Starting this season, the Deutsche Eishockey Liga (DEL) has decided to radically overhaul and update its approach to match fixing and manipulation. This approach involved the implementation of a brand new set of regulations related to match manipulation; a partnership with award-winning anti-matchfixing experts Sportradar to cover the detection and investigation of suspicious betting behaviour worldwide; and a partnership with German sports law specialists SportsLawyers to independently drive any resulting prosecutions.

The new regulations, developed by the highly respected German sports law scientist Professor Martin Nolte and Dr. Anja Martin of SportsLawyers, aim to protect the integrity of the league and its matches. They cover all persons and officials who are involved in the match operations of the DEL. This includes professional players, but also coaches, referees, medical staff as well as player agents. The regulations will focus in on betting and the trading of insider information, whether knowingly or unknowingly.

The outsourcing of both the monitoring, detection and investigation portion, as well as the evaluation and prosecution portion is a model which is sure to attract interest from other sports federations, as well as National Platforms as defined in the Council of Europe’s Convention on the Manipulation of Sports Competitions.

“We think that it makes sense for the DEL to safeguard the independence of the steps in the process, starting with the regulations adopted, through the monitoring, detection and investigation, right on through to any resulting prosecutions before the German Court of Arbitration for Sports. We genuinely feel that our cooperation with SportsLawyers and Sportradar could become a template for other German professional sports to follow”, explained Gernot Tripcke, Managing Director of DEL. “So far there have not been any concerns around the DEL or German ice hockey more generally. But we cannot be complacent.

Betting interest in our matches is growing and so the potential risk of match-fixing cannot be ignored. We are confident that being proactive and setting up this process puts us in a strong position to prevent and deter integrity attacks”.

Dr Anja Martin of SportsLawyer added: “We have spent a number of years advising national and international federations around a range of integrity issues and in recent years, we have seen some really encouraging steps as different stakeholders: state, sport, law enforcement and betting-related have started to assign resources and expertise to this particular threat.

The Council of Europe’s Convention in this area is another significant step in the right direction and Germany has signed up to it and has already introduced a criminal law against sporting fraud. There is momentum and I am excited that we can play a role in what looks like a new structure or process that could serve as an example for sports in other countries as well as right here in Germany”.