Lords Committee Hears Match-Fixing Is Spreading to Chess, Darts and Skiing
Yemen Herald News 
Match-fixing is spreading into corners of the sporting world once thought immune to it, a committee of the House of Lords has heard, as organised crime networks look for fresh ways to launder money and exploit the boom in online betting. Peers scrutinising an international anti-corruption treaty were told that manipulation now reaches well beyond the traditional targets of football, cricket and tennis, with witnesses pointing to a widening range of sports as gambling markets multiply and betting becomes accessible from almost any device, at almost any hour.
The evidence was given to the House of Lords International Agreements Committee, which is examining the Council of Europe’s Convention on the Manipulation of Sports Competitions — better known as the Macolin Convention. The treaty is the first international agreement designed specifically to prevent, detect and punish the fixing of sporting contests, and it sets up mechanisms for governments, sports bodies and betting operators to share information. The United Kingdom has signed the convention but has not yet ratified it, and the committee’s inquiry is weighing what British participation would involve.
Among those giving evidence was Moses Swaibu, a former professional footballer who was convicted in connection with an English match-fixing conspiracy and served a prison sentence before rebuilding his life as an advocate for sporting integrity. Swaibu, who now works to educate players about the risks of corruption, told peers that awareness of the rules remains strikingly low among athletes, particularly younger ones. Many, he said, have never heard of the Macolin Convention and do not fully grasp how easily an approach from a fixer, or a single compromised decision, can end a career.
Swaibu argued that the tools used to fight match-fixing have not kept pace with the technology driving it. Betting has moved online and gone global, he said, opening up a vast market in so-called micro-bets — wagers on individual moments within a game rather than the final result — that are far harder to police than a simple win-or-lose market. Outdated approaches, in his view, leave sport exposed, and he warned that education has to evolve alongside the gambling industry if players are to be equipped to recognise and resist manipulation.
That warning was echoed by Dr Madalina Diaconu, an academic and lawyer who specialises in sports integrity and gambling law. Diaconu stressed the need for close cooperation between sports organisations, the betting sector and law enforcement, arguing that no single body can tackle networks that operate across borders and hide behind the anonymity of online platforms. Isolated national efforts, she suggested, will always struggle against criminal groups able to shift their activity to whichever jurisdiction offers the least scrutiny.
Diaconu told the committee that match-fixing incidents have risen markedly over the past two decades and that the range of sports affected has broadened. Where manipulation was once associated mainly with football, cricket and tennis, she said, concerns now extend to disciplines previously regarded as unlikely targets, including darts and skiing. The committee also heard that the threat has reached games as cerebral as chess, as criminals probe any contest that attracts betting markets, however niche, in search of opportunities to profit or to move illicit funds.
The financial logic behind the trend is straightforward, witnesses explained. For organised crime, fixing offers both a direct route to quick profit and a convenient means of laundering money earned from other illegal activity, such as drug and human trafficking. A bet placed on a manipulated outcome can turn dirty money into an apparently legitimate winning, and the sheer volume and speed of modern online wagering make suspicious flows easier to disguise. As betting expands into new markets and new sports, so too does the surface area available for abuse.
The committee was presented with figures underlining the scale of the problem, including a reported surge of around 92% in suspicious football matches flagged in Africa — a rise witnesses linked in part to the rapid growth of online sports betting across the Americas and the global reach of the operators behind it. Such statistics, the peers were told, capture only the cases that are detected; the true extent of manipulation is by its nature difficult to measure, and gaps in monitoring mean many suspect events may never be identified at all.
There were, however, grounds for cautious optimism. Diaconu pointed to countries that have already ratified the Macolin Convention, such as Belgium and Spain, where authorities have reported successful operations dismantling criminal groups involved in fixing. Those states have set up centralised systems to pool intelligence, allowing law enforcement to act more quickly and decisively against syndicates. The example, supporters argue, shows what coordinated, treaty-backed action can achieve when governments commit to sharing data in real time.
The overall message to peers was that match manipulation can no longer be treated as the problem of a few sports or regions. It has become a transnational phenomenon sitting at the intersection of sport, organised crime, gambling and technology, and one that demands a coordinated response. Whether the United Kingdom moves to ratify the Macolin Convention is among the questions the committee will weigh, but the testimony left little doubt that the pressure on the integrity of competition — from the football pitch to the chessboard — is intensifying rather than easing.
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