Friday, 17 November 2023
Play Fair Code and the Olympic Movement Unit on the Prevention of the Manipulation of Competitions: Further enhancement of the mutual exchange and strengthening the long-lasting partnership
After more than eight years of joint action in awareness building and prevention work to protect the integrity of sports and combat match-fixing and betting fraud, Play Fair Code and the Anti-Match-Fixing Unit of the International Olympic Committee, the Olympic Movement Unit on the Prevention of Manipulation of Competitions (OM Unit PMC), recently strengthened their partnership and cooperation.
Founded in 2012 the Play Fair Code meanwhile ranks among the most renowned expert organizations when it comes to the topic of sports integrity with a strong focus on the prevention of match-fixing and betting fraud. The OM Unit PMC) is the IOC’s Unit entrusted with the prevention of the manipulation of competitions. It safeguards the integrity of both, Olympic Competitions as well as the competitions of the Olympic Movement stakeholders throughout the Olympic cycle.
The Austrian entity first teamed up with the IOC in 2015 when contributing to an expert group on educational matters preparing the then International Forum for Sports Integrity (IFSI).
Since then, an appreciative and trustful collaboration has been established which amongst others led to valuable contributions to expert- and working groups, educational activities and appearances in panel discussions or onsite on the occasion of Olympic and Youth Olympic Games.
Needless to say, that the Play Fair Code of course is a close partner to the Austrian NOC (ÖOC) as well with regards to national efforts to raise awareness among their athletes and respond to competition manipulation.
“We are more than pleased to formalize our longstanding partnership with the team of the OM Unit PMC at the IOC and very much look forward to upcoming joint activities. This comes timely as on the one hand we notice a still significant increase of suspicious activity globally, targeting an ever-wider range of Olympic disciplines, and, on the other hand, our mid-term objective is to continue strengthening the Play Fair Code’s international presence and positioning, for the sake of manipulation free sports,” said Severin Moritzer, Play Fair Code CEO.
“Play Fair Code definitely is a very special entity and surely a best-in-class example in the realm of anti-match-fixing initiatives. We are very happy that Play Fair Code since the early days when we started to work on the topic ‘prevention of competition manipulation’ at the IOC and since the establishment of the OM Unit PMC was and is on our side to tackle the phenomenon.
Indeed, we are proud to formalize this cooperation now and we are already looking forward to, together with Play Fair Code, strengthening these activities,” said Friedrich Martens, Head of the OM Unit PMC.
The recent agreement shall further enhance the mutual exchange and cooperation between the two organizations beyond education, prevention and best practice approaches.
