www.
playthegame
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org
Speaking up
for a sport
that makes life
worth living
by Jens Sejer Andersen, Director, Play the Game
In the spring of 2008, a Swiss court proved that in recent
years a sum of at least 138 million Swiss franc around 87
million euros were paid as secret personal commissions,
or bribes if you like, to a limited number of sports lead-
ers in some of the most powerful sports organisations.
The money was paid out from the then big-
gest sports marketing company in the world, ISL,
which went bankrupt in 2001. Its former directors
did nothing to deny these events in court, because at
the time such bribery was not illegal in Switzerland.
On the contrary, the directors confirmed that these
payments were part of the daily business, indispensable
if ISL wanted to acquire the TV and marketing rights of
FIFA and other major players on the global sports market.
Curiously enough, in spite of being the biggest and
most well-documented corruption scandal in sport
known to this date, there has been no reaction at all
from the involved international federations and the IOC.
And although tens of thousands of journalists cover
sport every day, only a handful has bothered to ask like
German Jens Weinreich does on the following page,
"Who took the money?" For what purpose? Are they
still holding important positions in sport? And are mas-
sive bribes still "all in a day's work at the office" in sports
federations?
At the conferences of Play the Game and in this maga-
zine, questions like these abound. Not because we dislike
sport, but because we like it. We like it all too much to
see it fall victim to a culture of fraud, silence and failure to
act. We are not attacking sport, we are trying to defend it.
Sport has a huge potential for developing individu-
als, communities and nations, but its values are, like for-
mer Olympic athlete Nikki Dryden states, threatened
from the top.
Some threats are swept under the carpet by sport itself,
others not. For instance, sports organisations have rela-
tively quickly understood that match-fixing is a bullet
aiming precisely at the heart of their own business.
If sport loses its unpredictability, the uncertainty of
the outcome, everything is lost every cultural, moral,
entertainment, gambling and business value is reduced
to zero.
According to experts, illegal gambling in Asia may
account for more than 100 billion dollars in revenues. If
only a tiny percentage of these fortunes is set aside to
organise match-fixing around the world, then it is still a
huge budget for fixers.
Declan Hill received the Play the Game Award be-
cause of his ground breaking research into how fixers
operate. It is no wonder that there is a growing demand
in world sport for establishing an international body
against corruption in sport. Play the Game suggested
such an initiative almost three years ago and we wel-
come the new trend, but we would also like to add a
warning.
If the effort of an anti-corruption institution is focused
only on match-fixing, then it will miss a very important
area of interest, namely corruption in the corridors.
If this issue is overlooked, it will be the same kind
of historic injustice that we have seen in the anti-dop-
ing struggle, all its qualities untold. The battle against the
evils of sport tends to focus only on athletes, on those
who deliver the sport themselves. Their morality and
blood parameters are under daily scrutiny.
We must not forget that the athletes are only parts
of a much bigger system. These young people are sur-
rounded by trainers, managers, physiotherapists, doc-
tors, agents, advisers, organisation officials, sponsors,
journalists and media consumers grown up and
mature people who all exercise an extremely strong
influence on a young, ambitious, inexperienced and
vulnerable person.
In the fight against doping and corruption, it is high time
that we turn the spotlight to the sports leaders and
hold them accountable for the health and well-being of
the sporting system.
The world sports leaders take much pride in
claiming that they protect the health of nations, that
they bind communities together, that they bring social,
cultural and ethical values to us and most especially to
our children.
These are certainly noble tasks. But if the sports
leaders continue to focus on entertainment sport only, if
they refuse the public access to information, if they deny
taking part in public debates that are not controlled by
them, how can we trust them?
As a first step, sports officials must open them-
selves and their organisations up for the public's right to
know and readiness to debate.
Play the Game invites sports leaders and every-
body else with a heart for sport, to embark on a truly
open, unrestricted and fact-based dialogue on how we
create a better sport.
A sport that reaches out not only to those who are
rich on talent, money and power, but everybody with a
desire to play, have fun, make friends and make life worth
living.
3
2
Governance and finance
4
Who took the money? The ISL bribery system
6
World handball: Charges of ingrained corruption
7
Pound: Corruption is part of human nature
8
Ex-mobster Franzese warns against match-fixing
9
Do we need an anti-corruption agency?
10
Play the Game Award 2009 to Declan Hill
11
Match rigging - a world wide plague
12
Sports financing balancing on the edge of the abyss
14
Europe is draining Africa for football talent
15
Peace and Reconciliation - the Coventry context
16
Athletes told to shut up or go home
Anti-doping
17
Greg Lemond: The worst things happen in cycling
18
Doping enforcement: Has it gone too far?
20
Anti-doping a target for corrupters
21
The cocaine connection in sport
Sporting culture
22
The price of a medal is rising
23
The sports pyramid is history
24
Parkour, an escape route for the youth
26
Death and overproduction: the fate of Thoroughbreds?
27
Kosovo sport: Let us compete
28
Oscar Pistorius: Changing our perception of sport
Mega events
30
2018: England in the iron grip of Jack Warner
31
Misuse of mega events
32
No clear improvement of China's image after 2008
33
A Coventry Declaration to protect civil rights during events
Overview and facts
34
Overview: Find papers and video on our website
35
Play the Game in facts and figures
contents
play
the
game 2009
Play
the
Game 2009
conference magazine
© Play the Game 2009
This magazine is a journalistic summary of
events during Play the Game 2009, the sixth
world communication conference on sport
and society, which took place in Coventry,
United Kingdom, from 8-12 June 2009.
Views expressed in the articles are not
necessarily those of Play the Game.
Articles can be quoted in parts when
crediting the author and Play the Game.
For all other kinds of reproduction written
permission must be requested at
info@playthegame.org
Editor-in-chief
Jens Sejer Andersen
jens@playthegame.org
Editor
Maria Suurballe
maria@playthegame.org
Writers
Jens Sejer Andersen
Michael Herborn
Stine Alvad
Ida Relsted Kærup
Marcus Hoy
Steve Menary
Søren Bang
Henrik H. Brandt
Alan Hunter
Mario Rodrigues
Photos
All photos by press photographer
Jens Astrup (www.jensastrup.dk) if not
otherwise credited.
Photos can be downloaded from
www.playthegame.org/2009
Frontpage: : German table tennis player
Timo Boll, Credit: All Over Press
Print
Rosendahls, DK-6715 Esbjerg N
www.rosendahls.dk
Design & layout
Maria Suurballe
maria@playthegame.org
Play the Game 2009 was arranged in
cooperation with Coventry University,
United Kingdom.
More facts about
Play the Game 2009
on last page and at:
www.playthegame.org
The following magazine does not claim to paint a full picture of world
sport not even of Play the Game 2009. We have selected among articles
already written about our 2009 conference in Coventry, highlighting
issues that need urgent consideration by the global sports community.
Many valuable contributions have been sacrificed in the editorial process,
but you can find most of the conference covered on video, slides and
text at
www.playthegame.org/2009
(overview at page 34).
Play the Game would like to thank Coventry University, Advantage West
Midlands, CV One, SEN Sport and all those people in Coventry who
helped us create a successful conference. A special thanks to Professor
Simon Chadwick, Director of the university's Centre for the International
Business of Sport who was the first to suggest that Coventry hosted Play
the Game 2009