level to gather together all information that might
be useful to sports organisations on corruption in sport linked with betting. As time goes on, the
monitoring centre will enable the concentration of information on the progressive integration of
risk by the various sporting organisations according to discipline and type of organisation
(national federations, leagues, athletes associations etc.).
As with doping, where factoring in the risk has made it possible to access aggregated data on its
scale and scope, this monitoring centre will in the course of time provide access to quantitative
data for suspicious cases and disciplinary/criminal proceedings instituted within the different
sports organisations and countries. Its competence will be strictly limited to aggregating factual
data (including sensitive data), which will be collected by dedicated structures or integrity
officers within the sports movement. It will cover a number of fields: inventorying instances of
corruption across all sports, sharing experience between disciplines, changes in legislation in
countries (regulation of sports betting and details of criminal proceedings in countries).
This monitoring centre will serve as a think tank on the opportunity for creating an agency for the
integrity of sport , in the image of that recommended by the Auconie Report (see above), which
will have formal competence and the power of constraint and sanction over the sports movement.
While the creation of such an agency would seem premature at the moment, establishing a
corruption in sport monitoring centre would enable an appreciation of the feasibility and added
value of such a structure.
83