Impact of Sports Betting and Corruption: Reflections from Uganda
This chapter focuses on Uganda as one country with the insidious threat of sports betting and corruption with all its attendant manifestations. It seeks to examine how the national laws have sought to, or have failed to, regulate sports betting and gaming
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Abstract This chapter focuses on Uganda as one country with the insidious threat of sports betting and corruption with all its attendant manifestations. It seeks to examine how the national laws have sought to, or have failed to, regulate sports betting and gaming; how far have the sports bodies been ready to handle this affliction? Have the socio-economic factors contributed to this nascent problem? How has the impact of globalization, liberalization of trade markets, information age and consumerism been? How have the people’s cultural dispositions been conducive to this malaise? Finally, some recommendations for the future are presented in the conclusion section.
Introduction In 2003, Uganda’s top tier football league, The Super League, ended with about 70 % of the games bearing the makings and trappings of match-fixing and corruption. It was presided over by centre match officials who were contemptuously given the moniker “Arrow Boys” and thus the country recorded its abysmal football league scandal and the lowest point the game sank.1 The aspects of match-fixing and corruption had been in existence before this debacle and are, by no means, extinguished to date. The incidence of sports betting and corruption has been adequately highlighted in the Western world and the major emerging economic regions but rarely is this illuminated in what are considered to be backwaters of sport in which Uganda falls. 1
http://www.observer.ug/index-php?option=com-content&view=article&id=4316%3Ahb-ziwa22-1win over-akol-
M.M. Richard (*) M/s Kigozi Ssempala Mukasa Obonyo (KSMO) Advocates, Crested Towers, 5th Floor, Short Tower, 17 Hannington Road, 23064, Kampala, Uganda e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]; www.ksmo.biz M.R. Haberfeld and D. Sheehan (eds.), Match-Fixing in International Sports: Existing Processes, Law Enforcement, and Prevention Strategies, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-02582-7_3, © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2013
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This is notwithstanding that the same levels of sporting integrity and uniformity of application of sporting rules are required of the sports governing bodies, the players, athletes/participants, the sovereign Governments, the referees/match officials, fans, technical persons in these developing countries as those in the Western world or developed world. In the developing world, especially the often impressionable yet passionate youths, have been engulfed in the global problem. This chapter is not a be-all-end-all study and discussion of sports betting and corruption in Uganda but there is a sincere belief and hope that it has considerably dealt with the impact. Henceforth, the stakeholders in Uganda, the bigger African region and wider international players, will take the necessary attention and devise measures to check the myriad negative ramifications of sports betting.
Background Because of our close cooperation in the past, when corruption allegations surfaced and became a major concern undermining the integrity of football, FIFA and INTERPOL were able to put
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