The International Agreements Committee met yesterday in the House of Lords in a final session to discuss ratifying the Macolin Convention. International cooperation is essential to tackle the growing threat posed by international criminal gangs attempting to corrupt sport, representatives from the Department for Culture, Media, and Sport (DCMS) told the committee.
Emma Floyd, Director of Sport & Gambling at the DCMS, said that there were 28% more instances of corruption reported in 2025 than in 2024. Many of the cases were in football and tennis, Floyd added, with corruption “increasingly happening in the lower tiers of sport.”
International Cooperation Essential to Tackle International Corruption
Floyd advocated ratifying the convention, as it could speed up cross-border information sharing to tackle corruption in sport. This was in line with speakers over the last two weeks, who said international cooperation is essential to tackle international criminal organizations responsible for match-fixing.
Floyd said, “You can have your athlete from a particular country, the sporting event in a different country, the intermediary who approaches the player might be from yet another country, where the betting takes place could be somewhere else, the money can flow somewhere else, and ultimately the person at the top orchestrating this, which could be organized crime, could be in yet another country.”
Madolina Diaconu, an Associate Professor and Swiss attorney-at-law specializing in Sports and Gambling Law, told the committee two weeks ago that over the past 15 years, there has been “a tremendous increase in the infiltration of organized crime into match-fixing”.
“Given the inherently global nature of this, we need to work with other countries and cooperate in order to really tackle this together,” Floyd added.
The UK has already signed up to the treaty, along with 42 other European nations, Brazil, Morocco, and Australia. However, only 17 countries have fully ratified the Convention. Full ratification will give the UK a seat at the table to “shape the strategy about how we respond to these evolving threats,” Floyd said.
UK Lacks Proper Enforcement
Simon Mason, Deputy Director of Sport at the DCMS, said the organization is already following the convention’s protocols, which raised questions of how much difference ratification will make.
“We undertook a full compliance assessment to assess how it works within our existing arrangements and existing structures, and have concluded that our existing structures are sufficient to meet the requirements of the convention,” Mason said.
The convention states that countries must provide support to sporting bodies to tackle corruption and manipulation in sports. Mason said the UK’s Code for Sports Governance already ensures this happens.
The Gambling Commission’s Sports Betting Intelligence Unit and the Sports Betting Integrity Forum provide “vital structures that provide guidance, education, and support to all organizations to ensure that they are able to manage these kinds of issues as effectively as possible,” Mason added.
Yet, corruption is still increasing. That raised questions of how the UK can do more to address the problem, and ratification of the Macolin Convention would not appear to make a sizable impact.
“We can sign as many treaties as we like, but unless we have proper enforcement in the UK, it’s not going to make a great deal of difference,” said Lord Johnson.
“There are probably not so many prosecution cases,” Floyd admitted. She said more international cooperation might help address that, but both she and Mason said the DCMS was already sharing information internationally and following the convention.
Bottom-Up Approach Can Improve Athlete Education
Moses Swaibu, CEO of GameChanger360, told the committee two weeks ago that organizations need to improve their education programs to help athletes understand the risks of corruption and how to handle approaches from criminal groups.
Swaibu told us in an interview last week that GameChanger360 is working with sporting bodies to offer its educational platform, which provides athletes with the tools required to identify and report corruption.
The former football player is one of the few who faced criminal prosecution for match-fixing, but in his book Fixed: My Secret Life as a Match Fixer, he detailed how he largely avoided detection from authorities for years.
While ratification of the convention may slightly improve the UK’s ability to share information internationally, it is a small step to address the growing threat of corruption in sports. The committee also noted that the rise of prediction markets, many of which allow crypto payments, has added to the complications of fighting against criminal groups that operate in hidden areas of society.
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The International Agreements Committee met yesterday in the House of Lords in a final session to discuss ratifying the Macolin Convention. International cooperation is essential to tackle the growing threat posed by international criminal gangs attempting to corrupt sport, representatives from the Department for Culture, Media, and Sport (DCMS) told the committee. Emma Floyd, Director of
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