The World Anti-Doping Agency's annual budget is a tiny fraction of that paid for the domestic Premier League television rights and its president has asked for more funding
Sir Craig Reedie, the president of the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada), called on broadcasters and sponsors to help fund clean sport during his opening speech at Wada’s annual Symposium for Anti-Doping Organisations in Lausanne.
Amid bumper revenues for football’s top teams due to mammoth television and sponsorship deals - including a new £5.1bn domestic Premier League television contract - Reedie has pleaded for more assistance in the fight against doping. Wada’s annual budget is set at around $26m, about the same amount that Sky Sports will pay to broadcast just two Premier League matches in the UK from next season.
“I have heard ever-more vociferous calls for a slice of the millions of dollars that are paid for sport television revenue to be provided to the anti-doping cause,” Reedie said.
“This is a bold idea, and I put it to the leading sport federations and broadcasters: now is the time to look at this seriously. I also think that major sport sponsors should start to consider how they might help fund clean sport.”
Reedie conceded that “the public’s confidence in sport was shattered in 2015 like never before” with the most high-profile doping cases in football yielding positive tests for Dinamo Zagreb’s Arijan Ademi and Brazil’s Fred.
Uefa’s Disciplinary Commission handed Macedonia midfielder Ademi a four-year ban for his positive test, which came after a Champions League game against Arsenal in October, while Fred is serving a one-year Fifa worldwide ban after testing positive for the banned diuretic hydrochlorothiazide at last year's Copa America.
Wada has previously criticised football authorities for the quality and depth of their anti-doping programmes, with the latest Wada Testing Figures revealing a dearth of testing in the sport.
“We [WADA] operate on an annual budget of approximately US$26 million, and so if full-blown investigations are to become the norm then we must of course seriously explore greater funding for our community,” said Reedie.
In 2014, testing authorities including those in Brazil, Japan, Mexico, China, Switzerland, Greece, Sweden, Netherlands, Russia, Turkey and Portugal as well as governing bodies in South America, Africa and Asia failed to conduct one single blood test in football.
“We have concerns that in some sports, including football, there are no quality anti-doping programs being run at the national level in a number of countries,” a Wada spokesperson told Goal last year.
- Goal