ABSTRACT
This chapter contends that doping in sport evolved from simple cheating to economic crime; the current combat against doping behaviour is inefficient because it is based on wrong incentives; new appropriately designed rules can turn doping upside down into a self-defeating strategy. A first section reminds how doping transformed from cheating behaviour into hidden, though systematic, strategy which occurred when growing streams of money were poured into high-level and professional sports as major rewards for athlete performances. Then, some rules started prohibiting and sanctioning doping when unveiled so that it became an economic crime and was analysed as such by standard microeconomics (Becker) from which the tools currently used to combat doping were derived. A second section tackles the issue of how current anti-doping combat turned out to be inefficient; instead of curbing the growth in the number of doped athletes, it practically resulted in an ever more widespread doping behaviour. The last section suggests that an efficient anti-doping combat requires athlete behaviour to be transformed; such transformation can only result from changing incentives, which calls for a new set of rules. Six new rules, including a compulsory doping drug diary, are pushed forward that are likely to transform the doping prisoner dilemma into a new game where the dominant strategy is ‘no-over-doping’ in the long run (repeated games) while over-doping becomes a self-defeating strategy.
