Olympic Games 2012: Match Fixing and Suspicious Betting

Lord Addington Excerpts

Thursday 9th February 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington]

My Lords, when I saw the subject of this debate, I initially thought, “Oh, yes. That will be a problem this time, won’t it?”. When most of us think about betting, we do not think about the Olympic Games or the Games structure; we always think about certain activities. Traditionally it was racing but it has now expanded into football, with possibly boxing or the other martial arts being dominant.

The Olympic Games have not had the best of records, in ancient or modern times, when it comes to the integrity of the events. Not only has there been the great problem of doping but at times question marks have been raised over the impartiality of judges in any sport that requires judging. Casting my mind back to when Torvill and Dean were winning everything, I remember that one or two judges from the eastern bloc gave them high scores and were never seen on the international circuit again. There is a tradition of prestige in controlling what happens.

Now, we have a new threat, which basically is money. The noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, pointed out—or, at least, he made it clear to me—that the issue of money involves not just the medallists. The fact is that there is money to be made in an obscure market by making sure that an athlete who has made the grade to be a competitor but is expected to reach only the semi-finals does not get that far. One has only to look at the number of events to realise how many attempts can be made to interfere with the odds process by removing the competition at certain points. That is the challenge that faces us.

The noble Lord did an excellent job of going through the activity that has taken place, but I think that the noble Baroness, Lady Billingham, is correct that, as has always been the case, we are playing catch-up to events. We are in a reactive phase and have been for quite a long time. The previous Government may have started this but they still said, “Oh, there’s a bus ahead. I’m belting after it”. How much effort are we putting in to catch up? Perhaps the Government can give us some assurances about how they are progressing in this respect. The answer to this is surely to be open with information and share information in order to see where the flows of money and pressure are and what we should be looking at.

There was the example of a tennis match a few years ago when the person who was ahead suddenly dropped out. On that occasion, people were aware that something was wrong because it became clear from the betting markets. We have a huge ally here—the legitimate bookmakers, who are trying to make money out of their business, and accessing them is probably the best tool that the Government have available. They will not want to be ripped off, and those interfering in the markets will probably be targeting them predominantly. There is a huge mutual interest here in counteracting this problem. We have to make sure, as the noble Lord pointed out, that the representatives of the sports are looked after and remunerated properly, as that, too, is another defence against corruption in sport, as has been proven in the past.

We must take a holistic approach to this problem. Prevention will be better than cure here. It will be necessary to make sure that all countries that have athletes who are capable of winning or influencing the various stages are looked after, and the IOC itself is going to have to look after them. How the Government play into this is vital. There is a history of people trying to change things for the purposes of prestige and profit. Unless the Government encourage greater openness so that we are all aware of what is going on, people will find a way through. We need to put pressure on those who want to be associated with Britain—for example, Gibraltar and Malta—and make sure that we have total access to, and some way of dealing with, irregularities in betting there. That might be a way for those places to reassert how favourably they feel towards Great Britain and how much they want to be involved. I could put it much more strongly than that but life is too short. Perhaps my noble friend can give us some guidance on what we are doing on all these fronts.

One of the primary aims of the Olympics is to create a legacy. It is a legacy of how to deal with an existing problem and a legacy that will continue not only in relation to the Olympics but in relation to all future British sporting events. I hope that when my noble friend comes to reply she will be able to tell us what progress has been made in getting all those involved to pass on all the information they can to the relevant authority. Can she also tell us how soon they will be able to do that and how they will encourage the flow of that information? That is really the only way in which we can nullify, if not stop, the impact of corrupt betting.