Young athletes are too often targeted by false promises of trials, contracts, scholarships, and migration opportunities. What looks like a pathway to success can quickly become a route into trafficking, abuse, abandonment, or labour exploitation. Sport trafficking is not on the margins of global sport — it is embedded within it.
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Sport trafficking did not exist as a recognised concept at the time of the United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organised Crime (UNTOC) and its Protocols, negotiated from 1998 to 2000. The most significant of these Protocols — the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, commonly known as the Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Protocol or the Palermo Protocol — established the foundational international legal definition of trafficking in persons.
The Global Thematic Report on Sport Trafficking (2024) uses the Palermo Protocol as its analytical and legal framework, examining sport trafficking through the lens of Article 3 and its three key definitional elements: the act, the means, and the purpose of exploitation.
Article 3(a) — UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children (Palermo Protocol, 2000)
‘Trafficking in persons’ shall mean the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation. Exploitation shall include, at a minimum, the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labour or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs.
Article 3(c) — Special Provision for Children
The recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of a child for the purpose of exploitation shall be considered ‘trafficking in persons’ even if this does not involve any of the means set forth in subparagraph (a) of this article. This provision is of critical importance: in the case of children, no deception, coercion, or force is required to constitute the crime of trafficking. The act and the purpose of exploitation are sufficient. This means that where a child has been recruited and exploited through sport — regardless of whether they or their family initially consented — the crime of trafficking has been committed.
In addition to the Palermo Protocol, the international legal framework governing Mission 89’s work includes:
Prior to 2024, no internationally accepted definition of sport trafficking existed. This absence created significant gaps: cases were misclassified as smuggling rather than trafficking, victims went unidentified, and targeted legal responses were impossible. Mission 89, through its Global Thematic Report on Sport Trafficking (2024) — produced in partnership with Loughborough University and the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association UK — established the world’s first comprehensive working definition.
Prior to 2024, no internationally accepted definition of sport trafficking existed. This absence created significant gaps: cases were misclassified as smuggling rather than trafficking, victims went unidentified, and targeted legal responses were impossible. Mission 89, through its Global Thematic Report on Sport Trafficking (2024) — produced in partnership with Loughborough University and the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association UK — established the world’s first comprehensive working definition.
This definition is deliberately aligned with the Palermo Protocol to ensure it carries legal weight within existing anti-trafficking frameworks, while applying the Protocol’s definitional elements specifically to the sport context. As Lead Researcher Dr Serhat Yilmaz of Loughborough University explained at the report’s launch: ‘Without a precise, sport-specific definition of trafficking, we are dealing with inadequate legal protections, ineffective policy development, challenges in identifying and supporting victims, limited prevention strategies, and blurred legal distinctions that allow perpetrators to escape accountability.’
The Global Thematic Report on Sport Trafficking (2024) introduces a three-subset conceptual framework for understanding how trafficking manifests in the world of sport. Each form is grounded in the legal definition of the TIP Protocol and is supported by documented case studies.
Trafficking in sport involves athletes or aspiring athletes who are recruited and exploited primarily within the context of sport itself. Exploitation occurs inside the sporting environment through mechanisms including debt bondage, exploitative contracts, situations where agents take up to 50 per cent of athletes’ salaries, and third-party ownership arrangements that treat athletes as commodities rather than persons with rights. This form encompasses both labour and sexual exploitation within sport-related settings.Documented cases span football, athletics, basketball, baseball, and Muay Thai boxing. A prominent example from the Global Thematic Report is the Portuguese football academy case of 2023, in which 47 young players — including 36 minors from Africa, Asia, and South America — were rescued from a trafficking operation. An earlier Belgian case involved over 400 illegally traded Nigerian players, illustrating the scale of organised criminal exploitation within football recruitment structures.The defining characteristic of trafficking in sport is that the exploitation is inseparable from the sporting activity itself: the athlete is exploited because of, and within, their role as an athlete.
Trafficking through sport uses sport as a recruitment mechanism — a vehicle for deception — but the exploitation itself occurs outside the sporting environment. Victims are lured with promises of trials, professional contracts, academy placements, or scholarship opportunities that either do not exist or are pretexts for exploitation in non-sport settings.In these cases, fraudulent agents, scouts, or intermediaries identify young athletes and their families — often from economically vulnerable communities — and present an offer that appears entirely legitimate. Families may pay significant fees for what they believe is a genuine opportunity. When the athlete arrives in the destination country, no trial or contract materialises. Instead, the victim may be financially exploited and abandoned, left in an irregular migration situation, or trafficked directly into forced labour, domestic servitude, or sexual exploitation.The Global Thematic Report documents cases involving Latin American athletes promised European trials who arrived to find no contract existed, subsequently falling into exploitative labour arrangements. What makes trafficking through sport particularly difficult to prosecute is that, at the point of recruitment, the transaction appears to involve a legitimate sport opportunity.
Trafficking around sport is the third and most novel subset, introduced by the Global Thematic Report as a contribution to the existing conceptual framework. It recognises that sport can be incidental to exploitation — where victims neither participate in nor engage with sporting activity, but are exploited on the fringes of the sport industry or in proximity to sporting events.This form includes: the sexual exploitation of non-athletes during mega sporting events, where increased demand is well documented — the 2017 Super Bowl, for example, resulted in approximately 750 arrests related to human trafficking activities; labour trafficking in the construction of sporting infrastructure (stadiums, training facilities, accommodation for events); exploitation of workers in the hospitality and service sectors mobilised around tournaments; and forced labour in the supply chains producing sporting goods, apparel, and equipment.The 2026 FIFA World Cup (United States, Canada, and Mexico) and the Morocco-Spain-Portugal 2030 World Cup represent significant areas of concern for trafficking around sport. The scale of construction, hospitality, and informal service provision associated with these events creates conditions that criminal networks have historically exploited. This is a central focus of Mission 89’s forthcoming second Global Thematic Report.
Sport trafficking sits at the intersection of poverty, unequal access to opportunity, weak oversight, and the global prestige attached to professional sport. Where families feel they have few alternatives, risky offers can appear legitimate. Where regulation is weak or poorly enforced, harmful actors can operate with little scrutiny. The root causes include:
Reliable data on sport trafficking remains limited and contested. Cases are chronically underreported, definitions have historically varied, and many affected athletes disappear into informal or cross-border systems where they are invisible to authorities. The Global Thematic Report identifies several factors that compound this:
Young players estimated to be trafficked annually from West Africa to Europe through football alone (Guilbert, cited in GTRST 2024)
Young players including 36 minors from Africa, Asia, and South America rescued from a football academy trafficking operation in Portugal in 2023
Arrests related to human trafficking activities during the 2017 Super Bowl sweep by US police authorities
Estimated global sports industry value — making the sport ecosystem a lucrative playground for traffickers (Global Sports Insight, cited in GTRST 2024)
Prevention must begin earlier. Athletes and families need practical information about safe recruitment, legitimate contracts, and warning signs. Sports bodies need stronger safeguarding standards, better oversight of academies and intermediaries, and real accountability when minors are placed at risk. The Global Thematic Report makes consolidated recommendations for policymakers, sport organisations, law enforcement, prosecutors, the judiciary, and service providers. Key areas for action include: