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Why every major sporting event needs an anti-corruption policy. By Louis Weston
Where there is brass there is muck and in sport there is a great deal of brass.
The cost to the Qataris of putting on the 2022 Fifa World Cup is estimated at $220 billion, the betting markets generated $35 billion and FIFA’s revenues for the rights for that football tournament were $6.4 billion – plenty enough to fund its FIFA Peace Prize.
Even more modest competitions require significant funding. The next Commonwealth Games was to be in Victoria but was cancelled when costs headed above £3 billion, and Glasgow 2026 is a stripped back version: up to £150 million of savings have been made by having no infrastructure construction, no athletes’ village, fewer sports and a shorter opening ceremony.
The sums at stake in the awarding of games and events, then to be dispersed, and the significant rewards won or lost in competitions attract not only spectators and participants but also corruption in all its many forms at every turn.
Sport events are particularly vulnerable to corruption during (at least) these three stages:
Games and events are awarded to a host city/country in a competition where pitches are made to an awarding body. Sport’s vulnerability arises because customarily governing bodies have a ‘closed’ voting system for the award of events under a process where putative hosts are expected to pitch privately, following months of diplomacy and courting of votes, to award committees. Allegations against erstwhile FIFA Vice President Jack Warner show what may go wrong. He has recently brought an end to criminal proceedings in the USA by avoiding extradition from Trinidad. Warner is alleged to have accepted bribes in connection with the award of the World Cups in 2018 and 2022, $5 million for his support of Russia and $2 million to support Qatar. All his voting took place in a closed private ballot, one in which England’s rival pitch – involving the stardust of David Beckham, the then Duke of Cambridge and David Cameron – secured only two votes in the first round.
Once awarded, the event requires construction works, promotion contracts and grants of media rights. Long after the athletes left Tokyo following the 2020 Summer Olympic Games, criminal cases moved through the Japanese courts with some officers of the organising committee accused of involvement in the award of over $300 million in rigged contracts. Rio’s 2016 Summer Olympics produced an unviable athletes’ village, and the long running ‘FIFA-Gate’ corruption scandal involved media rights sales with alleged bribery in bidding processes. The relatively opaque corporate governance structures in sport make it highly susceptible to such abuses.
Once under way, contests within the event can become the target of match manipulation by participants and referees. The fact that bets can be placed against a person winning and in-play – both in legal and illegal betting markets – has allowed corruption activity in sport to rise exponentially because betting rewards are more than athletes may ever earn. The International Cricket Council has found itself busy addressing match fixing in the Indian Premier League, the International Tennis Integrity Agency has tackled corrupt networks among players who fix matches and umpires who delay entering scores into betting companies’ data sets to allow bets to be placed pitch-side before the outcomes are registered. Sports from horseracing to badminton, snooker to darts and table tennis have teams dedicated to tackling integrity in performance of the sport both in match-fixing and anti-doping. Doping is a species of corruption with London 2012, the Summer Olympics, having suffered 73 anti-doping violations, and the Saudi Cup 2020 seeing its initial ‘winning’ horse, Maximum Security, disqualified in 2024 for doping and the $10 million first prize reallocated.
This battery of enemies at the gate to the integrity of sporting events necessitates response from sports’ governing bodies and federations for two reasons.
First, the moral. A sport where corruption infects bidding and award is brought into disrepute and its reputation tarnished. The tragedy of bribery is that money which may serve a useful purpose – such as developing a grassroots network of sporting facilities or future accommodation and infrastructure projects – is either diverted from that purpose to the pockets of the corrupt or is met by the burden of additional taxation on the host’s populace. In the performance of a sporting event, a sport which has lost control of its integrity is no sport at all, because the essence of a sporting contest – fair competition, under rules on a level-playing field – is lost. In both cases there is a long-term loss; no sponsor, broadcaster or spectator wants to invest in a fixed contest or be associated with a fraudulent project.
Second, the legal. Domestically, the Bribery Act 2010 by its s 7 and creation of the offence of failing to prevent bribery puts at jeopardy a commercial organisation which does not have in place procedures to prevent bribery, and ss 1, 2 and 14 puts at jeopardy directors and officers who connive in the receipt or giving of bribes. A domestic organiser of a sporting event must secure a sufficient code and procedures to prevent bribery. To that end, policies are published by many of the leading sport governing bodies. The international dimension of most competitions should raise the greater concern that the USA’s wire fraud legislation is a much more powerful tool in the prosecution of bribery and corruption offences, and the long arm of the USA’s law enforcement community was demonstrated in its prosecution of FIFA officials under the wire fraud legislation around the world. Where there is the transfer of dollars or crypto on a USA-based server there is, at least the risk of, exposure to that jurisdiction.
To think about the problem is a sound starting point. Anti-bribery and corruption policies should take the pragmatic approach of appointing a person within an organisation to consider the risks to the organisation of corruption and bribery. The following steps should be considered:
Where there is brass there is muck and in sport there is a great deal of brass.
The cost to the Qataris of putting on the 2022 Fifa World Cup is estimated at $220 billion, the betting markets generated $35 billion and FIFA’s revenues for the rights for that football tournament were $6.4 billion – plenty enough to fund its FIFA Peace Prize.
Even more modest competitions require significant funding. The next Commonwealth Games was to be in Victoria but was cancelled when costs headed above £3 billion, and Glasgow 2026 is a stripped back version: up to £150 million of savings have been made by having no infrastructure construction, no athletes’ village, fewer sports and a shorter opening ceremony.
The sums at stake in the awarding of games and events, then to be dispersed, and the significant rewards won or lost in competitions attract not only spectators and participants but also corruption in all its many forms at every turn.
Sport events are particularly vulnerable to corruption during (at least) these three stages:
Games and events are awarded to a host city/country in a competition where pitches are made to an awarding body. Sport’s vulnerability arises because customarily governing bodies have a ‘closed’ voting system for the award of events under a process where putative hosts are expected to pitch privately, following months of diplomacy and courting of votes, to award committees. Allegations against erstwhile FIFA Vice President Jack Warner show what may go wrong. He has recently brought an end to criminal proceedings in the USA by avoiding extradition from Trinidad. Warner is alleged to have accepted bribes in connection with the award of the World Cups in 2018 and 2022, $5 million for his support of Russia and $2 million to support Qatar. All his voting took place in a closed private ballot, one in which England’s rival pitch – involving the stardust of David Beckham, the then Duke of Cambridge and David Cameron – secured only two votes in the first round.
Once awarded, the event requires construction works, promotion contracts and grants of media rights. Long after the athletes left Tokyo following the 2020 Summer Olympic Games, criminal cases moved through the Japanese courts with some officers of the organising committee accused of involvement in the award of over $300 million in rigged contracts. Rio’s 2016 Summer Olympics produced an unviable athletes’ village, and the long running ‘FIFA-Gate’ corruption scandal involved media rights sales with alleged bribery in bidding processes. The relatively opaque corporate governance structures in sport make it highly susceptible to such abuses.
Once under way, contests within the event can become the target of match manipulation by participants and referees. The fact that bets can be placed against a person winning and in-play – both in legal and illegal betting markets – has allowed corruption activity in sport to rise exponentially because betting rewards are more than athletes may ever earn. The International Cricket Council has found itself busy addressing match fixing in the Indian Premier League, the International Tennis Integrity Agency has tackled corrupt networks among players who fix matches and umpires who delay entering scores into betting companies’ data sets to allow bets to be placed pitch-side before the outcomes are registered. Sports from horseracing to badminton, snooker to darts and table tennis have teams dedicated to tackling integrity in performance of the sport both in match-fixing and anti-doping. Doping is a species of corruption with London 2012, the Summer Olympics, having suffered 73 anti-doping violations, and the Saudi Cup 2020 seeing its initial ‘winning’ horse, Maximum Security, disqualified in 2024 for doping and the $10 million first prize reallocated.
This battery of enemies at the gate to the integrity of sporting events necessitates response from sports’ governing bodies and federations for two reasons.
First, the moral. A sport where corruption infects bidding and award is brought into disrepute and its reputation tarnished. The tragedy of bribery is that money which may serve a useful purpose – such as developing a grassroots network of sporting facilities or future accommodation and infrastructure projects – is either diverted from that purpose to the pockets of the corrupt or is met by the burden of additional taxation on the host’s populace. In the performance of a sporting event, a sport which has lost control of its integrity is no sport at all, because the essence of a sporting contest – fair competition, under rules on a level-playing field – is lost. In both cases there is a long-term loss; no sponsor, broadcaster or spectator wants to invest in a fixed contest or be associated with a fraudulent project.
Second, the legal. Domestically, the Bribery Act 2010 by its s 7 and creation of the offence of failing to prevent bribery puts at jeopardy a commercial organisation which does not have in place procedures to prevent bribery, and ss 1, 2 and 14 puts at jeopardy directors and officers who connive in the receipt or giving of bribes. A domestic organiser of a sporting event must secure a sufficient code and procedures to prevent bribery. To that end, policies are published by many of the leading sport governing bodies. The international dimension of most competitions should raise the greater concern that the USA’s wire fraud legislation is a much more powerful tool in the prosecution of bribery and corruption offences, and the long arm of the USA’s law enforcement community was demonstrated in its prosecution of FIFA officials under the wire fraud legislation around the world. Where there is the transfer of dollars or crypto on a USA-based server there is, at least the risk of, exposure to that jurisdiction.
To think about the problem is a sound starting point. Anti-bribery and corruption policies should take the pragmatic approach of appointing a person within an organisation to consider the risks to the organisation of corruption and bribery. The following steps should be considered:
Why every major sporting event needs an anti-corruption policy. By Louis Weston
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