Gambling (Licensing and Advertising) Bill

Written evidence submitted by the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) (GB 03)

The ECB is pleased to submit a short response to on the subject of the Gambling (Licensing and Advertising) Bill. The ECB is an active member of both the Sports Betting Group (SBG) and Sports Rights Owner Coalition (SROC) and fully contributed to and endorses previous and current submissions made by them.

The ECB is the governing body for all cricket in England and Wales. Our responsibility is to promote and develop the game’s growth and success at all levels, far beyond the boundaries of just International and domestic First Class Cricket. For cricket to have the trust and support of all participants and fans we must do all we can to protect the game’s integrity at every level.

Promoting and upholding integrity is one of the key functions of all sports governing bodies and event organisers. The whole concept of sport is based on a fair competition between participants under agreed rules. It is a vital principle for any sport that all involved are competing to win, and are seen to be doing so.

The sport of cricket has recently faced serious issues relating to its integrity at both a national and international level. These types of threat will remain as sports betting continues to grow across the world in both legal and unregulated markets. It is therefore vital that the sport itself works closely with Governments and Regulators to ensure we create an infrastructure to prevent this from happening.

The ECB itself has recently increased its work in this field including creating an in-house integrity function.

Sports integrity is a challenge for every Government in the world, and there are of course likely to be bigger threats in other countries, but it is our duty and responsibility to make sure that our domestic market is regulated as effectively as possible. Not only does this give greater protection but it creates a best practice model we can promote to other jurisdictions.

That is why the ECB fully supports this Bill and the measures within it that will see all betting operators acting in the UK subject to regulation at the point of consumption. It is extremely important that all bets placed fall under the remit of the Gambling Commission and their Licence Condition 15 that requires information sharing with Sports Governing Bodies.

The ECB led the campaign for the introduction of Gambling Commission Licence Condition 15 that makes information sharing between sports and betting operators a statutory requirement. To be effective it must cover all bets places in the UK and we very much support the Government’s bringing forward of legislation to address this.

There are two other related policy areas that we feel the Bill should address.

1. Spread betting. Spread betting on sport is growing and cricket is one of the sports that attracts a lot of interest from spread betting companies. This type of betting is not currently regulated by the Gambling Commission but by the Financial Conduct Agency (FCA). Despite repeated requests, they have not introduced a similar code to Licence Condition 15 nor entered into meaningful dialogue.

The ECB believes that this issue can be addressed by the FCA introducing its own Licence Condition 15 into its own codes to apply to spread bets made on any sporting activity. Alternatively an option is to amend this Bill so that spread betting is subject to the advertising and licensing arrangements being applied to all other betting activity.

2. A specific criminal offence of match fixing. At present the UK has no specific offence to deal with match-fixing. In 2010 the DCMS commissioned the Parry Report into Sports Integrity and its recommendations identified this as a key subject for the Government to review.

Since then the European Parliament have come to a similar conclusion and in Australia very specific legislation has been introduced in this regard, which we attach as an appendix to this submission.

Australia is now leading the world through the introduction of legislation addressing the issues of cheating and related threats to sports integrity. ECB would urge the government to introduce similar legislation within this Bill.  

The Gambling (Licensing and Advertising) Bill rightly strengthens the protection for sport from corrupt Gambling activity. To be wholly effective we also need to address the associated top-line offence of match-fixing, and the investigation/charging arrangements that would follow.

The ECB is grateful to your committee for taking the time to review this evidence and would be pleased to provide any further information.

   November 2013