The "Enhanced Games" are strongly opposed by the international community
2025-06-11
On 17 June this year, representatives of the Lithuanian Anti-Doping Agency participated in a meeting of the countries of the Platform against Match-fixing. Representatives of the Ministries of the Interior and Education, Science and Sport, the General Prosecutor's Office, the Lithuanian Criminal Police Bureau, the Financial Crime Investigation Service, the Special Investigation Service, the Gambling Supervision Service, and the National Sports Agency were also present at the event, which is organised periodically.
The Lithuanian Anti-Doping Agency presented the latest information on the manipulation of sports competitions. In 2024, Lithuania received 6 official reports of possible manipulation, 4 of them related to basketball, 1 each to football and athletics. The same number of 6 have already been received in less than half of this year (until 15 June 2025, 2 related to basketball and football, 1 each to hockey and handball).
The meeting focused on inter-institutional cooperation to prevent match-fixing. The Lithuanian Anti-Doping Agency has offered to sign a cooperation agreement in 2024 for 70 Lithuanian sports organisations whose activities are financed in one way or another by the National Sports Agency. So far, only 25 sports organisations have responded to this initiative and signed an agreement on doping control and combating manipulation in sport.
The Lithuanian Anti-Doping Agency also presented to the participants of the meeting the draft amendment to the inter-institutional cooperation agreement prepared jointly with the Ministry of Education, Science and Sport and discussed the work on the development of the coordination platform for the management of information and data on manipulation of sports competitions.
"An IT solution feasibility study for the platform is currently being prepared and 3 implementation options are being considered.The aim of the platform is to create a single and integrated information system to collect, store, organise, manage, analyse, transmit and store information and data on the manipulation of sports competitions. It would also allow for the modelling, monitoring and evaluation of different situations based on the data collected. Such a platform would make the fight against manipulation in sport more effective and facilitate cooperation between public authorities and other organisations in this field," said Aleksandras Kovalenka, representative of the Lithuanian Anti-Doping Agency.
The draft rules against manipulation of sports competitions (vision, conceptual direction) were also presented. The training sessions organised by the Lithuanian Anti-Doping Agency for other organisations were discussed - in 2024, 5 sessions of such training sessions have been organised, this year 4 events have already taken place, and 3 more are planned (representatives of football, hockey, handball and other sports organisations have already participated in these events).
The Agency is currently preparing on-line training on the prevention of manipulation in sport. Participants will be issued with a certificate confirming the knowledge acquired. Representatives of the institutions present at the meeting offered their support and assistance to the Agency in finding IT solutions for such training, as well as in developing and delivering the content.
"When it comes to manipulation and doping, even more attention needs to be paid to education and prevention. We shared the key principles of the Agency's communication strategy in this area and the results of its implementation, and we all agreed that communication between all the institutions involved in the problem needs to be even stronger. We need to develop public intolerance to these problems afflicting sport. Changing public attitudes is a long-term process, but without this, these problems will not be overcome," said Mr Kovalenko.
At the end of the meeting, the participants were presented with the latest developments in pre-trial investigations on manipulation of sports competitions and the results of monitoring betting related to manipulation.
