Project Description
Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University (P1PSU) is one of the largest universities in France as well as a leading university in the field of humanities and social sciences. P1PSU offers about 370 bachelor, master, and doctorate degrees to 43,000 students. It is organized into 14 teaching and research units, mainly in the following disciplines: economics, and management including mathematics and IT Department, law and political science, arts and humanities including history, art history, archaeology, philosophy, geography, tourism, demography and development studies.
P1PSU is also very attractive internationally. More than 300 partnerships have been set up with universities around the world. 9,000 foreign students are currently enrolled at P1PSU and more than 500 students spend a semester or year abroad. In addition, the University welcomes more than 100 visiting professors from universities around the world. 35 trainings of P1PSU are leading to a dual degree with foreign university. Furthermore, the university has created 8 off-campus degrees in several countries (e.g. Russia, Argentina, Turkey, Romania, Egypt, etc.).
Established in the heart of the city’s Latin Quarter, P1PSU is part of the great French university tradition and is a leading research centre. At the same time, it is the centre of a wide-reaching international academic network spanning all five continents and playing a major role in the training of researchers, teachers, judges, lawyers, and senior business and public-sector managers.
P1PSU hosts a world-renowned sports law faculty which has a range of programs specialising in sports law, most relevantly a Masters in Sport Integrity, a program endorsed and spearheaded by the ICSS-Sorbonne Sport Integrity Program.
In addition, the P1PSU and the International Centre for Sport Security (ICSS) have launched, in March 2012, the applied research programme “Ethics and Sport Security” with a main focus on the links between international gambling and sports results’ manipulation for the purposes of betting fraud. The main aim of the programme is to contribute to the efforts of the international community in the development of an international legal framework to regulate gambling and curb sports results’ manipulation, starting from an analysis of existing instruments at the international, regional and national levels.
Key aspects of the Program include:
- the creation of a jointly run Sport Integrity research initiative with the ultimate goal of promoting an international legal framework to curb match-fixing, illegal betting, and all issues which relate to the manipulation of sports results;
- extensively consulting with key decision-makers from various sporting federations in order to provide long-lasting, pertinent and innovative solutions to combat the proliferation of match-fixing, and other forms of manipulation of sports results; and
- the establishment of a Master’s Program in Sport Integrity at P1PSU.
The overarching focus of the ICSS-Sorbonne Sport Integrity Program is on collaboration of all relevant international stakeholders, facilitating synergies with:
- existing working groups targeting the manipulation of sports results;
- international sport federations;
- inter-governmental bodies:
- governmental stakeholders;
- bookmakers and betting industry experts;
- sport integrity experts; and
- the wider international sport community as a whole.
The Program has two main objectives:
- Identify the mechanisms currently available to fight against sports results manipulation and unregulated and illegal gambling and match-fixing, to assess their effectiveness under the various statutes of sport bodies and criminal and regulatory laws, whether national or supranational, and to identify existing gaps and propose possible solutions without obscuring potential drawbacks and challenges related to competition standards.
- Propose an international legal instrument which addresses sports results manipulation, unregulated and illegal gambling and match-fixing through a combination of articulated strategies including prevention, detection and investigation mechanisms, criminalization and punishment and functional regulation of presently illegal or unregulated international gambling practices.
The first international report about “fighting against the manipulation of sports competitions” has been published in 2014: http://sorbonne-icss.univ-paris1.fr/media-and-press-zone/
Finally, in January 2016, the P1PSU and the University of Lausanne lauched The International Observatory on Sports Policies (IOSP). This Observatory develops essential scientific tools for the implementation of international and national sports policies and for their evaluation as part of mandates with important stakeholders of the sports world:
- national and international sports organisations,
- states and supranational institutions,
- regulators, media, sponsors, …
The added value of the IOSP concerning expertise is based on the multidisciplinary approach and on the academic independence of both universities. Indeed, the complexity of the sports phenomena and the multiplicity of actors and issues require to promote a multidisciplinary approach. Thus, the IOSP brings together not only lawyers, economists, specialists of management, political scientists, but also historians, specialists of civilizations, sociologists, ethicists and philosophers, specialists of media sciences… The IOSP is rooted in a tradition of independence of both founding universities towards all the powers which excludes conflicts of interest.
