It is no overstatement to say that sport’s integrity is being questioned as it has never been before. It is not just doping issues that confront us – but governance failures and match-fixing claims at the highest level. We face challenges on a number of fronts, but with doping adversely affecting the athletes themselves, it without doubt remains the greatest threat to modern-day sport. In combatting doping, we can be proud by how far we have come since the advent of the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) in 1999.
Of all the things that have been achieved during that time – an international Unesco Treaty, the Athlete Biological Passport, investigative powers, partnerships with pharmaceutical companies – we can above all be thankful that there is now one set of global rules in place no matter the sport or country you compete in. That is significant progress from what came before Wada.
Those rules – under the World Anti-Doping Code – have brought fairness to the system. However, we operate under the Code with our belts tightened, and the anti-doping community feels the squeeze evermore with the expanding amount of work we are asked to do.
In light of this, at the Wada Anti-Doping Organisation Symposium in March I called on broadcasters and sponsors to consider funding clean sport. Wada’s annual budget is approximately $30m per year; that money provided through a 50-50 split respective of the two halves of Wada: governments and the sport movement. Wada has to cut its coat according to its cloth, and conducts its activities – which range from education to compliance, research to athlete awareness – effectively.
During my presidency, the agency has explored new revenue streams. One example is the Anti-Doping Research Fund, the joint creation of the International Olympic Committee and Wada. The IOC committed to fund up to $10m towards athlete-centred anti-doping research, something which governments matched to the tune of $6m. The result was a pot of $12m which has been put towards innovative science and social science research, helping us develop new and improved detection methods for prohibited substances and methods; and, understand the reasons behind an athlete’s decision to dope.
Following the outcome of the recent Independent Commission investigation into widespread doping in athletics, I wrote to governments to ask for contributions towards further investigations. I have been buoyed by their commitment to make substantial contributions, which I will now ask the IOC to match dollar for dollar.
Such initiatives are helpful, but to really confront the scale of doping, we all need to dig deeper. Sport is a huge, global business in 2016, and the industry – though regrettably not anti-doping – is awash with money. A conservative estimate in 2015 would place its value just under $145bn, according to the PwC Outlook report for the global sports market to 2015.
Media rights – the lion’s share of which comes from television broadcasters – is worth north of $35bn alone. These broadcasters, who serve billions of sports fans worldwide, must have an interest in clean sport. After all, as sport’s integrity is increasingly under threat, it is the fans – the very people who turn on the television to watch sport – who will tune out. Why not, as some have argued for before, suggest some form of tariff on the media rights holders who pay for the sports rights? To impose, for example, a 0.5% tariff on this $35bn annual media rights figure would instantly put $175m more in the anti-doping coffers. Increasing Wada’s budget five-fold. With such extra funds, we could make a greater impact in protecting the rights of the clean athletes, and in turn uphold the integrity of sport.
The question with this is, of course, who would shoulder that cost: the broadcasters themselves, or would they pass it on to the sports federations, many of whom are profitable enterprises, some of whom are not? This is a debate we must now have.
Sponsorship is also an enormous contributor to the sport industry. Major sports sponsors should start to look at how they might support clean sport. Take pharmaceutical companies, for example, with whom the anti-doping movement has strong relations. While anti-doping has an interest in protecting the rights of the clean athlete, the pharmaceutical industry has a significant stake in ensuring that its products are being used for legitimate medical reasons, not abused by athletes seeking an edge.
The annual value of global sport sponsorship is thought to be approaching a staggering $50bn according to the PwC report. Sponsors are the sport industry’s fastest growing source of money, investing a significant amount of funds not only in sports events but in elite athletes. For sponsors, all the benefits of association with a sport or a star athlete may be easily tarnished through an athlete’s doping scandal. Doping is a threat to the sponsor’s business, so why would sponsors not want to fund clean sport, and have a stake in the positive values clean sport exudes? Such a move would be in step with public opinion.
As one person suggested to me, why does an organisation that sponsors an athlete, who has been sanctioned for doping, not attribute the money it would pay the athlete during that sanction to the anti-doping movement, instead? That is surely where its interest should lie.
We need to rally all sport’s stakeholders – including broadcasters and sponsors – to the clean sport cause. The public loves sport. In fact, gate revenues are estimated to cover one third of the sport industry’s total value in the PwC Outlook, clear evidence of the public’s desire to watch sport en masse. Public opinion is also firmly in favour of a level playing field, and so we all have a duty to protect the clean athletes and ensure the fairest, most efficient system possible is in place for athletes across the world. Sport, government, athletes, broadcasters and sponsors alike share this important duty.
