At Securing Sport 2014 on Monday, the International Centre for Sports Security (ICSS) hosted a special closed doors meeting attended by sports ministers and leaders of international organisations, who agreed to take steps to prevent the growing threat of corruption in sports.

The ICSS also announced a partnership with UNESCO the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to safeguard sport against the “unprecedented threat” from corruption, match-fixing and sport betting fraud. 

Ministers at the private meeting came from Portugal, Singapore, Cape Verde and Angola, joined by representatives of UNESCO, the Council of Europe, WADA, Commonwealth Secretariat and OECD.

The participants agreed on the importance of following up on and implementing international conventions and instruments such as the Declaration of Berlin and the Council of Europe’s Convention on the Manipulation of Sports Competitions.

“Sport is now under threat in a way unprecedented in its history and the response to these threats must be united, international, and bold,” said ICSS president Mohammed Hanzab. 

“This special ministerial forum was another important step in engaging key countries and regions, international experts and sport ministers and ensuring that protecting the integrity of sport continues to stay high on the agenda.

“Securing Sport 2014 has today gathered individuals with the power, will, and determination to see that international sport moves in the right direction in the future.”

According to the ICSS, the ministerial meeting highlighted a desire to implement education programs and capacity building initiatives, to support countries and regions to assist them in creating national integrity platforms, and to work together to create programmes to preserve the integrity of sport.

Under the agreement with UNESCO, ICSS will host around around 100 government officials, technical experts and leaders in sport at a “special technical meeting” in Doha in the first half of 2015. This will be the first time international experts have met to implement the detailed recommendations on the manipulation of sport competitions outlined within the ‘Declaration of Berlin’.

“This meeting of international experts will play an important part in the ICSS’s drive to mobilise international efforts and enhance the integrity and credibility of sport,” said Hanzab.

Hailed as a ‘beacon for future national and international sports policy’, the Declaration of Berlin was adopted by 600 participants from 121 countries at the 5th UNESCO World Sport Ministers Conference (MINEPS V) in May 2013. It seeks to improve and enhance international cooperation between governments and all other sport stakeholders on issues of access, investment and integrity of sport.

In particular, the Declaration of Berlin calls for better sports governance and a zero-tolerance policy against doping and the manipulation of sports competitions, as well as greater collaboration to detect, prevent and monitor such manipulation.

“We are all custodians of sport and we owe it to every athlete and sport fan to protect its integrity and credibility so we can nurture the next generation of sports leaders,” said Hanzab.

Security and good governance are key themes of HOST CITY Bid to Win conference. To find out more about best practice in major events, register for HOST CITY Bid to Win and join ICSS director general Helmut Spahn and many more experts on 28th October.

(Source: ICSS) Against the backdrop of growing global concern regarding ownership and investment structures surrounding professional and even amateur sports clubs, leading sport integrity and policy experts ICSS INSIGHT have launched a major independent study into the legal, financial and integrity aspects of sport club ownership.

As a first and crucial step in the project and to develop much-needed research in the area of financial integrity and club ownership in sport, ICSS INSIGHT and the International Association of Lawyers (UIA) have also announced a partnership to work together on the first phase of the major three-part global study.

The first phase of the three-part study will analyse current legislation and regulations in place that apply to club ownership and investment structures in world football. 

Over the coming months and as part of its ongoing efforts to champion the highest standards of governance and financial integrity in sport, ICSS INSIGHT will partner with other leading international academics and institutional partners for the second (financial) and third (integrity) phases of The FITS Global Study on the Legal, Financial and Integrity Aspects of Club Ownership.

Results of the first phase of the three-part study will be announced by the ICSS INSIGHT and UIA at the second edition of the FITS FORUM, which is due to take place in spring 2018, with the overall and final results of the FITS study to be finalised at the end of 2018.

The study is part of the Financial Integrity and Transparency in Sport (FITS) Global Project – an initiative launched by ICSS INSIGHT (formerly ICSS EUROPE) in November 2014 to identify and address the emerging threats facing the financial integrity and transparency of sport and bring together stakeholders from all areas of the sports industry to drive long overdue reforms.

Key findings from the first independent report of the Financial Integrity and Transparency in Sport (FITS) Global Project include:

• Only an estimated 25% of professional football clubs in top leagues around the world produce publically-available financial reports
• Only an estimated 40% of national associations are financially viable without the help of FIFA
• There are vast and significant ‘dark spaces’ in the finances of football, which must be addressed to protect clubs, players and leagues from the growing threat of organised crime.

Speaking in Toronto on 30^th October in front of legal experts and international law firms from around the world at the 61^st UIA Congress, Emanuel Macedo de Medeiros, ICSS INSIGHT CEO, said:

“Incredible sums of money are being invested in the acquisition of sporting clubs around the world. Investment in sport is welcome, but it must be clean and transparent.

“Whilst there are positive exceptions, there is very little due diligence and effective oversight. The existing regulations are simply too short and too poor to respond efficiently to the mounting challenges posed by a fast growing, globalised, financially sophisticated and increasingly complex industry.

“As the first FITS study highlighted, plenty of ‘dark spaces’ exist in the finances of football and the wider sports industry. This must change if we are to safeguard sport from the growing influences of corrupt and unfit investors, money launderers and organised crime.

“To help drive this positive change, ICSS INSIGHT is launching this major three-part independent study under the banner of the FITS Global Project. On behalf of ICSS INSIGHT, I look forward to working closely with the UIA and all other partners over the coming months to progress the first phase of the study, which will explore the current legal landscape relating to club ownership and investment structures in football.”

Speaking of the new collaboration with ICSS INSIGHT as part of the FITS Global Project, Mr. Pedro Pais de Almeida, President of the UIA (Union Internationale des Avocats), said:

“It is a great honour and responsibility for the UIA to partner with the ICSS INSIGHT and to be at the front line of the preparation of a most awaited and welcome “Global Study on the Legal, Financial and Integrity Aspects of Club Ownership in Football”.

“The UIA have always been in the forefront of integrity and governance issues and our members from all over the world will be pleased to be involved and contribute in the preparation of this important study that will certainly be a strong contribution towards important and urgent changes in a leading global business such as the football industry.

“In addition, it will also be a great opportunity to be involved with all the other partners including universities, financial entities, institutional partners and other.”      

For more information about ICSS INSIGHT and integrity products and services the ICSS offers to help safeguard sport, please visit www.theicss.org

IAAF president Sebastian Coe believes the creation of the new independent Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU) will not just benefit competitors but also puts policies in place to combat any threat to the sport’s ethics.

Launched at the SportAccord Convention, the AIU will be chaired by David Howman and replaces the IAAF’s former anti-doping department. It will manage activities including education/prevention, testing, intelligence gathering, investigations, results management, prosecutions and appeals.

The AIU’s focus will not only be on anti-doping but will also address integrity breaches in other areas of concern such as bribery and corruption, betting, the manipulation of competition results, age manipulation and misconduct around transfers of allegiance.

Coe said that from now on athletes must be the centre of the sport and the framework for the AIU will provide them with a “safer ecosystem”.

“At the heart of the governance reform is the creation of the Athletics Integrity Unit,” said Coe. “So often the athlete has been the first thought, but actually in reality the last consideration. This will place the athlete absolutely at the centre of that ecosystem. So they are the first thought and also the first consideration.

“It [the AIU] will have a very different approach to anti-doping. It will be independent, will remove national interest and will speed up the process. We need to resolve these issues quickly, we need to resolve them in an independent way and we need to do them so we don’t have national interest obscuring that process.”

Coe added: “It’s really important in a sport that has 214 federations that the ultimate goal is not just to make your headquarters safer or the academic process of putting corporate governances in place. They have to have practical applications through area associations, in our case the continental associations, and then it’s got to have an alignment, an impact and practical support to the 214 federations.

“This will take time but we needed a constitution that was both fit for purpose and can deal with not just one or two issues but for the first time we will have a unit that can deal with all these problems.

“Yes there is a disciplinary element to it, yes there is a sanctioning element to it, there will be investigative powers – but it is fundamentally there to help the athlete make the right decisions throughout their career.”

With the launch of the AIU, the sport is putting systems in place to safeguard its future off the track. But with the introduction of events such as Nitro Athletics, Coe says that innovation must also happen on the track if the sport is to survive.

Not seen as an event for the purists, Nitro Athletics was headlined by sprint king Usain Bolt and is a team-based competition that combines strength, endurance, power and extreme energy.

What did Coe think about the Nitro Athletics spectacle held in Melbourne in February? “It’s very simple, you innovate or you die,” he said. “If sport is our activity then our business is entertainment. We haven’t adapted [to the modern world] as well as we should have done.

“What I liked about Nitro is it’s not that you are suddenly in the World Championships in London or the [Olympic] Games in Tokyo going to see elimination miles, power plays or mixed relays, but there were clues there as to why young people felt more engaged in what they were watching.

“I did throw down the challenge when I became president to ‘do things differently’. It’s important that we evolve and it’s important that we engage young people.

“Yes, sometimes that will be uncomfortable for the purists.”

[Source: SIGA] A series of high profile delegates, headed by European Athletics President Svein Arne Hansen, today called for active and sustainable sports governance reform at the inaugural SIGA Sport Integrity Forum.

The Forum was held in the historic Chartered Accountants’ Hall – the headquarters of SIGA member, Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW). Representatives from over 100 organisations from the international sports community attended, with high profile delegates from sport (international federations, clubs, leagues, national governing bodies and regional confederations), government, international and regional organisations, civil society and the commercial and professional services sectors.

Hansen began the high-profile Forum with a keynote address in which he described the corruption and doping scandals seen across a number of sports in recent years as “betrayals of sport’s values and of the trust of millions of people, young and old.”

Read Host City’s exclusive interview with Svein Arne Hansen here

He went on to highlight the significant progress that has been made both by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) and European Athletics in integrity and good governance. Hansen concluded: “I see SIGA as being from the sport movement and that it and European Athletics have common interests. Therefore, I want to wish you all the best with your project and I hope to work with you in the future.”

Hansen also took advantage of his address to reveal that he is asking that in future “we will store the doping control sample for any European record for a minimum of 10 years to allow for retesting when technology improves.”

The Forum’s three panel discussions on good governance in sport, financial integrity and sports betting integrity featured prominent and influential leaders from the world of sport, united in their belief that all of sport’s stakeholders should work in partnership to bring about real and lasting reform.

The debate was geared towards identifying solutions to the problems sport currently faces and the role SIGA can play in supporting organisations implement reform. Speakers included Lars-Christer Olsson (Chairman, EPFL), Nick Bitel (Chair, Sport England), Kimberley Morris (General Manager, FIFA TMS) and Thierry Pujol (CEO, Française des Jeux) among others.

Speaking after the Forum, the SIGA Council said: “The first ever SIGA Sport Integrity Forum has been a great success and a significant step forward. We enjoyed three panels of very high quality with excellent interventions from the audience. But this Forum would not have been such a success without the contribution and efforts of everyone involved. SIGA as an organisation is completely reliant on the expertise and contribution of its members. We are built on the principles of collaboration and partnership as we recognise that real change is only possible if we work together.

“The panel discussions today highlighted the scale of the work that is ahead of us but they also reinforced the need for an organisation like SIGA to act as a bridge and bring together like-minded organisations from across the sports industry. SIGA is here to stay and we are committed to bringing about real change. Today we have shown that we can talk the talk but now we must walk the talk.”

The Forum was concluded by Chairman of the International Cricket Council Anti-Corruption Unit, Sir Ronnie Flanagan, and Caribbean Association of National Olympic Committees (CANOC) President Brian Lewis who expressed their support for SIGA and called on sports organisations to adopt SIGA’s Universal Standards.

Read Host City’s exclusive interview with Svein Arne Hansen here

Mega Sporting Events (MSEs) are not just about huge amounts of money being lavished on glamorous international competitions, as is often perceived by the general public; they are also about values.

Events such as the World Cup or the Olympic Games carry positive values for children. Practising sport can contribute greatly to the harmonious development of a child and thus, within this perspective, big events can constitute a driving force for social development.

However, large-scale sporting events pose risks for children as well. The need to create new sports infrastructure, and the subsequent obligation to relocate whole communities, can tear families apart, as shown in Rio since the city was awarded the Olympic Games in 2009. During preparations for the 2016 Olympics, and before it the 2014 World, 22,000 families were evicted from their original location.

Further to this, children in a street situation were removed and placed in overcrowded detention centres for the duration of the sporting event. Production of footballs or clothing linked to MSEs may bring cases of child labour down the value chain. Construction, with a high concentration of workers, or the event itself, with an increased number of visitors, can increase the risk of sexual exploitation for minors.

Therefore it is in the interest of all stakeholders involved in the organisation of MSEs that the positive values and benefits for children should be preserved and the risks mitigated. To that end, Terre des Hommes, a global child rights organisation active in almost 70 countries, launched a campaign called Children Win in 2014.

The campaign is based on a threefold strategy. Firstly, it documents the impacts of Mega Sporting Events on children (according to the United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of the Child, a child is defined as anyone under 18), as most recently in the case of the Rio Olympics (see the briefing paper “Breaking Records”).

Secondly, it engages in a dialogue as constructive as possible, in particular with sport governing bodies, in order:

1. that the organisation, from bidding to legacy, of a sporting event comply with human rights and children rights’ criteria;
2. that the bidding process is conducted in a transparent and open manner;
3. that security measures inherent to the organisation of MSEs do not infringe the rights of the local population, in particular to the most vulnerable groups such as children.

Thirdly, the campaign monitors the implementation of the criteria and the steps taken by stakeholders connected to MSEs.

It is clear that the world of international sports has some way to go. Over the last two years, various sport governing bodies and MSE organisers have shown encouraging signs in taking into consideration the human rights and children rights dimensions in the bidding process. Efforts need to be pursued at two levels:

1. To monitor the situation for the MSE awarded to a host before this last two years, when human rights and children rights were taken into consideration, such as the World Cup in Russia or the Summer Olympics in Tokyo.
2. To work on bidding documents edited by sport governing bodies to frame the process of awarding the MSE of 2024, or 2026 and beyond.

If sport governing bodies still want host countries to be interested in receiving a Mega Sporting Event, the argument of sustainability not only in environmental terms, but as well in regards to the respect for human rights, needs to be strengthened and advertised. Such elements certainly influence the choice of potential host to start preparing a bidding file and take the long road towards the organisation of inspiring global events.

It is too early to tell if this wind of change , which demands that human rights considerations are part of the process during the organisation of MSEs, will blow steadily and bring about the required change of mindset. However Terre des Hommes and its campaign Children Win will continue unabated to work so that children rights get respected by Mega Sporting Events.

This article was written by Terre des Hommes. To know more about the Children Win campaign, please go to www.childrenwin.org. To know more about Terre des Hommes, please go to www.terredeshommes.org. You can support their action and follow them on Facebook and Twitter.

Ignacio Packer, CEO of Terre des Hommes, is speaking at Host City 2016 in Glasgow on 21 November on the panel “Has Sport Lost its Integrity and How Can it Win Confidence Back”

Host City: What do you see as the most important issue facing major events today and why?

Prof. Dr. Ugur Erdener: Unpredictable international political situations, which result in security and economic issues, are much more in focus in the modern world. Then there is doping and match fixing – both serious issues that cannot be overlooked. Protecting clean athletes is a particular priority of mine.

How is World Archery leading the fight against doping?

As a lower risk sport our emphasis has progressively shifted towards education. However, we increased the number of in- and out-of-competition tests taking place in 2016 following two cases at the start of the year.

Both were rooted in a lack of knowledge and attributed to accidental use rather than performance-enhancing doping. These cases are very sad, as they are not intentional and are completely avoidable.

In the lead up to Rio 2016, World Archery actively targeted Russian athletes for doping control, which – in the end – allowed us to prove beyond reasonable doubt that they were not implicated in any doping activities. That allowed them to compete in Rio at the Olympic Games. I believe that we had to protect clean athletes' rights for participating in the Rio Games.

What was the highlight of Rio 2016 for you?

The archery competition at the Olympic Games in Rio was great success. Our broadcast hit record numbers in Germany, France and Korea, and received excellent viewing figures in the USA and other major markets.

The quality of the competition on the field of play was excellent, featured athletes from 56 countries, and we ended with medals going to four of the five continents.

What for you will be the greatest legacy of Rio 2016?

Seven years ago, Brazil did not have a fully-formed archery team. Now, the nation has several professional archery athletes, and a good coaching and judging structure. If progress continues, Brazil will soon be challenging for medals.

World Archery substantially increased its worldwide exposure across all kinds of media. There was a 52 per cent rise in the number of Facebook fans during the Games period.

In general, we can say there is a huge transformation in the city, a big legacy related to many high level sports facilities – and of course their management and maintenance will be important going forwards.

As a speaker at Host City 2016, what are your expectations of this important event – what do you hope to share and learn?

Host cities are critical partners in the success of any event. As a sport federation, we are constantly working to see how to better exchange expectations and expertise with our host cities, to ensure our events are a win for both parties.

Hopefully, this event promotes and nurtures this positive collaboration.

Why is it important for cities and rights holders of sports, business and cultural events to have the opportunity to connect at Host City 2016?

Successful events only take place when stakeholders truly collaborate.

Not only is it important for sports – or event rights holders – and cities to find the correct fits, for both parties, but be able to define common objectives that allow them to work together to deliver results for both parties in a true partnership.

Prof. Dr. Ugur Erdener is delivering a keynote address at Host City 2016, the largest meeting of cities and sports, business and cultural events. For more information visit http://www.hostcity.com/events/host-city-2016

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (ONODC) and the International Centre for Sports Security (ICSS) have launched a new resource guide to help law enforcement and sports organisations better detect and investigate match-fixing and cases of sports-results manipulation.

“The joy that sports bring to billions of fans around the world can so easily be marred by crooked practices such as match-fixing,” writes Yuri Fedotov, Executive Director of the UNODC in the foreword to the guide. “The best way to tackle these threats is through a multi stakeholder approach.”

The Resource Guide on Good Practices in the Investigation of Match-Fixing was launched on Tuesday alongside a meeting of the Open-ended Intergovernmental Working Group on the Prevention of Corruption, attended by representatives of the 178 States parties to the United Nations Convention against corruption.

“The problem of match-fixing is such that it undermines integrity in sport with the significant illicit profits it generates allowing organized crime and corruption to thrive,” John Brandolino, UNODC Director for Treaty Affairs said at the launch of the resource guide.

“In addition, the investigative skills of both law enforcement agencies and sports organizations around the world which are needed to identify and apprehend those responsible, are relatively underdeveloped.

“The Resource Guide represents UNODC’s and ICSS’s efforts to address this shortage in skill among investigators in both law enforcement and sports organizations and to raise awareness among policy makers about the threat of match-fixing. It serves as an important tool for those seeking to understand the problem and to learn how to effectively investigate it.”

More than 40 experts contributed to the development of the resource guide, including officials from FIFA, the International Olympic Committee, INTERPOL, the European Commission, Hong Kong Jockey Club, World Snooker, Council of Europe, Ministries of Justice from France and the Republic of Korea, and EUROPOL.

“This handbook provides a comprehensive range of case studies, investigation techniques and approaches to combat match-fixing as well as providing valuable guidance on how to disrupt the international organized crime syndicates that now operate in sport,” said Mohammed Hanzab, President of ICSS.

“As the ICSS looks to build on this launch and work alongside the UNODC to develop a series of workshops and training courses in this area, this handbook will hopefully provide sport federations and law enforcement agencies with an important go-to-guide to detecting, investigating and prosecuting match-fixers and organized crime.”

The full Resource Guide can be read and downloaded on the UNODC website.