International Agreements Committee — hearing of 21 July 2026: transcript & video

00:07 - 01:40

Speaker 1

Welcome to this meeting of the International Agreements Committee in the House of Lords, and I formally welcome Emma Floyd, Director, Sport and Gambling at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, and Simon Mason, Deputy Director, Sport at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. And as ever, may I remind you that this session is on the record, it's broadcast and it is transcribed. This is our third and final public inquiry session on the Council of Europe Convention on the Manipulation of Sports Competitions, known as the Macolin Convention. I shall ask the opening question, and after that I will defer to my colleagues who will then go for asking questions where they will go further and have more detailed questions to ask. First of all, though, I'd like to thank both witnesses for the department, your department, at the time when you were the DCMS, so to speak, for giving us the written evidence that you did.

It was very helpful to have that as background before this, but also more generally for the work that we're doing. So my general question in starting: what is the government's assessment of the issue of sports manipulation and its impacts on the UK? And I don't know whether Emma you'd like to start first, but as you get asked questions, can you decide between you who goes first?

01:40 - 02:46

Speaker 9

Well, thank you, Chair. Thank you very much for having us today. So, you know, we see sports manipulation, you know, match-fixing, a very serious threat to the integrity of sport, to public confidence, fair competition, but also the integrity of the regulated betting market. And at a personal level, you know, vulnerable athletes, it's a threat to them too. I expect the Gambling Commission will have spoken to you about the fact that instances of reporting have gone up.

The Sports Betting Integrity Unit, between 2024 and 2025, sorry, 2024 and 20... let me get that right again. 2024 and 2025, reporting went up by 28%. Much of that in football and tennis, which really reflects the global popularity and the volume of those sports happening, as opposed to systematic sort of corruption in those particular sports. And much increasingly happening in the lower tiers of sport. And one of the sort of challenges as well is the increasingly international nature of match-fixing.

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