Sports betting and corruption: How to preserve the - SportAccord

Sports betting and corruption: How to preserve the integrity of sport
Be that as it may, the study of current initiatives demonstrates increasing mobilisation of the sports
movement at different levels. While some sports are still poorly equipped to assess the risk and protect
themselves against it, there are tools already in existence that help to identify best practice and enable
it to be adopted and applied in more depth.
2. Sports betting operators
Betting operators provide major support in the action because they have data enabling the detection
and illustration of attacks on the integrity of sport. The Internet has helped to multiply the number of
stakeholders in the activity. The offering is diversifying and more and more bets are being offered on
an ever-increasing variety of sports competitions. The operators have an important role to play in this
context, because the products they market can in some cases present direct risks to the integrity of
sporting competitions.
For operators, combating fraud linked to sports betting primarily relates to their image and reputation,
which are vital in retaining the trust of gamblers. An operator s credibility depends on their being able
to ensure the genuineness of the sporting results on which they accept bets. Furthermore, sports betting
operators are operating and expanding in a competitive economic environment, and the very principle
of match fixing distorts such competition.
The very significant growth in the offering in recent years has considerably enlarged the field over
which control needs to be exercised. The new routes opened up 15 years ago with the development of
the Internet have helped to expand the offering, which now extends to multiple sports and phases of
matches alike.
Operators are introducing monitoring systems that serve both to optimise their risk management (i.e.
for fixed odds betting, approaching as closely as possible to their target margin despite the
uncertainties linked to sporting results) and the detection of irregular bets. In this latter respect,
initiatives have flourished in recent years with the introduction of early warning systems specifically
for the surveillance of sports betting. These are a key resource in preserving the integrity of sport and
combating money-laundering. In addition, the Internet can enable better management of suspicious
movements by breaking down the barrier of anonymity and enabling the aggregation of data relating
to the provenance, nature and concentration of transactions. This does not however prevent the
continuing difficulty of monitoring international transactions.
A distinction must be made between state lottery operators on the one hand 90 (which, in many
European countries, offer sports betting) and private operators on the other, a difference relating to
their respective statuses and identities. Lotteries are essentially public, whereas private operators are
committed to a more lucrative approach. So their approaches often diverge when it comes to the
conditions for managing the market and/or regulating offerings. However they share the desire to
combat fraud, the lotteries from the point of view of preserving public order, the private operators to
protect their commercial interests (competitions that are too corrupted risk chasing gamblers away).
90 The field of activity of lotteries initially covered gambling and games of chance (lotteries, scratch cards etc.), but they
have diversified their activities and now also offer sports betting. The term lottery will be used in this study to refer to this
latter field of activity.
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