Naturally, sporting authorities wish to change the incentives and so they test athletes and hand out bans to those who break the rules. One might think that such tests largely resolve the prisoner’s dilemma. But an analysis published last year by three economists, Berno Buechel, Eike Emrich and Stefanie Pohlkamp, suggests otherwise. Game theory is a clever tool but the risk is that the theorist misses some bigger game. Buechel and colleagues argue that the bigger game in this case isn’t just between the athletes and the sporting authorities, but involves sports fans. The sad truth is that sports fans aren’t necessarily providing the right incentives.
Fans, understandably, do not like drug scandals: news that another sprinter has been caught taking steroids or another cyclist has been found using the blood-enhancer EPO does nothing to enhance the reputation of these sports. That typically means lower box-office takings, smaller broadcast revenues and less money from sponsors.
But what constitutes a drug “scandal”? It’s not the doping itself: that’s the offence, not the scandal. The scandal doesn’t break until the offence becomes public knowledge
Sochi Olympics has had two clever features. First, samples are being kept for 10 years. The usual reason given for this is that it may allow new and improved detection methods to catch cheats after the event, but there is nice side benefit: sporting authorities have more incentive to catch historical cheats than current cheats, because doing so presents an attractive image of a sport that is making progress.
Second, the IOC took great pains to describe the increased numbers of drug tests that would be conducted during the games – up by more than 14 per cent from the tests during the Vancouver Winter Olympics. We’re invited not to think of the failed drugs tests but all the tests that have passed. The real target for such announcements is not the athlete. It’s the sports fan.
