With the 2012 London Summer Olympics on the horizon, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) recently began a series of closed doors meetings to discuss illegal gambling and match fixing in international sports. The growing fear is that organized crime elements, especially those in the Far East, have grown powerful and rich enough to influence the outcomes of games everywhere in the world, including in the Olympics.
Of course, they are a little late in making that revelation.
Author Declan Hill, whose excellent book The Fix: Soccer and Organized Crime revealed just how prevalent match fixing is the world over, spoke to the IOC Committee. He has become a champion for cleaning up international sport, pressing for some type of anti-corruption agency to monitor potential game fixing the world over.
As he pointed out to the IOC, “We have already seen fixing at the Olympics. We all saw the events of the 2002 Winter Olympics with its involvement of Russian mafia godfathers, the FBI and the international embarrassment of two gold medals having to be presented for one event.”
He continued, citing facts from his own book, “We have already seen that the Asian match-fixers were at the Athens Olympics in 2004. The fixers talked about it with me. The players talked about meeting them there. The players even spoke about accepting money from them for winning matches. So the fixers are already at the Olympics, and, so far, nothing effective has been done to stop them.”
“We are facing an almost unprecedented threat to the future of sports,” Hill warned.
What will the IOC do? With this summit, they appear to be making steps in the proper direction. IOC President Jacques Rogge brought together a panel of experts in this field, including members of the gambling community and Interpol, to discuss what can be done to stem the tide of game fixing.
Rogge realizes he needs the help of many governments to create such an international body, but it is possible. A similar entity—the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA)—was created to address the problem of performance-enhancing drugs in sports. While it has not been a complete success, WADA has clearly been beneficial in helping to clean up international sporting competitions.
The biggest hurdle to clear in creating such an entity is funding. Rogge would like to see legal gambling establishments pitch in their “fair share” to help keep these sports clean. He also would expect the governing bodies for each sport to chip in for the cause.
Despite these efforts, no type of sporting anti-corruption body will likely be instituted prior to the 2012 Summer Olympics.
The question remains, with match and game fixing occurring on a seemingly grand scale internationally, how much is occurring in the United States today? Is there the proper oversight within leagues like the NFL and NBA to curtail possible game fixing or point shaving scandals? If the gamblers and mafia members based in the Far East can influence games in Europe, what’s to prevent them from doing the same in North America?
It’s interesting to note that according to an ESPN.com article, while government officials from Australia, Britain, China, France, Germany and Italy were slated to attend these meetings, no representative from the United States was present.
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