Sports Integrity, Betting & Financial Corruption – Annual Review 2025/26

Welcome once more to the Sports Integrity Chapter of the LawInSport Annual Review 2025/26. 

The inventiveness of misfeasance in the world of sport never ceases to alarm and amaze, nor the lengths to which might be gone to, to achieve illicit success.  The Winter Olympics were awash with allegations that athletes^[1] have injected their penises with hyaluronic acid to increase suit size so that ski jumpers might hang longer in flight, and the relatively genteel sport of curling is rocked with suggestions^[2] that a Canadian curler can be seen on video replays to have touched his stone after the hog line a rule violation few could have contemplated.  There is no point in suggesting that we are surprised by these developments, even the hearts of the good can be turned to darker acts when glory is at stake.

Yet more so in the world of integrity in sport, and this review takes on once more the bigger cases, revisits some old friends, and tries to balance out the battle of the good against the occasional successes of the less than good.

Article Overview

• Old Friends Revisited: Bessebeg, Lopez and Blatter
• Match-Fixing in the U.S. - What Did You Expect?
• Football and Expert Evidence
• Corruption Cases Across Other Sports
• Publications of Note
• Cases of Redemption