Qatar 2022 is about to start with massive labour and human rights challenges. The sports integrity industry has had little effective effect. Sports integrity is, now, an industry. It needs clear rules of disclosure.
You ain’t in Kansas anymore Dorothy. Back in the day, international sports integrity conferences - like Play the Game, happening right now in Colorado Springs - were jovial affairs where independent journalists, saddened whistle-blowers and beleaguered sports officials could meet, chat, drink and sometimes dance. Now, everything has changed. Sports are battle grounds of geopolitical soft power. Hard power is the idea that you can conquer another country with tanks, planes and lots of death. Soft power is the idea that you can...
The FIFA Corruption trial in Brooklyn is over now comes the question who really broke the story of high-level bribery and corruption in international soccer? Clue – it was not the sport journalists. “The ladies and gentlemen of the press came a great deal cheaper than an Olympic Committee member. If their potential accreditation to World Cup 98 did not fully concentrate their collective minds, there were always the freebies. The one thousand one hundred and eight-one (sic) journalists milled...
Dear Friends, The lectures will be controversial. The material will be accurate. There will be shocking videos. Please see below my thoughts on the upcoming Play the Game conference in Denmark. If you’re a conference participant I guarantee that you will not leave unshaken. Introduction It was a dramatic and surprising announcement. Ten years ago at the Play the Game conference in Copenhagen, I announced that European sport would be hit with a wave of Asian-style match-fixing. It was the first time that...
No independent, intelligent or credible person should have anything to do with the International Centre for Sports Security (ICSS) – the Qatari sponsored organization on sports governance and integrity. The ICSS is like the great Yiddish joke: what is the definition of chutzpah? The man who kills his mother and father and then throws himself on the mercy of the court because he is an orphan. To review: the Qataris are the people who ushered in yet another chapter of FIFA integrity...
