After the cricket gambling scandal which surrounds the test between England and Pakistan, the Secretary-General of the European Sports Security Association (ESSA) Khalid Ali, offered his views on the problem of match-fixing in sport arguing that sports federations could do more to root out corruption from now on. “Sport’s collective efforts to root out corruption have not been 100 per cent successful”, stated Khalid. “Bookmakers are the biggest losers when it comes to match-fixing. Let’s not forget the only people that can fix a match are the participants themselves. Many sports would still rather bury their head in the sand than come up with a robust-enough code of conduct and rigid enforcement procedures to prevent this”.
In Khalid’s opinion the match-fixing scandals “Are motivated purely for competitive reasons. Scandal comes in many forms and unfortunately, there are more ways of polluting sport integrity than betting related match-fixing. The problem of match-fixing is a global problem”. In June the chairman of International Olympic Committee Jacques Rogge called for the international sports community – regulators, federations, governments and betting operators – to work together to put in place the rules, disciplinary procedures, enforcement and technology to defeat match-fixing on a global scale. “In Europe, ESSA is already doing this through a range of measures – commented Khalid – including a code of conduct on sports betting for athletes, industry-leading security measures and better communications with sports federations”. The European Sports Security Association (ESSA) is a non-profit organisation whose members are the leading online sports book operators in Europe. It was initiated in 2005.
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