ClearingSport debate: Should governments cooperate more with sport, or demand accountability?

“Labels and words used in public messaging are not matched by process and outcomes. Processes called democratic are often lacking fair and open election procedures, and representative positions are often stymied by controlled environments and agendas, intimidation tactics, and the propagation of self-service instead of service to athletes and sport.”

Allison Wagner, director of athlete and international relations at the US Anti-doping Agency (USADA) and a former Olympic medallist and world record-holder in swimming, didn’t mince her words when explaining her commitment to the ClearingSport proposal of an international entity to counter crime, corruption and other integrity breaches in sport.

Wagner was among dozens of speakers at a webinar organised by Play the Game on 3 April 2025 to discuss the proposal launched a few days earlier.

For Wagner, it was frustrating to see the discordance between athletes’ pursuit of excellence with integrity and the institutions behind the sports movement not doing the same.

“Athletes like me reach the highest level of competition by solving problems, and we expect institutions behind us to do the same”, Wagner said, arguing problems were not solved because “the same things keep happening over and over again”, she said.

Integrity standards are not respected 

The link between the respect for athletes’ rights and the integrity of sport was also highlighted by Paulina Tomczyk, general secretary at the European Athletes & Players Association (EAPA).

“The athletes’ rights have to be at the centre of attention of this initiative to really create an efficient way to tackle integrity,” Tomczyk said at the webinar, adding that in many integrity issues, sports organisations actually do have standards and frameworks, but they are not respected.

“I hope for the governments and for the sports organisations to come along and cooperate on this important initiative. I do think it requires a proper understanding of what autonomy of sport really is. It’s a sports version of freedom of association, but that doesn’t mean you have a right to break the law.”

However, other speakers at the Play the Game webinar warned that the ClearingSport project shouldn’t duplicate existing integrity efforts in sport, mentioning the Macolin Convention, which provides a framework for tackling match-fixing, UNESCO’s Anti-Doping Convention, reinforcing clean competition, the Enlarged Partial Agreement on Sport (EPAS), promoting ethical governance of in sport, and the anti-corruption body GRECO, with experts in transparency and accountability.

Scepticism about state involvement   

Wilhelm Rauch, head of legal affairs at BASPO, the federal office for sport in Switzerland, said he was “somewhat sceptical” of the ClearingSport proposal of a new entity, especially when it comes to fighting corruption.

“In my opinion, the proposal takes too little into account the fact that acts of corruption, such as bribery, embezzlement, money laundering, etc., are first of all criminal offences,” Rauch said, adding that “realistically, no state will be willing to surrender part of its authority to a third-party organisation”.

He argued that state criminal law and disciplinary rules under association law should run parallel and that their representatives should work together where appropriate.

“Judicial authorities and disciplinary bodies each have their role to play. We cannot and should not want to mix up these different roles, but we can and should help these entities to work together to learn from each other in the best possible way when it comes to investigating and sanctioning corruption cases in the world of sport,” Rauch said.

“I therefore advocate that we use our energy and resources to improve the corporation and effectiveness of existing instruments and organisations.”

A critical focus on the framework

Sophie Kwasny, head of the sport division at the Council of Europe, underlined that the fact that she attended the webinar “doesn’t mean that there’s an endorsement on the need or on the proposal for the umbrella entity”.

She, too, expressed scepticism about the proposal of creating a new anti-crime entity, and she had a specific critical focus on the framework of the entity:

“What is the mandate?” Kwasny asked the panel, noting that the ClearingSport report has references to both anti-doping, human rights, workers’ rights, sexual abuse and exploitation.

“There are also references to corruption, and there, I don’t need to repeat what Wilhelm said about the national legislation in place to address all criminal acts and offences. So, I think it’s important to define what this umbrella entity would be doing. What would be its mandate?”

Ingrid Beutler, senior partner at Think Beyond Consulting, acknowledged the challenges and the importance of recognising the international legal frameworks that do exist and the importance of collaboration. But she highlighted the need for an umbrella organisation for the existing national integrity units, an entity that has specialist skills and services or at least knows who to go to.

“I am particularly in favour of having an impartial ombudsperson or a commissioner for sport that may even be as simple as a signposting function, knowing where to go to, knowing who to go to,” Beutler said.   

Teemu Japisson, secretary general at the Finnish Center for Integrity in Sport (FINCIS), also said that the first step might be to build a framework with existing national and international integrity entities.

“There are approximately ten national integrity agencies. We have different organisations and different tasks, but for example, in Switzerland, they are doing an excellent job, especially in safe sport, and in Australia and New Zealand, they are tackling quite a wide scope of integrity tasks, and I think it’s the same situation in some international federations,” Japisson said.

“One challenge is that so much is already going on. Is it worth trying to build something from scratch?”

A paradigm shift is needed

However, to Arnout Geeraert, an assistant professor at Utrecht University exploring public-private interactions in global governance as well as the European Union’s role as an international actor, with a specific focus on sport, it is important that the proposed entity is not designed in the image of today’s sports governance but in opposition to its systemic weaknesses.

“I think that the goal is not merely to interact with sports governing bodies. We have done that already. Public authorities are interacting with sport governing bodies. It is not working. The goal is to enforce real, lasting change. To do this, we need a paradigm shift from cooperation to real accountability. I think this agency could play a major role in that,” he said.

Geerart believes that the current approach in global sport governance is inherently flawed for two reasons: Self-regulation in sport and a public authority bias towards the interest of sports governing bodies. 

“Sports governing bodies can set their own governance standards, and quite understandably, they want to keep their own autonomy,” he said while also noting that organisations, in general, tend to resist reform because decision-makers want to maintain their existing power relations.

“On the other hand, we have what I would call a collaborative governance approach in global sports governance.”

According to Geeraert, that means that public authorities always interact with sports governing bodies with a view of achieving consensus, and they are very open to sports governing bodies’ arguments, whether it’s about doping, match-fixing, good governance, or corruption policies.

“So, if we want sports governing bodies to embody good governance, what we need is a paradigm shift in global sports governance from collaboration to accountability. Someone needs to hold sports governing bodies and their officials to account”, he argued.

There is no shortage of money in sport

Geeraert presented two scenarios of a new anti-crime entity where sport governing bodies would either be excluded entirely from the decision-making bodies or be forced to share the power with other stakeholders such as governments, athletes, and independent civil society groups in a tripartite model used by the International Labour Organisation.

But even if all relevant stakeholders manage to agree on the mandate and the framework of a new entity, the idea raises the question of who should fund such an agency. Jens Sejer Andersen, founder and senior advisor at Play the Game, answered the billion-dollar question:

“I think we have come to two conclusions. One is that any entity that benefits from sport has a duty to protect it. We could also add another one. Elite sport is not short of money. There is a lot of money in the system. The question is who is willing to contribute to strengthening integrity?” he said, adding that organisations could help fund the entity through membership fees or service fees.

“We could also have a tax on commercial transactions in sport, such as sponsorship and broadcasting agreements or athlete transfer deals.”

Furthermore, Andersen said that sponsors and broadcasters could, by their own initiative, set a percentage of their turnover in sport aside to ensure sport integrity. Betting operators, who make big profits on sport, could set aside a portion of their profits.

“Governments could also contribute public funds based on the assumption that they would get revenues from their efforts against tax evasion and money laundering, and law enforcement agencies can reinvest seized assets. These are some ideas. Again, our conclusion is there is no shortage of money in sport. It’s just a matter of willingness to pay.”

Empowerment through education

João Paolo Almeida, director general of the Olympic Committee of Portugal, compared the fight against corruption and crime in sport to “chasing elephants with slingshots” and said there is a lack of education, prevention, and capacity building in sports organisations.

“It’s very important to empower people within the sports organisations to start working on diverse fields of integrity,” Almeida argued, and to him, the free press is another important stakeholder that is needed to set the issue on the media agenda.

“We are not talking about small changes or a checklist. We are talking about a comprehensive reforming agenda, and it’s very important that the issue is a priority for all decision-makers.”

Brian Wesaala, founder and CEO of the Football Foundation for Africa, said that he is excited to be part of the ClearingSport project because he sees Africa as the weakest link in sports governance.

“Trafficking is a major issue in African football and other sports. I think it is timely that we have an entity that can address these challenges from a transnational perspective but at the same time remaining very relevant locally or decentralised,” he said, noting that match-fixing is another major integrity issue in African sport.

A new entity must be built with sport

Tom Harding, senior vice president for global integrity operations at Sportradar in the UK, said at the webinar that the ClearingSport proposal is missing a strategy for detecting match-fixing.

But he also added that his team strongly supports the ambition behind the proposal of creating an independent entity free from undue commercial and political pressure.

“We think the proposal rightly recognises that today’s integrity threats are increasingly cross-border. They are multidimensional, and they are also extremely urgent,” he said.

“However, we believe that any new global integrity body must be built with sport, not simply for it. And that’s where we see the potential first misstep in the proposal’s approach. Without sport’s participation, there is a risk of creating something disconnected and ultimately ineffective.”

The time has come to do something

To Steven Berryman, the founder of Berryman Prime LLC, an investigative firm focusing on sports corruption and integrity issues, match-fixing patterns, sports gambling, financial fair play, domestic and foreign bribery, anti-money laundering, and complex financial fraud matters, it’s simple:

“An organisation like this is needed. It is necessary, and it is essential to happen because over the decades with different types of scandals and corruption and integrity matters that have come up, they are not going away,” said the former special agent who drew on his experience with the United States Department of the Treasury, IRS Criminal Investigation Division that led the worldwide investigation into FIFA relating to tax, money laundering, and corruption in sports governance. 

“It just seems to be getting worse and worse as time goes on, and in my opinion, the time has come to do something about this and work collaboratively with stakeholders within the industry to make that happen,” he said at the webinar.

Berryman has been an investigator for his whole adult life. After his retirement as a special agent in 2018, he has worked for various national and international sports federations. Now, he hopes to continue with ClearingSport and whatever organisation comes from the project, concluding:

“You just can’t have aspects of self-governance with integrity units and not have conflicts of interest. It just doesn’t work.”

You can watch the webinar and access more information on ClearingSport via www.clearingsport.org