The chief executive of the Sport and Recreation Alliance, Tim Lamb, yesterday provided oral evidence to the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee as part of its pre-legislative scrutiny of the Draft Gambling (Licensing & Advertising) Bill.
Tim was acting in his capacity as chair of the Sports Betting Group (SBG) and spoke on behalf of the sport and recreation sector along with two other members of the Group, Paul Scotney from the British Horseracing Authority and Simon Barker from the Professional Players Federation.
During the evidence session the SBG fully endorsed the Government's proposals to move to a point-of-consumption licensing system that will require all betting operators taking bets in the UK to hold a Gambling Commission licence.
Crucially, this will mean that overseas companies will be obliged to share information and intelligence on suspicious betting with the Gambling Commission and sports bodies in the UK. This will go a long way to assisting sports governing bodies to be able to effectively deal with the very serious risks posed to integrity by corrupt betting and match-fixing.
As part of his evidence Tim Lamb put the case for why integrity is so important to sport:
“It is one of the key functions of all sports governing bodies to uphold integrity, because sport is based on fair competition and it’s absolutely essential that all competitors are genuinely competing to win.
“When there is suspicious or corrupt betting it can do untold damage to the reputation of the sport.”
On whether the London 2012 Olympic Games was a target of match-fixing Lamb said:
“Corrupters are not particularly keen to target heavily scrutinised and heavily publicised global events whereas maybe other minor sporting events which are less under the gaze of the public eye, particularly certain recent incidents in football involving the likes of Weymouth or Accrington Stanley, are more susceptible to match fixing because they are less high profile.”
Also highlighted by the Sports Betting Group was the growing costs incurred by sports bodies as they strive to put in place rigorous infrastructure and education programmes to help protect their integrity. The central role that the Gambling Commission plays in prevention and detection was also discussed.
The Group remains very hopeful that the Government will push forward with its proposals as soon as possible.
A full video stream of the evidence session can be found here (from 45minutes onwards).
To find out more about the Sports Betting Group, contact policy officer David Foster.
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