An Economic Roadmap to the Dark Side of Sport: Volume III: Economic Crime in Sport

137 Pages·2019·1.401 MB·English

by  Wladimir Andreff

PALGRAVE PIVOTS IN SPORTS ECONOMICS
An Economic Roadmap
to the Dark Side of Sport
Volume III: Economic Crime in Sport
Wladimir Andreff
Palgrave Pivots in Sports Economics
Series Editors
Wladimir Andreff
Emeritus Professor
University Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne
Paris, France
Andrew Zimbalist
Department of Economics
Smith College
Northampton, MA, USA
This mid-length monograph series invites contributions between
25,000–50,000 words in length, and will consider the economic analy-
sis of sports from all aspects, including but not limited to: the demand
for sports, broadcasting and media, sport and health, mega-events,
sports accounting, finance, betting and gambling, sponsorship, regional
development, governance, competitive balance, revenue sharing, player
unions, pricing and ticketing, regulation and anti-trust, and, globali-
zation. Sports Economics is a rapidly growing field and this new series
provides an exciting new publication outlet enabling authors to generate
reach and impact.
More information about this series at
http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/15189
Wladimir Andreff
An Economic
Roadmap to the Dark
Side of Sport
Volume III: Economic Crime in Sport
Wladimir Andreff
Centre d’Economie de la Sorbonne
University Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne
Paris, France
ISSN 2662-6438 ISSN 2662-6446 (electronic)
Palgrave Pivots in Sports Economics
ISBN 978-3-030-28614-9 ISBN 978-3-030-28615-6 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28615-6
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer
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I
ntroductIon
This book focuses on the economic facets of the dark side of sport and
warns against those manipulations, dysfunctions, distortions, and crimes
triggered by economic interests or even naked greed in sports. It gathers
publicised facts and cases referring to economic manipulations and build
up a typology of sport manipulations which makes sense from an eco-
nomic standpoint.
The book is divided into three volumes. Volume 1 shows that sports
ethics and integrity are at bay as soon as economic manipulations, dys-
functions, and distortions breach the sports rules, violate managerial
rules and the law, and infringe human rights in sport.
Volume 2 is about corruption in sport and focuses on those manipu-
lations and misbehaviours that nurture decisions significant influence on
sporting outcomes such as match-fixing and on sport (economic) devel-
opment such as corrupting sports governing bodies.
Volume 3 deals with the most economically significant manipula-
tions which definitely jeopardise the future of current modern globalised
sport, that is rigged online sport betting and doping. These are usually
referred to as economic crime in sport and their unveiled perpetrators are
often sentenced as criminals. This is the darkest side of sport that seri-
ously threatens sport integrity and credibility in the long run. The four
chapters attempt at going deeper into economic analysis of these two
major threatening overheads on nowadays sport. Cases of doping started
invading the newspapers’ headlines, and the courts to a lesser extent,
v
vi INTRODUCTION
in the past five decades or so while online betting-related fixes only
emerged during the past two decades and they were more rarely brought
to lawsuits so far.
Volume 3 is not only a roadmap to the two aforementioned major
manipulations; it also provides the author’s own analyses about how to
understand and approach crime in sport from an economic standpoint,
as well as some ideas or recommendations regarding how to combat
it more efficiently. The suggested analysis departs from the standard
approach and elaborates on a concept of the supply of manipulation
(match-fixing) from within sport, the intertwined markets for match-fix-
ing and rigged betting, and new incentives to transform doping into a
self-defeating strategy. Some recipes are derived to combat the most seri-
ous economic manipulations in sport more efficiently than standard rules
currently enforced. At any rate, combating economic crime in sport is a
long way to go. Hopefully, some new recipes pushed to the fore in this
volume may be used as shortcuts towards alleviating, then eradicating,
the two major economic manipulations in sport.
The Volume reads as follows. Online betting-related match-fixing
appears as a new business undertaken by global criminal networks upon
which emergence is linked to economic globalisation and the worldwide
extension of the Internet (Chapter 1), opening new profitable oppor-
tunities for match-fixing and money laundering. Chapter 2 shows that
the standard model of economic crime is at bay when facing this kind
of criminal network, thus a more complex model is elaborated on that
relates the market for sport betting with a newly conceived ‘market for
match-fixing’; within this new framework, different policy options are
screened to combat online betting-related match-fixing.
Doping is approached through a snapshot of empirical evidence and
a guesstimate of the market for performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs)
before reminding us how the standard economics of crime and, more
recently, game theory, have tackled the issue (Chapter 3). Then Chapter 4
checks how efficient the current anti-doping policy derived from standard
theory is, how game theory looks more promising, and suggests an incen-
tive scheme which, within a game theoretical framework, is likely to trans-
form doping into a self-defeating strategy.
c
ontents
1 Global Criminal Networking in Sport: Online Betting-
Related Match-Fixing 1
1.1 Online Sport Betting in a Complex Context
of Globalisation and ‘Internet-isation’ 2
1.1.1 Complexity Triggered by Economic Globalisation 2
1.1.2 Internet and Globalisation of Sports Betting:
New Market Behaviour 4
1.1.3 Estimating the Size of Global Online Sports
Betting Market 8
1.2 Online Betting-Related Match-Fixing:
New Opportunities and Empirical Evidence 10
1.2.1 New Fixing Opportunities: Legal and Illegal
Sports Betting Markets 10
1.2.2 Some (Non-exhaustive) Empirical Evidence 12
1.2.3 Fraudulent Online Sports Betting and Money
Laundering 15
References 17
2 Challenging Standard Economics and Policies 19
2.1 Modelling Online Betting-Related Match-Fixing 20
2.1.1 Standard Economics in the Face of Online
Betting-Related Match-Fixing 20
2.1.2 An Economic Model of Interaction Between
Match-Fixing and Sport Betting 22
vii
viii CONTENTS
2.2 Which Tools to Combat Online Betting-Related
Match-Fixing? 30
2.2.1 Surveillance and Monitoring of Online Sports
Betting 31
2.2.2 Initiatives to Save Sport Integrity at Bay 34
2.2.3 Public Regulation of Online Sports Betting 40
2.2.4 Property Rights and Privatisation of Sporting
Fixtures and Outcomes 46
2.2.5 A ‘Sportbet-Tobin’ Tax? 49
References 52
3 Doping: Which Economic Crime in Sport? 55
3.1 Doping: A Snapshot of Empirical Evidence 57
3.1.1 Looking at the Tip of an Iceberg 57
3.1.2 The Market for Performance-Enhancing Drugs:
Guesstimates 70
3.1.3 Unobservable Doping Distorts Observed Sporting
Outcomes 74
3.1.4 A Natural Experiment of Doping at the 2014
Sochi Winter Games 76
3.1.5 The Impact of Doping on Fans, TV Viewers
and Sponsors 77
3.2 Standard Economics Analysis of Doping as a Crime 79
3.2.1 Beckerian Economics of Crime: Once Again 79
3.2.2 Game Theory: Doping as a Dominant Strategy 81
References 88
4 Moving Beyond Inefficient Policies to Combat Doping 91
4.1 A Limited Efficiency of Economic Recipes to Combat
Doping 92
4.1.1 Anti-doping Recipes Derived from Standard
Theory 93
4.1.2 Limited Efficiency of Anti-doping Combat 96
4.1.2.1 Anti-doping Inefficiency from Testing
to Sanctioning 97
4.1.2.2 The Negative List System Is Inefficient 100
4.1.2.3 Anti-doping Institutional Weaknesses 102
4.2 Towards an Analytical and Policy Renewal 105
4.2.1 Game Theory and Renewed Strategies to Combat
Doping 105
CONTENTS ix
4.2.2 A New Option: Incentives That Transform Doping
into a Self-Defeating Strategy 108
4.3 Conclusion: In Support of New Tools to Combat Major
Sport Manipulations 116
References 116
Conclusion: End of the Roadmap 119
Index 121