Council of Europe Secretary General Alain Berset has called on FIFA to open an integrity dialogue over sports betting, pointing to a disciplinary sanction that was suspended during the 2026 World Cup and the tournament’s first official prediction market partnership. He set out the proposal in a statement issued on 19 July 2026, the day of the World Cup final.
The intervention lands as prediction markets move from a niche product to an official presence inside football’s biggest event, sharpening the debate over how betting integrity is policed across Europe.
A suspended sanction and FIFA’s first prediction market partner
The 19 July statement followed an earlier one from Berset on 13 July 2026, in which he said the integrity and autonomy of sport are non-negotiable and set out the Council of Europe’s instruments against match manipulation, doping and stadium violence.
In the later statement, Berset named two developments during the tournament as symptoms of a wider problem. He said a disciplinary sanction had been suspended within days, without public reasons given, which he argued called the authority of match officials into question.
He also said betting had moved beyond match results towards in-play moments that a single player can produce without changing the score. He described this as an open door to fraud.
Berset added that the tournament had, for the first time, brought a prediction market operator inside the stadiums as an official partner. FIFA named the platform, ADI Predictstreet, as its first official prediction market partner on 2 April 2026, ahead of the 48-team tournament staged across Canada, Mexico and the United States.
The next crisis has already begun. It has two names: money and power.
A proposal for an integrity dialogue before 2030
Berset also referenced political pressure on the tournament, saying the suspended sanction followed a call from a head of state to the president of FIFA. He argued that when rules bend under pressure, results are open to doubt.
He proposed what he called a third half: a working dialogue with FIFA, starting immediately, to build an integrity framework for the 2030 World Cup before that tournament is played.
The proposal targets a specific gap. In-play betting on individual actions, rather than final scores, gives a single player the means to influence a wager without altering the result of a match. That is the mechanism Berset argues existing football governance is not built to catch.
A record of binding sports treaties
Both statements set the proposal against the Council of Europe’s history of responding to crises in sport with binding law. In the 13 July statement, Berset named the manipulation of competitions as the most insidious threat, citing so-called negative bets, where a single player or action can be enough to influence a bet without necessarily affecting the final result.
He named the Macolin Convention, signed by 43 states, as the only binding treaty against this form of match-fixing. He pointed to the Saint-Denis Convention on stadium safety, security and service, which has 39 signatories since it opened for signature in 2016, and the Anti-Doping Convention, binding on 52 states, as further examples of the same approach.
Berset used the three conventions to argue that the Council of Europe has consistently turned moments of crisis in sport into binding legal commitments. In the 13 July statement, the organisation said it was finalising an updated recommendation to member states on a coherent approach to sport integrity.
The timing places the proposal within a wider regulatory contest over prediction markets in Europe. Malta has moved to draft a framework for the products, while Gibraltar has pushed to license them as other EU jurisdictions hold back, leaving no common European position on how they should be treated.
No response from FIFA had been published at the time of writing. Whether the proposed dialogue proceeds, and on what terms, will determine if an integrity framework is in place before the 2030 World Cup is played.
Source: Council of Europe
