Lausanne, 11 January 2012 – Today, SportAccord kicks off its Global Programme to Stop Match-fixing in Sport at http://integrity.sportaccord.com.
The Programme aims to raise awareness about what is responsible sports betting behaviour and to help athletes and officials from having match-fixing destroy their careers and sports.
Declan featured in “Olympics the target of match fixers” from The Australian newspaper.
Declan Hill mentioned in the Wall Street Journal
“High Tide: From Mob Money Laundering To A UK Phone-Hacking Scandal Arrest”
Ai miei amici italiani e colleghi – circa l’attuale scandalo delle partite truccate con Doni e dei fixer asiatici.
Ve l’avevo detto. Molti di voi non volevano ascoltare quando vi ho raccontato il sistema moderno di truccare partite, tre anni fa.
Ora, ecco un’altra previsione a meno che non vi siano cambiamenti significativi nello sport italiano – sarà ancora peggio.
Dr. Declan Hill
My old supervisor, the great Diego Gambetta, once said, ‘Every gentleman needs to know statistics.’ Like much of my education I did not understand it at the time. However, I was fortunate enough to also be mentored in statistics by Johann Lambsdorff (the professor who founded Transparency International’s indexed list of perceived corrupt countries) and the brilliant Anthony Heath. Thanks to them and a number of other hard-working statistical teachers, I eventually understood Diego’s statement. It was not some mark of class attainment, like learning to pass the port or tie a bowtie, but rather it is the idea that every informed citizen needs to have numerical literacy. As the cult of numbers grows in our societies with statistics used to justify all kinds of claims, we all have to have the ability to discern the truth from the malarkey.
I thought with gratitude about my teachers and all of their painstaking efforts, when I was reading recently one of the most shoddy and ill-conceived pieces of research every to waste trees. You may have seen the report or the newspaper articles around it. Coventry University researchers have examined doping in sport and match-fixing. They compiled a ‘database’ (really a long list) of ‘cases’ of match-fixing and doping in sports. They compared the two and discovered that in their lists doping cases out-number fixing cases by approximately 96% to 3%. Then they claim that this research shows that that doping is a far more serious problem in sport than match-fixing.
A couple of points. First, I am quite prepared to believe that in certain sports (weight-lifting) and in certain countries (United States) their claims may be true. I am also willing to believe that in certain sports (football) and in certain countries (Thailand) that the opposite may be true. Two, we need good, credible research into sports corruption, whether it is doping or fixing. Sadly the Coventry report is neither good, nor credible. The researchers commit a number of errors that would make most high-school statisticians blush.
I will explain in a moment, how such a paper laden with elementary mistakes came to be published, but first a brief explanation of what is wrong with the report.
1) The mostly elementary error is that their database is incomplete. They miss a fair number of corruption cases. One example (but there are others) shows that they have neglected the China case. (They do mention one involving the corruption conviction of one of the highest-ranked FIFA referees in China, but that is merely a small indication of the problems in that country.) The case I am referring to is a very large and very important investigation where match-fixing in the Chinese football league was so bad – that the government stepped in declaring that there were so many corrupted matches that the sport had become ‘a national embarrassment’’. The Chinese police eventually arrested over 200 players, coaches, referees, team owners and league officials (including the President of the Chinese League). These kinds of numbers of both games and high-profile people indicate that this is not a unique case, but rather a culture of corruption that had entrenched itself in a particular sport in a particular country. Yet this example and a number of similar ones are not mentioned in the Coventry Report.
2) There is another significant data collection problem. There is a dedicated unit designed to identify drug cheats in sport – the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). The agency has a budget of tens-of –millions-of-dollars, a large staff and significant buy-in from many national governments and sports agencies (reluctant in some cases, but it is there). It has been in place for ten-years, so there is a well-developed path to identifying drug cheats in sport. On the other hand, there is no similar agency to fight against fixing in sport. If there were a similar agency, we could reasonably expect to see an increase in the number of cases of corruption reported.
3) Academics call it ‘sample bias’. This is where the collection of the data is unwittingly slanted in a particular way. So the authors declare that there is less match-fixing in Asia then in Europe. They make this astounding claim because there are fewer reports about fixing in Asia than in Europe. The real problem is that match-fixing is so routine that, in many Asian countries, it does not make it into international media. For example, there have been police investigations in Singapore and Malaysia of even high school sports events being fixed. Yet because there are such high-levels of corruption, these events are not widely-reported outside of those countries.
4) The authors do not seem to have thought of the very simple question – ‘How do you measure the prevalence of a deviant act?’ This is a very significant issue in statistics. In layman’s terms, if you study the rate of rape provided by the United Nations, the numbers would indicate that relatively peaceable Sweden has a far higher incidence of sexual assault than Liberia where there have been widespread war crimes and sexual repression. Of course, this is not true. What these statistics actually indicate is the reported rate of sexual assault. Reported is not actual and it can vary widely between countries – depending on social norms and police actions.
We can reasonably expect that match-fixing will be significantly under-reported, as in many jurisdictions there is no one looking for it and no system to detect it. Match-fixing can be an illegal activity connected to violent, criminal gangs. This factor gives participants a very strong motivation for not reporting match fixing.
5)I could go on but I will skip to the most serious error – the design of the survey itself. I think they may be comparing apples with oranges. Their list of corruption ‘cases’ is too vague. It makes no attempt to say how many fixed matches or corrupt individuals were involved in each of their ‘cases’. So in their list of fixing ‘cases’ there is one listed as ‘Europe’ – this is actually, a fourteen-month police investigation and a number of court trials by the superb Organized Crime Task Force in Bochum, Germany. Their work exposed approximately two-hundred-and-fifty fixed matches, involving hundreds of players, referees and club officials in nine different countries across Europe. In the Coventry database, all those matches and all those people are represented as only one ‘case’, rather than hundreds of individual examples of corruption. They repeat this mistake in a number of their other ‘cases’.
Because they do not list their sources, it is unclear if in their list of doping ‘cases’ they are speaking about individual athletes caught cheating. If this is so, then it is pure and simple inaccurate measurement. Even if it is not, how do you accurately contrast the number of events that may have been corrupted by doping or fixing – is all of the Tour de France implicated if one cyclist is caught or merely the winner? Is the Balco case equivalent to Bochum? If so, then how is it measured? By the number of corrupted athletes involved? None of these rudimentary questions seem to have been asked and the report is severely weakened by this lack of critical analysis.
6) Finally, the Coventry University report is not actually an academic paper. If it were, it would have to go through a peer review. There are few academic statistical commentators who would be as gentle in their criticism as I have been.
Why all the scorn for a relatively obscure piece of research? (First, full disclosure, I know the authors and am deeply disappointed that they chose to bring out such work). The reason that I take the time to analyse what I believe to be worthless nonsense is because of who funded it.
The entire report was brought out with the sponsorship of the European private gambling industry. To their credit, both the authors and gambling executives have disclosed this fact. However, the report is so full of elementary mistakes that it is an instant credibility-destroyer.
I know the European private gambling industry. I have many friends, sources and contacts there. Most of them are thoroughly decent people. However, I am genuinely perplexed by the attitude of some of their lobbyists. Why don’t they just state the obvious loudly, clearly and repeatedly – ‘We love sports, we hate fixing’. This is a golden opportunity for the European private bookmaking industry to point out that their own companies suffer if matches are fixed. At times the industry does do this, but it is often drowned out by a few of their lobbyists who go about making statements on how the incidence of fixing in sport is exaggerated. Presumably, in the future, they will use the Coventry Report to support their claims.
Contrast these efforts with all the actions and statements of the police and many sports officials (neither of whom is usually the most open when it comes to making claims about corruption): FIFA’s integrity unit claims that there are now 24 national police investigations into football corruption: around the world there have been arrests of hundreds of players, coaches, referees and sports officials: hundreds of matches are mentioned in court documents as having been fixed in Turkey, Hungary, Finland, Croatia, Greece, Italy, Germany, Belgium, Poland, Czech Republic, Malta, South Korea, Malaysia, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, and many other countries: the UEFA President Michel Platini has declared match-corruption to be the ‘number one threat’ to their sport (and all of this is in just football, it does not even mentioning the very public problems of fixing in Taiwanese Baseball, Japanese Sumo, international cricket or other sports).
So in my opinion, the Coventry Report does serve a useful purpose. It is so bad, it is so heavily supported by commercial interests outside of academia, that it is a great red-flag warning. If you are a politician or a sports official or a journalist and someone cites the research then you can immediately question their findings.
December 8, 2011: For those who missed it last night’s final round of Champions League matches featured a bizarre game between Olympique Lyonnais (OL) and Dinamo Zagreb. OL needed to win by a large margin of goals to qualify for the next round of the Champions League. They duly won the game by a score of 7 to 1. Today’s European newspapers – particularly in the Netherlands – are full of speculation about the match. The following are my comments about questions I have been asked on the match and its circumstances:
Do you have any specific knowledge about last night’s match between Olympique Lyonnais and Dinamo Zagreb?
No.
Is it perfectly reasonably for a football fan to ask whether a fix occurred at last night’s Olympique Lyonnais versus Dinamo Zagreb match?
Yes, of course. Any fair-minded person could be suspicious. The Croatian football world has had a long history of corruption. The Sapina Brothers who organized a match-fixing ring across Europe and many of their top conspirators are Croatian. The Croatian police are aware of this issue and have launched a national investigation. Twenty years ago, French football officials like Bernard Tapie and Jean-Claude Bins routinely fixed European Cup matches. Two years ago, UEFA (the organization in charge of the Champions League) the officials themesleves, claimed that up to fifty Champions League matches in the last five years may have been fixed. This is not to say that a fix did occur, but it is perfectly reasonable to be suspicious given the track record.
Would the gambling market have shown that a fix was occurring?
No. People are insinuating that a fix occurred between team officials for OL to qualify to the next round of the Champions League. I have no idea if such a thing happened. However, this type of fix has nothing to do with the gambling market and therefore would not necessarily have shown up on the market. Two, OL was the favourite to win the match therefore the markets would have been slower to pick up on a lot of money being punted for OL to win.
Could Football officials be doing more to ensure that a fix did not take place?
Yes. UEFA, for all practical purposes, still does not have a credible integrity unit. UEFA is the best football organization on the planet for taking this problem seriously. However, three years after the establishment of their integrity unit they still, largely, rely on the monitoring of the betting markets, which as I explained above, is in this case practically useless for verifying if a fix occurred. They need to get more former police officers who can walk into a player’s dressing room and instil fear in the players, before their unit will be complete.
The French Football Federation does not have an integrity unit. They need to get one into place quickly or this wonderful tournament will suffer from more doubt about its integrity.
This is the most important thing that I have written or said in some time. It is a copy of my speech from this year’s ‘Play the Game’ conference in Cologne, Germany.
I release it today, in light of the guilty verdict in the international cricket spot-fixing scandal. The three Pakistani players were not found to have cooperated with any match-fixing gang or criminals, rather they were just doing it on the side to make some spare cash. This is the way of the future, and it so profoundly worrying that no one seems to have realized the implications for sport. Read on and be frightened:
The Four Words that are the End of Sport
Ladies and gentlemen, it is a great honour to be here in Cologne. Thank you for all your kind work and hospitality [in German].
Look, Jens Seger Andersen, the genius who has organized the ‘Play the Game’ conferences for the last eleven years pleaded with me before this event began. ‘Please, Declan,’ he said, ‘Please do not give one of those long, dreary speeches that you are known for. You know your usual presentation that goes on and on. The organizers get angry. The other speakers are bored. The audience is usually comatose, if not asleep. We have to bring in oxygen to wake them up at the end.’
You know I was hurt by those words. I wrestled with them for some time, but I agreed with him. So this time, I have obeyed Jens completely. I have wrestled with the presentation until I have squeezed everything that I need to say in three, possibly four, words.
Now look, I do not say these four words lightly. Let me give you some background for those of you who do not know my work.
In 2005, a much younger man, I mean that literally and figuratively stood in front of you and spoke about the ‘Tsunami of Asian-style match-fixing’ that would hit Europe in the next few years. Many people were sceptical and thought, ‘this man cannot be speaking the truth.’ But today in 2011, we have 24 national police investigations around the world examining hundreds of different matches in Hungary, Austria, South Korea, Turkey, Italy, Greece, Malaysia, … all following the pattern that I predicted.
In 2008, with the help of Jens Seger Andersen and many other people in this room, I launched a book based on my doctoral research at the University of Oxford, that spoke about the activities of a gang that was going around the world fixing top international matches. This year, we have finally, seen some of this gang arrested in Finland, Zimbabwe and their activities exposed around the world in half-a-dozen other countries.
So now in 2011, I stand in front of you, to tell you, a new warning compressed into four simple words. Those words seem the most banal, understated thing that you will hear at this week’s conference. However, they are four words, when you think about them, when you fully go through all that they mean are the most bone-chilling, terrifying words that will be spoken in this hall.
They are four words, that show that the cancer of match-fixing is not simply here in the body of sport – it is beginning to metastasise.
They are four words that should unite and bind us all. They are four words that should make us – the good guys – put aside all our petty rivalries and competition to join together to fight for proper protection of sport. They are four words that should make us establish a properly-funded and well-organized international agency like WADA to fight corruption in sports.
They are four words that unless we do so, will kill off much of sport as we know it. Not now – not in the next five years, but soon, soon, it will come. Just as much of Asian sport has been killed off. Just as much of the sport of our great-grandparents in the 1890s was killed off.
The three words are …
‘anyone can fix’ – ‘anyone can fix’ – ‘anyone can fix’.
The fourth word is – almost. We are now living in an era when ‘almost anyone can fix.’
Let me explain.
We have entered a world that because of technology a person who wants to corrupt a football match or a tennis game or a handball tournament does not need to phone up Joe Bagofdonuts, the local organized crime gambling guy, to fix the sports event.
I feel, when describing this to a person under-25, that I am describing a medieval ritual. But fifteen years ago there were things called ‘record shops’ where you would buy ‘albums’ like large black CDs that you ‘played’ – now all that is ancient technology. You simply download specific songs that you like from the Internet.
It is the same with travel industry. We used to go to ‘travel agents’ to book tickets with cash, they would give us paper tickets. Now it is almost always done on the computer. The same phenomenon is seen in gambling. Fifteen years ago, if you wanted to bet a large sum of money on a sports event in North America or Europe, it was very difficult. You had to know the phone number of Joe Bagofdonuts or organized criminals – and he could quickly tell if there was anything fishy going on with the bets.
Now, with the choice of gambling sites in Europe – onshore / offshore – Asia, North America, the Caribbean, Gibraltar, Cyprus, using the Internet or phone – the bettors and fixers have a massive choice to hide their fixing activities. We have already heard this morning from André-Noël Chaker of the Finnish National Lottery Association that there are fifteen thousand illegal gambling sites in Europe alone.
One example, taken from the air –Fenerbahçe, the Turkish football champions who are accused of fixing 19 of their matches last season. Currently, their president and half-a-dozen club officials are in prison in Istanbul. Now I have seen some of the purportedly confidential documents of the investigation, but it is not the charges against Fenerbahçe that is concerning – it is what about all those other teams that were alleged to fix games?
Let us presume, for one moment, that those allegations are true, and if they are not there are other investigations into top teams that could serve as similar models. What happens if you were a player for any of the other half-a-dozen much weaker teams that were to play Fenerbahçe? Imagine your feelings before the match. You are excited. The people in your town are cheering you on. The match will be shown all over Turkey on television. Then someone on your team – either the players or the officials – tell you that it is fixed and that you are not to play hard. This was your chance. This was your opportunity to show the rest of the world that you can play against the best and now it is being denied to you. So what do you do? You phone your Uncle Mehmet in Lyon, France. He is a gambler. He puts some money down that Fenerbahçe will beat your team above the spread. He puts down a lot of money, as much as he can – 20,000 or 30,000 Euro. And you know what? Not a single person in the gambling market will notice. Why should they? Bets for a much stronger team to defeat a much weaker team? They are what the market expects. That is what most fixes are about, just delivering certainty. No one will notice. You and Uncle Mehmet do it once. You get some free money. And then the two of you start to realize how easy it is and what a great way it is to make money. So you start doing it again and again.
This is what is going on in leagues across Europe by players and club officials. Why do you think there are so many fixed matches in early rounds of Champions League? Because organized criminals have come to the Balkans to fix matches? Partly that is true. But partly it is because the local club officials themselves know that fixing is a good way to make money.
This is where the word – ‘almost’ – enters the picture. All you need now to fix a sports event is reasonably good access to players and referees. You can be a father, a coach, a friend, a journalist, a sports official, a guy at the bar they go to. The athletes do not have to be high-end sports stars. You can place bets on the Women’s Second Division League matches in the Netherlands. And most of those matches are played in front of a few dozen people at most.
We now have investigations of fixed matches of sixteen-year-olds playing in youth matches. I witnessed at one Asian gambling company, an under-17 game in Norway where gamblers were trying to place 250,000$ on the match. Not fixing, just gambling.
Why do I say these things?
I have been criticized from various quarters. Some people say I am too academic. Other people say I am not academic enough. Some people say I exaggerate too much. Other people say that I should make stronger statements. This is simply the way of leading a field of research, you cannot please everyone. But I do have very strong motivations for standing in front of you and trying to convince the sporting world of the seriousness of what we all face.
I say them for the smell of the cut grass on a sunny Saturday morning, when I play soccer with my friends and the jokes and camaraderie of those matches.
I say it for the man in the flat cap and coloured scarf who sat at the side of the University of Toronto versus York University football match. He smoked. He was hooked up to some sort of medical contraption and monitor. He was dying. He clearly had just a few more weeks to live in this world and he chose to spend some of it watching his beloved York University players beat their arch-rivals on penalties. And when he stood up, cigarette in hand, to cheer their victory at the end of the game. You knew his march into the dark unknown, that we will all face at some point, would be that much lighter.
I say it for the girl of thirteen who stood in front of me in an African slum, introduced to me by a friend and hero – Bob Munro – and said, ‘You don’t get it do you? All of our world is corrupt. The police are corrupt. The mafia run this place. Our schools are corrupt. Our exams are corrupt. The only place that is not corrupt is when I play on that soccer pitch. When there are 11 of us, versus 11 of them and a fair referee, and we can play hard and lose or we can play hard and win, but it is uncorrupt.’
There is not a person in this room who does not have similar stories or images that drives them in their love for sport. This is why I do it. This is why I continue to fight. Because make no mistake – there is a clear and present danger to world sports. The sports world hangs on a knife edge. Do nothing, and it will slide into a morass of half suspicions and credibility problems where one or two sports as we know them will die.
Almost all anyone of us, can fix almost any watchable sports event. It just takes a little access to the referees and players. The gambling market is open to it. Few people will notice it.
It is this factor that makes the need for anti-corruption so important in sports. We desperately need a functioning and efficient anti-corruption agency for sports established now. We desperately need a functioning and efficient education program for athletes. We desperately need proper reforms of the government to make corruption in sports illegal.
We need them now, because, ‘anyone can fix’.
Thank you.
I am not surprised to hear of the allegations that there may have been spot-fixing at Motherwell in the Scottish Premier League (Spot-fixing is where people fix certain aspects of the game, rather than match-fixing where you fix the result. In this case, a player is accused of getting himself deliberately sent off). There have been credible similar stories coming out of the lower leagues in England and Scotland for years.
What I am surprised about is that anyone in Britain has actually begun to investigate a case. In the past, neither the aggressive British press that we keep hearing so much about nor British sporting officials seem to have shown any interest in the idea of examining possible corruption in their country. This disinclination to investigate their own is in stark contrast to the rest of the footballing world — where there are no fewer than 24 national police investigations going on into match or spot fixing around the world.
We do not yet know anything about the guilt or innocence of the parties involved, but it is good to finally see some officials having the courage to investigate.
Michel Platini, head of UEFA, on match-fixing at the Council of Europe. An excellent
speech from a man who has fought hard against corruption in sport. A bit too light
on the politicians at the end, but overall good work.
EMBARGO: 28 Sept. 11.30am
Madam president,
Ministers,
Ambassadors,
Friends of football,
INTRODUCTION
As I arrived this morning at this prestigious venue, very close to the region in which I
was born, I thought about how much time has passed since I first went to school –
and took my first free kicks! It all happened in Lorraine, just a few kilometres from
where we are today in Alsace. It was a long time before I set off to discover Europe,
your Europe. It was also a long time before European football appointed me its
leader, entrusting me with finding long-term solutions for the future of football…
I am delighted to be able to tell you about these solutions today. Why? Quite simply
because your assembly and I are old friends. Old friends because your assembly
brings together ambassadors of countries that I know well, having visited each one of
them and seen, sometimes with surprise, always with enthusiasm, often with wonder,
the importance of football, the passion of your people for the beautiful game and the
pleasure your children gain from simply kicking a ball.
Although I stand before you today with a deep sense of modesty, I am also more
determined than ever. Determined, first of all, to persuade you to offer a helping hand
to the football of tomorrow. Determined, also, to involve you in a fight that we will
wage with firmness, dignity and realism. Determined, finally, to address with you
certain evils that are damaging European society precisely where it is at its most
vulnerable. These evils we must overcome are not just everyday evils: they affect the
very roots of what Pierre de Coubertin rightly called “the glorious uncertainty of
sport”.
MATCH FIXING
Ladies and gentlemen, European football is afraid. European football is afraid, and I
think I can even say that European sport as a whole is afraid…
European sport is afraid because of a match-fixing phenomenon that is developing in
connection with large-scale online betting activities. The growth of betting-related
match fixing is alarming, especially because it is a problem to which no sport and no
country is immune.
Of course, the sports movement has not been sitting idly by: there have been
targeted awareness campaigns, expensive monitoring mechanisms, disciplinary
procedures, and so on. However, necessary though they are, these initiatives do not
suffice. Especially when match fixing is orchestrated by criminal organisations.
So what about the criminal codes of European states? Well, experience here shows
that, unfortunately, the traditional concepts of money laundering, corruption and fraud
are of limited relevance. This is why some countries have established sports fraud as
a specific criminal offence, in order to breach the gap. This is the case in Italy,
Portugal, Spain, the United Kingdom, Poland and Bulgaria.
However, the criminalisation of sports fraud is far from universal. And this deficiency
is, in part, why match fixing is still going on. Its international nature aggravates the
situation further still.
This is why I believe the Council of Europe now needs to intervene. It needs to
intervene in order to encourage its member states to criminalise sports fraud and it
needs to act in order to promote the indispensable cooperation between public
authorities and sports governing bodies required in this regard. It is a question of
responsibility, a question of ethics, a question of justice.
I would also like to reaffirm UEFA’s commitment to the federations’ rights of
ownership over the competitions that they organise.
In the context of betting, this ownership right implies that online betting operators can
only offer betting services on a particular competition if they have concluded a prior
agreement with its organiser. As is already the case in France.
This approach needs to be broadened, because in practice, this ownership right
requires a contract to be drawn up between the betting operator and the competition
organiser. This contract is extremely important because it is necessary to lay down
transparency obligations and limit the aspects of the game on which bets can be
placed. In short, as I’m sure you understand, this ownership right helps to protect the
integrity of competitions in a fundamental way and complements the criminalisation
of sports fraud.
Recognition of our ownership rights and criminalisation of sports fraud… These two
principles are the basis for responsible, forceful and courageous intervention by
legislators. I also hope that your colleagues at the European Parliament, who will be
adopting an important report on online betting in a few days’ time, will take them into
account.
Ladies and gentlemen, we have reached a point at which the public authorities can
no longer evade their responsibilities. This is why I fully endorse the recommendation
that you have just approved. It is only the first step, but it is a decisive one. It is a
logical step towards the adoption of an international convention against match fixing.
It would be wonderful if this assembly could unite in order to pursue this goal – or
should I say to score this goal – this necessary goal of combating match fixing.
CONCLUSION
Friends,
You heard me say a few minutes ago that European sport is afraid. But I think I can
safely say that the Council of Europe has managed to turn this fear around and
harness the energy produced. I commend it for this.
Of course, there is still plenty for us to do. But I remain convinced that we will make
excellent progress together. My most heartfelt desire is that you support our work and
that your ambition and determination make a positive contribution to the healthy
development of European sport.
Ladies and gentlemen, I am counting on you for today… And for the future.
Thank you.
END
International sports, particularly football, is facing an unprecedented wave of corruption and match-fixing. At the same time, we have witnessed FIFA executive after FIFA executive being tarnished with corruption. So what can you as an ordinary football fan do to save the sport?
First, please do not bother with the carefully-worded petitions to sports officials. Please do not bother with the appeals to the media. Please do not bother with campaigns for politicians.
The sports officials will ignore your petitions. The journalists will write, if you are lucky, brief articles about your appeal and then go back to their usual reports of tactics, athletes’ hamstrings or morale ‘before the big game’. The politicians largely cannot change anything in the sports world, so will be unable to help you.
However, there is one, effective way of cleaning up international sports. A world-wide boycott of sponsors who tolerate corruption in sports organizations.
In brief, if you want to clean up international football, then buy Puma.
I want to be clear, I have nothing against Adidas. They are a reputable company that makes very good sports clothes and shoes. However, FIFA as it is currently constituted is an organization sponsored and supported by Adidas. Adidas and Puma loathe each other. They have done so since the founding Dassler brothers, both living in a small German town after the second world war, had a bitter argument. The personal feud has dimmed in recent years, but Adidas and Puma are still intense competitive rivals – so write to Adidas and say something like:
Dear Adidas,
I like your products. I would like to buy them. However, I will not do so while you support FIFA as it is currently managed. I will buy Puma, your rivals. I will continue to do so until FIFA implements [rather than talking about] some effective anti-corruption reforms. Then I will consider buying your excellent products.
Yours….
Repeat this procedure for every single major sponsor of sports organizations. For example, Coca Cola supports both FIFA and the Turkish Football Federation, write to them and tell them that, reluctantly, you will buy only Pepsi. Do two things, make sure that the executives realize that you are not blaming them or their products and secondly, organize a proper and effective boycott. Get your friends to do it, use social media, write to the dozens of organizations that are trying to clean-up international sports. If one-hundred-thousand people can back Sports Illustrated’s Grant Wahl to run as President of FIFA, then one-hundred-thousand people saying they will buy Puma, drink Pepsi and not fly with the Emirates will have a massive effect.
International sport is facing an unprecedented wave of corruption. It needs people to stand up and fight for it. Will you be someone who sits on the sidelines and complains, or will you stand up to defend the sport that we all love?
