Background

• While integrity is one strand of sports betting policy, the issue of a fair return for sport is the other. The basic premise is that sport should receive a financial return from betting operators given that they are effectively exploiting a product – in this case sport – without properly paying for it. This could be achieved through a statutory relationship, with the money used to fund integrity costs for sport (e.g. education programmes, integrity units) and invested back into the grassroots.
• The Sport’s Right Owners Coalition (SROC) lead on the issue of fair return, while the Alliance champions work on betting integrity.

Status

• The Alliance tends to treat the issues of integrity and fair return as very separate ones so as not to confuse the two. However, they do overlap to a certain extent (e.g. using the fair return principle as a way to pay for integrity issues).
• The Government has not made a concerted move to address the issue of fair return for sports.
• The Horseracing Levy which, historically, is treated as a separate issue to fair return, was negotiated without Government intervention in 2011.
• At EU level, the Commission has mooted the concept of a sports betting right in its recent Green Paper on Online Gambling, which the Alliance supported in its consultation response.
• The French authorities have recently brought in legislation recognising a sports owner’s right with respect to betting.

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