Canada’s legal sports betting scene is booming, especially in Ontario. Unfortunately, some experts see the threat of match-fixing growing alongside that boom.
The match-manipulation concerns are looming even larger due to Canada's lack of specific laws to combat such shenanigans, which can happen via online sports betting sites.
Asked what needs to be done to create some kind of national system to fight match-fixing, perhaps one of the leading experts on the subject in the country says, essentially, that interested parties need to admit there's an issue.
“They need to recognize the fact that this is a coming problem,” Professor Richard McLaren said during the closing panel of the 2023 Symposium on Competition Manipulation and Gambling in Sport on Wednesday. “And it's in its infancy here, but it's here, and it's going to get bigger.”
Being proactive
The integrity division of Sportradar Group AG said the number of suspicious matches around the world hit 1,212 in 2022, up 307 from 2021. North America, however, was one of just two regions in which the number of suspicious matches had not risen, with 24 such games in 2022.
Nevertheless, there have been several high-profile incidents recently reported involving U.S. college sports and sports betting, such as Alabama firing its baseball coach in the wake of supposedly suspicious wagering involving the team. Canada has had issues of its own dating back before the boom in Ontario sports betting and otherwise, namely, allegations of match-fixing in a domestic soccer league.
But the recent growth of sports betting and the various types of pressure facing athletes has at least a few governing bodies thinking about ways to ensure there is no funny business. One avenue being explored is a pan-Canadian policy of some sort, to ensure nothing slips through the cracks.
“Every [national sports organization] needs to have that buy-in,” said Chris de Sousa Costa, treasurer and board member at AthletesCAN, the association of Canada’s national team athletes. “Even if they don't think match-manipulation is an issue in their sport, it will be down the road, so they need to take a proactive approach, not so much reactive.”
If you look, you can find
The concern about match-fixing was part of the debate around decriminalizing single-game sports betting in Canada, which the federal government finally did in August 2021. Since then, wagering has taken off in Canada, again, particularly in its most populous province. Ontario launched a competitive market for internet gambling that now has more than 30 online sportsbooks taking what is likely billions of dollars in action.
All that wagering has come as Canada has no specific prohibition against match-fixing in its Criminal Code. During the debate around single-game wagering, supporters of ending the prohibition said existing provisions in the code were sufficient, but this week’s conference suggested there may be more ground to cover.
The recent rash of incidents reported in the U.S., where legal sports betting has grown steadily since 2018, is also partly because allegedly suspicious behaviour is being detected by systems put in place by regulators and regulated entities.
“There is more of an effort to identify [match-fixing]," noted Doug Hood, the project director for gaming modernization at the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario (AGCO).
Announced today at the @EthicsInSPORT conference in Toronto: @IBIA_bet, @bet365ca, @betway, and @FanDuelCanada are promising at least $300K over three years for a Canada-wide athlete education program re: sports betting-related match-fixing and fraud:https://t.co/jcj7v50kQ8 pic.twitter.com/tmGWXNkodt
— Geoff Zochodne (@GeoffZochodne) May 30, 2023
The AGCO oversees online sports betting in Ontario, but Hood noted regulators only have a “small piece of the puzzle” in identifying match-fixing. Sportsbook operators, athletes, coaches, and administrators all possess other major puzzle pieces.
McLaren — who has been a part of some of the most notable sport-related investigations in recent history, such as consulting on the probe into performance-enhancing drugs in Major League Baseball — suggested approaching national sports organizations and developing a "robust" code for match-fixing. Those, he said, should be paired with sanctions for breaking the rules that can be applied to those who break them.
“You have to rigorously enforce it,” McLaren told the audience at this week’s symposium. The conference was co-hosted in Toronto by the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport (CCES) and McLaren Global Sport Solutions Inc. (MGSS), the latter for which McLaren, an internationally recognized expert in sports law, is the co-founder and chief executive officer.
Take me to the pilot
Some steps toward a national response have already been taken. CCES and the Canadian Olympic Committee (COC) announced in July 2022 that they were working together on a pilot project in which six national sport organizations agreed to implement a competition-manipulation policy. The pilot project is scheduled to run until December 2023 and involves Badminton Canada, Canada Basketball, Canada Soccer, Curling Canada, Racquetball Canada, and Squash Canada.
Jeremy Luke, president and CEO of the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport, agreed with McLaren that match-fixing is a “real issue” facing Canadian sports.
“It is coming at the sporting landscape,” Luke said. “And we have an obligation, all of us here in the sport community, to act on this issue.”
How to act is still up for debate. Yet Luke said the early feedback from the pilot project signals a need for a common policy for dealing with match-fixing.
“Which certainly leads us at the CCES to think there's an opportunity to have a pan-Canadian model, where that type of policy would apply to all sports in the same sort of way that the Canadian Anti-Doping Program does,” said Luke, whose not-for-profit organization also oversees the anti-doping program. “I think the challenge right now, though, is getting a commitment from sport organizations beyond those who are part of the pilot to recognize this as an issue and to want to support a common approach going forward and find the funding to support that approach.”
