Doping and the financial globalisation of sport: What can be learnt from economic analysis
This article presents the contribution of economists to the understanding of doping in professional sports, which has been remodelled based on the values of the contemporary liberal, productivist and globalised system. We therefore try to answer three questions: Why do athletes take drugs? What are the features of the global market for drugs? Why has doping developed, despite the implementation of international drug control policies and unprecedented crackdowns? The very complexity of this phenomenon justifies the use of several bodies of work. According to the theory of crime, drug-taking is an individual and rational decision that is made based on the expected advantages and costs. Game theory aims to go beyond this narrow calculation by integrating the strategic interactions between athletes that determine their choices: not to take drugs, or to take drugs in a careful or risky way, etc. However, when doping becomes systemic, only an institutional approach can take collective practices into account. Since the 1990s, doping has increased with the economic globalisation of sport. The rise of this lucrative market was boosted by a rapid growth in the turnover of the “sports” sector, an enhanced value of performance, a strong development in pharmacopoeia and a revolution of sales by internet. Drug-use supply is based on an international specialisation of labour between countries (production, transit, hosting commercial sites and consumption). Assessing the supply and the flow of funds that result from it highlights the importance of this hidden industry. Despite the creation of new institutions and ad hoc procedures (global and national anti-doping agencies or the World Anti-Doping Code), doping does not appear to be declining. This failure can be explained by a crisis in the aims of competitive sport, a weakness of governance in world sports and a lack of regulation of these unwanted abuses. Such a finding demands that the international system of sport be restructured and that an anti-doping authority that is totally independent of sport be created.