The Game Within the Game: How Sport Became a Gateway for Human Trafficking and What the World Must Do About It
September 2026 GLC Monthly Learning Call Brief
Seeing the layers of risk, responsibility and hidden power structures in sport
Key Learning Points from our May Calls:
Sport trafficking takes three forms — in, through, and around sport.
Trafficking in sport: genuine recruitment turns exploitative.
Trafficking through sport: a false opportunity is the lure.
Trafficking around sport: exploitation in sport's supporting industries.
Trust and the promise of a better future are what make sport exploitable.
Perpetrators are often trusted insiders, not outside criminals.
Prevention must start before recruitment and run through the whole journey.
A few simple due-diligence questions hold real protective power.
Responsibility is shared — no single actor can carry it alone.
Sport rarely polices itself — legislation from outside is what's driving change..
Introduction
In this community we all grasp the essential ‘playbook’ of modern slavery and human trafficking - vulnerability exists and is taken advantage of and exploited by those who are in positions to do so. We also know very many, nuanced forms of it in our respective communities and the particular segment of it that we work on, it is a thing that adapts, shifts and moves. In our September call one particular form of it - sport trafficking - was concisely framed and eye-openly broken down, even for the seasoned practitioners on the call.
Lerina Bright, founder of Mission 89 shared from her decades’ of experience, previously as a high level sports administrator, as well as from her knowledge and expertise forged in grappling with trafficking in sport and the research and advocacy she has led as part of the work of Mission 89. Her presentation drew from the Global Thematic Report on Sport Trafficking, the first peer-reviewed research of its kind produced by Mission 89, Loughborough University, and CPA UK, which informed UN Resolution 78/288. Her knowledge helped us see sport trafficking with great clarity and showed the way for action and intervention to be progressed and we also explored some illuminating real life examples and cases from participants.
The Secretariat couldn’t help but reflect on what we saw in real-time, that is the GLC working at its best. It was a distilled example of what the GLC is for: a topic raised by a community member (Adrian Alexander, Free the Slaves, Trinidad & Tobago) who on this occasion knew someone who could bring and share knowledge, the Secretariat doing the coordination to meet the need, and a call that reached people across multiple locations who could ask real questions and get real-time answers and guidance, as well as share real case examples to broaden our collective learning. Once again highlighting the value of human connection and reliable relationships so needed in our work
What we learned on the call
Sport Trafficking Framework - Seeing the shape of it
Sport trafficking Lerina explained, is not one problem but three, and pulling them apart is itself the useful thing. There is trafficking in sport – athletes are genuinely recruited but experience exploitative conditions such as document withholding, wage theft, restricted movement or coerced favors from coaches/agents. There is trafficking through sport – the sporting opportunity itself is not real or not what it claims to be, rather, the trial, contract or scholarship is used as a lure or vehicle to recruit victims into exploitation elsewhere, outside of sport. And there is trafficking around sport – exploitation in activities that sport depends on such as construction, hospitality, catering and the supply chains behind the stadium or a tournament, rather than the sport itself.
Sport creates unique vulnerabilities for young athletes because it is highly trusted and represents a pathway to better futures. Recruitment increasingly exploits this trust through deceptive channels - social Media, fake websites posing as legitimate clubs, and offers that appear credible. Families, desperate for their children's advancement, often pay significant fees or take out loans, creating debt-based control mechanisms that persist even when opportunities fail. The mobility inherent in sport amplifies vulnerability - young athletes move far from family and familiar support systems, becoming dependent on recruiters who control their documents, accommodation, movement, and access to opportunities. Perpetrators are not easily identified criminals but often legitimate figures around the athlete including coaches, agents, federation officials, and even family members, who hold positions of trust and power within the sporting ecosystem. Additionally, athletes cut from programs at young ages have nowhere to go and no support structures, leaving them extremely susceptible to further exploitation. the promise of a professional career, mobility, and community – all positive aspects of sport – Become the very mechanisms through which exploitation is concealed and sustained.
Prevention – a framework of shared responsibility
Lerina stressed that prevention only means something if it begins before recruitment and continues across the whole of an athlete's journey, rather than being reached for once harm is already suspected. She offered a set of due diligence questions that stay useful because they're simple: Before recruitment – who is making the offer, and can their legitimacy be checked independently of what they claim for themselves? Before travel – has the opportunity been verified by someone other than the person offering it, and is it clear who will be responsible for the athlete once they arrive? And throughout – can the athlete leave if they choose to, stay in contact with family, and reach support that doesn't run through the very people who might be the problem?
None of this, Lerina was careful to say, sits with one actor. Governments carry real weight – recognizing sport trafficking explicitly in national law and data collection does more than it might seem to, because naming a thing makes it far harder to pretend it isn't happening. Clubs and federations have their own obligations too, and while many now run anonymous whistleblowing channels, Lerina was candid about the structural bind they sit inside which is that federation leadership is often elected by the very club presidents whose conduct might need investigating, which makes robust internal accountability genuinely hard to achieve. She also pushed on something easy to overlook: a club's duty of care shouldn't simply end when a young player’s contract does, because a young athlete has often known nothing else and that moment of release can be its own point of high vulnerability. And then there are families and communities, so often the first place an opportunity is discussed and where there is real desire for better futures for their young people. Here is where their responsibility overlaps with wider institutional safeguarding responsibilities, and which can be fulfilled by holding onto a few plain questions – Who profits from this? Who has actually verified it? Who will be responsible for my child once they’ve gone?
In the discussion, Monica (Everfree, Uganda) raised something that we recognise is important for the sector as a whole, which is the tension they've come across in their prevention work in communities of how to emphasize very real risks and possible harms to parents, without fearmongering and blocking legitimate opportunities for children. While this is something that many in our community are trying to figure out, to the specific matter of sport trafficking Lerina shared a helpful resource - their Factsheet for Parents that can help parents recognise risks in regards to opportunities.
Essentially, for all involved, safeguiding checks should focus on control mechanisms, asking: Who holds documents, manages money, controls movement or determines access to opportunities?
Systemic barriers - Power, systems and structures.
Some of the discussion circled back to the question of what to do. Lerina highlighted the legitimate protocols that exist, if a team, club or academy is properly registered, there is a known process and route to follow to raise the alarm. But we also grappled with the deeper known problem of power and where it lies. Sport organisations face significant structural barriers to addressing trafficking because the systems designed to prevent exploitation are often controlled by the same powerful actors who benefit from things staying as they are. Many federation and club leaders lack awareness or intentionally distance themselves from trafficking issues, and those in governance positions know of problems but avoid robust action due to internal hierarchies where lower-level bodies depend on higher-level leadership for voting or approval. This creates a self-protective cycle where accountability mechanisms become ineffective because those investigating potential exploitation may have the most to lose if findings threaten powerful figures within sport. And because sport tends to handle its own investigations, discipline and appeals all inside the same closed structure, cases can quietly be resolved with very little that resembles real consequences and almost nothing in the way of outside eyes. Lerina also brought some insider insight to how an element of the culture inside the world of sport also enables exploitation, that is, athletes are discouraged from thinking critically about their rights and conditions - viewing education about exploitation risks as a distraction from performance rather than something that protects them. These interconnected power dynamics mean that legislative intervention from outside sport rather than reliance on self-regulation becomes necessary to create meaningful accountability and protection.
Implications for the GLC
After nearly a decade of sensitization work, Mission 89 has shifted toward legislative advocacy because sport organizations can no longer claim ignorance. Rather than appealing to sport's goodwill, the organization now works with governments to create legal frameworks that mandate protections, recognizing the challenges of sport bodies ‘self-regulating’. Lerina emphasized finding allies within government spaces, citing examples like ministers revising national anti-trafficking legislation to include sport-specific provisions such as in the recent case of Sierra Leone. And it is this legislative approach that creates opportunities for practitioners in the sector to collaborate and share the load, to harness government to drive change locally rather than waiting for voluntary compliance from sport organizations, for which Lerina and Mission 89 are very enthusiastic about.
The value of GLC learning is often in reminding us afresh of some things we already know and in helping us see the similarities across global locations and between our often siloed work. This call, like others over the past year, raised again the commonality of the need for effective relationship building. As we reflect on power, systems and structures as barriers in preventing sport trafficking, many of us understand that powers, systems and structures are likewise barriers in all the spheres of trafficking in which we work. It is often not simply ‘individual bad actors’ involved but entrenched power structures and even states themselves. But, within these there are individuals to be found who can become allies. Lerina highlighted that often these individuals are also seeking allies and by finding each other relationships can be built to take the work forward. The other value of this session was certainly in demystifying sport trafficking, helping us to understand its many layers and nuances, how legitimate pathways to raise concerns can be found and where we need to do some additional leg work.
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