Tuesday, March 01, 2011

IOC Gambling Update: Rogge tells governments to tighten gambling restrictions but send them a cut.

This is absolutely pathetic. In the world of Governing bodies there is a "royalty bubble"- pay us some money and we will believe in you even if you are a gambling service and/or licensing our governing bodies so as to be a marketing arm for your products. (Read as the TYR/Speedo anti trust suit.)

Look what Jacques Rogge is quoted as saying in The Guardian:
Ahead of an anti-corruption summit on Tuesday, the president of the IOC, Jacques Rogge, called for urgent measures and the sports minister, Hugh Robertson, said Britain was prepared to lead the way in co-ordinating international action on illegal gambling and match fixing.

More controversially, Rogge also called on governments to legislate to ensure that a proportion of betting revenues flowed back into sport, partly to help fund the fight against match fixing.

"Specifically we are in favour of a system where betting operators have to be licensed by the government," said Rogge, adding this would help monitor irregular betting patterns and also the companies' finances.

"Sports organisers, national federations and international federations would have a fair return for all their efforts for organising the sport. They should be recognised with a return from financial income."


I am shocked by this sentence: "...Sports organisers, national federations and international federations would have a fair return for all their efforts for organising the sport. ..."

Fair return for what?

Athletes will see none of this money but I bet the execs at the governing bodies will in the way of salaries.

3 comments:

hydroG said...

This is very unfortunate development!!! Look what this kind of behavior has done for boxing and wrestling. Do we want swimming to become this kind of extreme?

Tony Austin said...

Especially if it is the governing bodies getting the money.

hydroG said...

makes me what to quit coaching.

my coaches growing up always warned that we should be careful about how much we let money become a factor of the sport. they were always very happy with not making a lot of many to have a clean and pure sport.

Gold medals were just a great reward for a great effort, when they became worth millions and fame, we got doping and greed.

I think it all started going downhill with Spits.

I cant imagine how awesome it would be if a super talent like Phelps, Coughlin, Lochte, Torres.. made the Olympic team and then released a statement saying they would not be participating in a greed filled event like the Olympics. I could really respect that.

What person in those shoes could realize that the gain of such an action is worth more than money or gold medals. After all we are a society focused on #1 and that requires Olympic Gold. Its a race for a medal, then a race for the most medals, then for most Olympics.... it is really rather narcissistic and self centered desire to be more remembered than anyone. Our culture needs to 'grow up'