CEV and EOC EU Office deliver online session on match fixing

The CEV Technical and Development Department delivered on Monday a one-hour workshop organised in scope of the POINTS project together with the EOC EU office. The speakers were Evangelos Alexandrakis and Rida Ahmed of the Olympic Movement Unit on the Prevention of the Manipulation of Competitions. There were 38 participants present from different National Federations within CEV.

The speakers reviewed the four main rules about competition manipulation, i.e.:

• Don’t Fix
• Don’t Bet
• Don’t Share
• Speak up!

The review of these key rules included insight on how to spot insider information being abused/used publicly and how to make a report of possible competition manipulation.

Athletes, coaches, referees, friends, family, etc. match fixing can come from internal and external sources of the sport community. These people typically study their targets’ weaknesses first, and use them to pursue their goals. They start with getting their victims to break rules on a small scale, and work their way up to large scale so that the victim has no way out without being blackmailed or threatened.

Alexandrakis and Ahmed invited the audience to reach out to the IOC Integrity Hotline for incident reporting or further information on competition manipulation – since it is a secure and anonymous platform to use, before explaining possible sanctions for match fixing, both disciplinary and criminal.

The online session included a Q&A session at the end, where the speakers emphasised that it is an obligation to report suspicious activity – even if you think it might not be that significant, it could be the missing piece of information needed to close a case.