“RGA believes the convention is a significant development in the fight against sport and betting related fraud”

What is the Council of Europe’s Convention on match-fixing about? What does it aim to do?
The Council of Europe’s convention on match fixing essentially commits the countries that sign to raise their efforts in the fight against match-fixing in order to protect the integrity of sport. According to the convention itself, the countries are committed to fighting the manipulation of sports competitions by adopting a number of measures in the fields of prevention, criminal law and information sharing and cooperation between public authorities, sports organisations and betting operators, nationally as well as internationally. 

What are your concerns regarding their compatibility with EU law?
The convention defines “illegal” sports betting as “any sports betting activity whose type or operator is not allowed under the applicable law of the jurisdiction where the consumer is located”. Therefore there is a suggestion that operators which are licensed in one country and following rules on monitoring to control match-fixing could be declared illegal in another country and have their websites blocked. For this reason we are pleased that the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) has been asked to provide legal clarity on this particular issue.

What areas could be improved?
The RGA and the rest of the regulated betting sector honestly believes that the convention represents a positive and potentially significant development in the fight against sport and betting related fraud. However it is vitally important that the spirit of the convention is not abused and used as a vehicle to impose unnecessary restrictions which could drive consumers to unregulated markets.

Do you have any figures about illegal match fixing?
We, alongside our regulated betting industry partners published a report earlier this week called: Sports Betting Commercial and Integrity Issues that highlights while INTERPOL advises that match-fixing was “reported in over 70 countries across six continents” during the 12 months from 1 June 2012 to 31 May 2013 a significant proportion of match-fixing has no betting element and is instead focused on the unfair advancement of sporting-related matters. Underlining this position, a report on global match-fixing by Coventry University’s International Centre for the Business of Sport (CIBS) published in November 2011 found that of the proven incidents of match-fixing during 2000 and 2010, 58% of cases were examples of matches fixed to defraud betting operators (both licensed and unlicensed) with non-betting related match-fixing occurring in 42% of cases.

What are your future plans to combat match-fixing?
It has always been the RGA’s view that athletes are the first line of defense against match-fixing. Therefore, they should be educated about the rights and wrongs of betting as well as how to stay clear of match-fixers.

It has always been a cause of surprise that sports governing bodies have not championed this issue themselves but in the absence of that it is the betting industry that has provided funding. It was the absence of rules within sports federations that prompted EU Athletes Europe’s leading athletes federation, to approach the betting industry in 2010 to fund a face-to-face education program.

The importance of player education has now been acknowledged by many, and in 2012 the European Commission decided to co-fund our initiative which is based along the following guiding principles:

·         Know the rules

·         Play safe: don’t bet on your sports

·         Be careful about handling sensitive information

·         Fixing any part of an event is an absolute No-No

·         Report any approaches

·      Fixers ill be caught: All suspicious bets are monitored

In the past 18 months a total budget of €500,000 has been committed to the project targeting 15,000 young athletes in 13 countries and at least 10 different sports. Far from putting “nothing back” these education programmes, co funded by the gambling industry are supported by athlete friendly key messages on posters, wallet cards, social media and an upgraded internet site that is instantly accessible from smart phones and tablets.

I am pleased to report that the RGA, alongside our industry colleagues at the European Gaming and Betting Association (EGBA) and the European Sports Security Association (ESSA) agreed to fund the project for a further 30 month period.