Major League Baseball and FCPA Compliance Aren’t All that Different

Batter up! As we head into Major League Baseball playoffs, it’s a good time to revisit FCPA compliance. That’s right, I said FCPA compliance.

MLB offers a very useful analogy to FCPA. The MLB steroids scandal is arguably the biggest scandal in all of sports—so big that Sports Illustrated called it the number one sports story of the 2000s. MLB turned a blind eye to the use of steroids and human growth hormones for years because it was good for business. Comedian Daniel Tosh once said that baseball needs steroids because it makes the game more entertaining. Of course he was joking, but what he said has at least some truth, as the increase in attendance during the steroid era proves.

Ultimately in MLB, it was the “clean” players who led the effort to change their collective bargaining agreement (CBA) to allow PED testing. MLB now claims to have the toughest policy out of all of the major North American professional sports. Just as those players initiated change, our customers who have implemented Insights On Demand for FCPA are among those leading the charge for FCPA compliance. Perhaps like MLB, it will be the ones following the rules that lead the much needed change in implementing solutions that ensure fair play.