Living Ethics Journal

By Vedh Ramesh.

Corruption in the sports industry has been an issue since time immemorial. Evidence has been found of bribery in wrestling competitions in Ancient Greece two millennia ago,¹ and allegations of bribery and match-fixing plagued the original Olympic Games.² More recently, a UNODC report estimated the illegal sports betting market to be between US$340 billion and US$1.7 trillion, compared to the legal market at only US$40 billion.³ Illegal betting is often linked to organized crime, with a UNODC report stating that “[t]he involvement of organized crime in sport is widespread… [i]t is linked to… illegal betting, money-laundering, human trafficking and migrant smuggling….”⁴ Several sports, teams, and leagues across the globe have been rocked by illegal betting scandals — the Indian Premiere League (a cricket league with an estimated viewership of almost half a billion yearly⁵) went so far as to suspend a quarter of their teams for alleged involvement in an illegal betting scandal.⁶ Corruption in the sports industry has far-reaching consequences that not only affect viewers, but also is a tool for money laundering and organized crime. 

One possible solution to solve this issue would be to enforce laws against corruption and bribery. Many countries already have laws in place against corruption and bribery — for example, the United Nations Convention against Corruption was signed by 189 countries and is legally binding — but unfortunately, those laws are not always enforced. Enforcing laws against corruption ensure that people engaging in corruption are held accountable, acts as a deterrent, and with less people taking part in corrupt practices, corruption in the sports industry as a whole would decrease.⁷ The difficulty in effectively enacting this across borders without violating national sovereignty is recognized, and as such it is proposed that a system of sanctions on countries who have not shown an initiative to lessen their levels of corruption be enacted. While this may seem like an extreme measure, a similar system is already in place by the World Bank, which places economic sanctions on countries who continuously have high levels of corruption while not making an effort to tackle this issue.⁸ To take the same situation and apply it to corruption in the sports industry, the UNODC can recommend sanctioning countries from sport to the governing authority of said sport that that country is shown to continuously engage in prohibitive levels of corruption. 

Another possible solution to solve the plague of corruption in the sports industry would be to encourage nations to develop comprehensive anti-corruption laws specifically tailored to sport, and which also promote transparency across organizations. An example of this would be for a country to enact specific penalties for match fixing, which may not be covered under other anti-corruption laws. Another way to counteract match fixing is to ensure that players have little incentive to accept bribes — for example, an investigation by the Chinese Football Association showed that “Chinese footballers were prone to accepting bribes because their salaries were often painfully low and delayed for months”⁹ — with their salaries being as low as US$241 per month. This would entail ensuring that players in lower-level leagues get paid on time and have those wages meet the minimum wage in that country. The incentive for governments to ensure this would be that match fixing is often used as a tool to launder black money, so it is in the countries’ best interest to curb match fixing and corruption in the sports industry since by decreasing the levels of those, money laundering by organized crime is also curtailed. This would help alleviate any concerns foreign investors have about investing in that country, and thus help the country’s economy grow as well. Any concern about this not being under the jurisdiction of a concerned country is alleviated by the fact that many countries already have a ministry/department in charge of sports or related items. Passing legislation ensuring that all lower-level sports leagues pay their players on time and setting a minimum wage would greatly help in alleviating this issue. 

1 — “The Fix Was in for Ancient Wrestling Match.” Discovery News, 14 Apr. 2014, https://web.archive.org/web/20140420215008/http://news.discovery.com/history/archaeology/the-fix-was-in-for-ancient-wrestling-match-140417.htm. 

2 —  Huggins, M. “[PDF] Match-Fixing: A Historical Perspective: Semantic Scholar.” The International Journal of the History of Sport, 1 Jan. 1970, https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Match-Fixing%3A-A-Historical-Perspective-Huggins/7f4a5b8897382740d7218f4c14dc7ce6cd25d7ab. 

3 — Bittenbender, Steve. “UN Report Indicates Billions Wagered and Laundered through Illegal Sports Betting.” Casino.org, 13 Dec. 2021, https://www.casino.org/news/un-report-indicates-billions-wagered-and-laundered-through-illegal-sports-betting/. 

4 — “Global Report on Corruption in Sport – Unodc.org.” United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, United Nations, https://www.unodc.org/res/safeguardingsport/grcs/22-03221_SPORTS_CORRUPTION_2021_Exec_Summary.pdf. 

5 — “Two-Thirds of IPL Fans Watched Every Game on TV This Season, While a Third Watched Online.” YouGov, YouGov, https://business.yougov.com/content/42827-two-thirds-ipl-fans-watched-every-game-tv-season-w. 

6 — Wilson, Jack. “Why Were Chennai Super Kings Banned from the IPL? Real Reasons.” Express.co.uk, Express.co.uk, 25 Apr. 2019, https://www.express.co.uk/sport/cricket/942727/Why-Chennai-Super-Kings-banned-suspended-IPL-CSK. 

7 — “Anti-Corruption Module 5 Key Issues: Responses to Private Sector Corruption.” Anti-Corruption Module 5 Key Issues: Responses to Private Sector Corruption, United Nations, https://www.unodc.org/e4j/en/anti-corruption/module-5/key-issues/responses-to-private-sector-corruption.html. 

8 — “Sanctions System.” World Bank, https://www.worldbank.org/en/about/unit/sanctions-system. 

9 — “Match-Fixing and Bribery in Chinese Football Are Endemic, Sport Insiders Say.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 20 Feb. 2013, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/feb/20/match-fixing-bribery-chinese-football.