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Match fixing in sports: Spying & use of technology to stop illegal activities in sports

Match fixing in sports: Spying & use of technology to stop illegal activities in sports

Match fixing in sports: Match-fixing, doping and illegal gambling are among the biggest problems worldwide for sports. And the problem has been ever-present with sports bodies trying desperately to curb them. From government intervention to using technology, many options have been explored in this war against these practices which violate the statutes of fair play. […]

Match fixing in sports: Match-fixing, doping and illegal gambling are among the biggest problems worldwide for sports. And the problem has been ever-present with sports bodies trying desperately to curb them. From government intervention to using technology, many options have been explored in this war against these practices which violate the statutes of fair play. Follow live updates on InsideSports.IN

Also read: BCCI Fights Match-Fixing: Players shocked as BCCI deliberating ACSU proposal ‘to snoop & spy on cricketers to stop match-fixing’

One of the best known example of using technology to unearth a major scandal was the Calciopoli scandal. Uncovered in May 2006 by Italian police, the scandal implicated league champions Juventus, and other major teams including Milan, Fiorentina and Lazio.

Match fixing in sports: Spying & use of technology to stop illegal activities in sports

Telephone calls were intercepted which showed examples of collusion between team managers and referee organisations. Juventus were the champions of Serie A at the time. The teams were accused of rigging games by selecting favourable referees.

Juventus was relegated to Serie B and forced to start the next season with a 30-point deduction. Lazio and Fiorentina were also sent down to Serie B, where they too entered the next championship with ‘minus’ points against their name.

Milan avoided enforced relegation but were stripped of 44 points from the 2006 season, dropping them out of contention for a place in the elite European competitions like the Champions League and the UEFA Cup.

Match fixing in sports: Spying & use of technology to stop illegal activities in sports
Belgian police raided the offices of football club Anderlecht and the national football association in relation to a money laundering investigation involving agents and player transfers.

The developers of the most popular soccer app in Spain, La Liga, pushed an update that asked permission to access a smartphone’s mic and GPS settings. It then used that permission to listen for unlicensed broadcasts of games in public spaces. La Liga says any audio that gets captured is converted into binary code, which it then matches up against a control code to see if you’re watching something no one paid for. This is bad! No matter how they mask the actual audio they’re grabbing, it’s still a significant privacy violation—hard to imagine many people granted mic permission with the expectation it’d be used like this—and a risk, depending on how securely they capture and store the audio. An own goal, indeed.

Now, In India a bill which seeks to provide statutory framework for the functioning of the National Anti-Doping Agency (NADA), empowering it to conduct raids besides strengthening measures to tackle drug abuse in Indian sports was introduced in the Lok Sabha on Friday.

It is intended to provide a “statutory framework for the operation of the National Anti-Doping Agency (NADA), the National Dope Testing Laboratory (NDTL) and other dope testing laboratories and for creation of a National Board for Anti-Doping in Sports to strengthen anti-doping activities in sport.”

Match fixing in sports: Spying & use of technology to stop illegal activities in sports

The bill seeks to give NADA powers of “investigation, levying sanctions for Anti-Doping Rule Violations, the disciplinary procedures to be adopted and the powers of inspection, sample collection and sharing and free flow of information.”

Earlier, NADA had no authority to conduct raids and its anti-doping appeal panel has held the same. Many former sportspersons, head of National Sports Federations and experts have been calling for an anti-doping legislation to give more teeth to the existing rules made under the WADA Anti-Doping Code.

Most people who are “behind” match-fixing are commonly linked to organised crime, and not necessarily the sports world. This raises the question of whether sports organisations are capable of tackling the problem of match-fixing alone (sport autonomy) or whether cooperation with public authorities and legislative intervention are necessary.

Recent cases of corruption show that in order to catch match-fixers, authorities need to use formal criminal justice methods. This includes police expertise, phone-tapping, police interviews, prosecutions and trials.

Match fixing in sports: Spying & use of technology to stop illegal activities in sports

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