Sports Integrity: Betting & Financial Corruption – Annual Review 2024/25

Welcome to the Sports Integrity chapter of the LawInSport Annual Review 2024/25. 

One quarter of the way through the first century of this millennium and, no surprise to Mr Sherlock Holmes, corrupters and the corrupt have not stopped trying to make illicit money from sport.  The motives of money laundering, greed and envy drive the corrupt.  The to and fro, the cat and mouse of the regulators, the state and the miscreants carried on globally with little sign that those who cheat were to recognise the errors of their ways and simply play fair and straight.  Who though would think it would? It is a false expectation that humans might behave with humanity and integrity when at the international level nations still war against nations, and the great invention of the 21^st Century, AI, is being put to use to create fake videos, news and images; the human condition is to tread from the path of the good. 

Against which homily this review identifies some of the bigger cases and actions being taken, hoping to see in the light of the flickering candle of righteous endeavour that corruption, match-fixing and manipulation are being made harder, and punished when uncovered:

• Old friends and new
• Players and performers
• Esports
• Chess
• Cricket
• Tennis
• Action and redemption: what are the positives?
• Pulling together the threads and looking ahead