Day 5 of #SIW2023 ended in a high note with the high-level WoW Dinner Debate hosted by SIGA Woman and Powered by Abreu Advogados, a Portuguese Law Firm which is deeply involved in Sports. Women Leaders and male champions gathered in Gaia, facing the beautiful Porto city, for a fruitful action-oriented debate on the pressing issues facing Female leadership and gender-equity in Sport. The invite-only event, in the margins of Douro River, facing Porto inspired around 20 people to be agents of change, and empowered all the break the gender glass ceiling.
Katie Simmonds, SIGA Global COO and #SIGAWomen Managing Director shared her enthusiasm for holding such a relevant debate, while guests like Sandra Lopez (Exec Tech, former Intel and Microsoft), Ivan Bravo (CEO, Aspire Academy), Richard Weber (Former Chief of the Criminal Investigation Division, US Department of the Treasury), Sofia Silva e Sousa (Partner, Abreu Advogados), Roberto Armelin (Legal and Compliance Officer, São Paulo FC) and Julie Kassap (General Manager Number One Sport Consulting) shared their views on Female Leadership. Relevant topics were addressed by all, and no words were left unsaid by Katie Simmonds and Emanuel Macedo de Medeiros, SIGA’s Global CEO. Everyone needs to hold hands to ensure sport is a safe space for women to thrive!
Diário AS
Day 5 of SIW saw Diario AS USA host an high-level special session of SIGA Sport Integrity Week, the global thought-leadership event which aims to to unite the global sporting industry, share best practice and find solutions to current and future challenges to enhance sports’ governance, protect sport’s integrity and ensure sport’s long-term, sustainable development.
Kicking off the session, Will Gittins moderated a panel on the importance of transparency for club ownership (click to watch), looking at the importance of balancing short-term goals and long-term necessities to ensure clubs are run in a sustainable manner.
This was followed by Reem Abdalazem, AS journalist and two-time Olympian, moderating a panel looking at the importance of fair opportunity for all athletes.
Registered blind golfer Myles Clark, who has played for Scotland, then shared his journey and insights into the importance of making sport available for all.
Billy Lumsden, ex-gambling addict turned sports betting company executive, took a deep dive into gambling and soccer culture.
In conjunction with the SIGA Youth Council, Reem Abdalazem, wearing her former athlete hat, took part in a fascinating panel on the importance of integrity to GRID: Gender, Race, Inclusion and Diversity.
To round out the session Matt Riley, the author of the book ‘Her Game Too’, discussed gender equality in soccer, the success of the Women’s World Cup and the impact of the Rubiales scandal. In his words: “There is a momentum behind women’s soccer now that simply cannot be stopped”.
Check Diario As website for details
THE FIRST ESPORTS INTEGRITY FORUM, AND POMBAL’S MoU SIGNING CEREMONY
The Portuguese Municipality of Pombal – which signed an MoU to foster Sport Integrity in the region, and promote the development and protection of the 3000 athletes (mostly youth, as expressed by the Mayor Pedro Pimpão – hosted the first-ever Esports Integrity Forum, in partnership with SIGA EUROPE and WESCO Europe.
After SIGA’s Global CEO Emanuel Macedo de Medeiros’s and Pombal’s Mayor Pedro Pimpão opening speeches, Sandra Lopez, co-chair, SIGA AMERICA Advisory Board, and senior Tech-Executive (former Microsoft and Intel) delivered a keynote on Technology, Innovation and Integrity, in which she presented the most relevant facts in the history of video-gaming, while sharing views on the future of the industry.
Rui Jesus, vice-president, WESCO Europe, then moderated a panel on Esports, Integrity and Development with Sandra Lopez, Mags Byrne (Founder, Estars – The Home of Educational Esports); Tsubasa Shinhohara (Human Rights Officer, Swiss Esports Federation), and Reinaldo Ferreira (Vice-president, Boavista FC).
Esports is a growing part of the sport industry, it remains unregulated, and is a field that needs special attention, everyone recognised. Katie Simmonds, SIGA’s COO, emphasized that the Universal Standards on Sport Integrity are ready for Esports implementation, and invited all organisations to adopt them and go through SIRVS.
IACA
The International Anti-Corruption Agency (IACA) was the host for the “Anti-Corruption and Compliance in Sport” Event.
Starting with the welcome Addresses, moderated by IACA’s Advocacy and Communication Officer James Bigila, Giovanni Tartagli Polcini, SIGA Chair, Jaroslaw Pietrusiewicz, Head of Strategic Partnerships at IACA, and Emanuel Macedo de Medeiros, SIGA’s Global CEO, shared their insights on the importance the partnership between IACA and SIGA is as one of the first steps towards a more transparent sporting world. As Jaroslaw Pietrusiewicz stated “the main goals for this event are to identify the main corruption risks at the moment and to give an overview of the best practices”. Emanuel Macedo de Medeiros was precise and objective with his intervention affirming that people shouldn’t “judge us [IACA and SIGA] for our intentions but judge us on our results!”. With signs of agreement amongst the panel it was clear that attention needed to be raised and people should report and resist corruption practices.
Moderated by Drago Kos, Chair of the OECD Istanbul Anti-Corruption Action Plan, this Panel was entitled “Corruption in Sport: Modern Challenges and Trends”.
The three speakers of the panel were Giovanni Tartaglia Polcini, Dieter Braekeveld, Integrity in Sport Officer at INTERPOL, and Dr. Adam Masters, Senior Lecturer in Criminology and Executive Director, Transnational Research Institute on Corruption, The Australian National University.
Trying to answer Drago Kos’s questions on modern trends, key motivation factors to engage in misconduct and vulnerabilities of the system, the panel established, through the insights of every individual that “the penetration of organized crime is not only at the professional level but in the amateur level as well”, said Giovanni Tartaglia Polcini. Dieter Braekeveld observed that there is a misuse of the power relation, whereas people see mostly the athletes as victims but they sometimes are involved in. To tackle this, INTERPOL is laigning with new trends as they gather every year with worldwide police officers to discuss and identify new forms of crime. With the exemple of pole vault shared gold-medal in a competition that originated abuse towards one of the pole vaulters, Dr. Adam Masters stated that the relationship between fan and athlete needs to be managed.
The third panel “Safeguarding Sport: Enabling Integrity and Compliance” included the moderator Pawan Kumar Sinha, Director of Academic Programmes at IACA, alongside Senior Researcher at IACA, Eduard Ivanov, Emilio Garcia Silvero, Chief Legal and Compliance Officer at FIFA, and Norbert Rubicsek, DIrector of CSCF Sport Integrity Group.
This panel was consensual on the idea that education is vital. With their own observations Emilio Garcia Silvero noted that “Sanctions are important as well. If the community sees a proper legal framework is being taken seriously it will disincentive many ilegal activities”, while adding that fair-play is the best motivational factor. Norbert Rubicsek also enforced the idea that cooperation amongst countries is crucial because this issues know no borders.
IPLD & Truthfulness
In this Webinar “Integrity at Stake – Advances and Challenges of the New Sports Regulations in Brazil”, moderated by Adilson Lobato, Collaborator at Integrity, and assisted by Fernando Monfardini, Compliance Director and DPO, Atlético Mineiro, and Roberto Armelin, Legal and Compliance Office, São Paulo FC, they discussed the difficulties and progress of the new Sports Law in Brazil.
Everyone agreed this is a complex subject that could take days to dissect, as the panel tackled various issues surrounding this process. The democratisation of sport, a basic principle of this law, was the subject of agreement between the two compliance experts. As Fernando Monfardini put it: “the more people involved in the decision-making process, the better”.
Roberto Armelin shared his colleague’s opinion, pointing out that some things need to be reformulated because people “can’t expect different results if everyone keeps doing the same thing”.
ABOUT SIGA
SIGA is the world’s leading organisation for Sport Integrity. We are creating a whole new landscape for the sports industry by delivering independent global rating and certification for world Sport to ensure it is governed and operates under the highest integrity standards: The SIGA Universal Standards.
Funded by our Members, SIGA is a non for profit global independent organisation with one aim: To ensure the sport industry is governed under the highest integrity standards so that the values of sport are protected.
SIGA is the only organisation to bring together sport, governments, academia, international organisations, sponsors, business, rights holders, NGOs and professional services companies, from every region in the world, around a common cause of fostering greater integrity throughout sport.
SIGA is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, as a non for-profit association, and comprises of the following continental subsidiaries: SIGA AMERICA, SIGA EUROPE and SIGA LATIN AMERICA.
For more information on SIGA, including its vision, mission and reform agenda, please refer to the website: www.siga-sport.com and FAQs.
To contact SIGA, please email: comms@siga-sport.com.
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