Sports betting and corruption: How to preserve the - SportAccord

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Sports betting and corruption: How to preserve the integrity of sport - European Lottery Monitoring System 128 The European lotteries were the first to initiate this coordinated type of approach. Their association goes back to 1999, when it was named Match Info . It initially focused on sharing knowledge in their area of activity. The ELMS system was conceived in 2005 and has been fully operational since 2009. The monitoring team consists of technicians and analysts based in Copenhagen, within the Danish lottery organisation. Its members monitor various indicators in real time: the volumes generated by matches on Betfair and changes in odds both with the leading European operators and the heavyweights of the Asian market. The association centres its action on football, and monitored about 5,000 matches between January and October 2011. 93 alerts were issued. ELMS is now considering extending its skills, particularly to tennis and basketball. Members use an official Internet site to which they have secure access through a password. The Internet site contains details of all sporting events for which alerts have been issued, graded according to a five-level scale of risk. Email alerts are also generated by the team and sent automatically to dedicated departments in every member lottery (for example “Controle du jeu for La Francaise des Jeux). These departments are then required to indicate whether they too have noted anomalies likely to increase the level of doubt, particularly in relation to volumes of bets placed or abnormal or sudden variations in odds. The European Lottery Association (EL) is keen to extend this system - with the help of the World Lottery Association (WLA) - to the Asian lotteries (for example the Hong Kong Jockey Club) and other major players on other continents. Lotteries are not currently the dominant force in sports betting in Europe. Their role as precursors and their shared history with the public authorities nevertheless confer particular legitimacy on them, particularly with regard to extending monitoring to other regions of the world. The Internet platform is a particularly relevant resource, as it provides members with precise aggregated data on a daily basis. At their Annual General Meeting in June 2011, the European lotteries registered their commitment to preserving public order and the integrity of sport (Helsinki Declaration). In this declaration, they indicate more specifically their motivation to combat money-laundering, which is considered as the primary risk factor of corruption linked to sports betting. - European Sports Security Association 129 ESSA is an association of private operators whose 17 members lead the market in Europe. Established in 2005 and consisting originally of 6 members, ESSA is based in Brussels and its only remit is preserving the integrity of sport. Operator Bwin is one of its largest members, and is essentially the member on which ESSA s early warning system depends - its advanced system based in Gibraltar has a five-member security team led by a head bookmaker, whose task is to study suspect movements submitted by ESSA members. The association also has a bookmaker based at Ladbrokes in London. It is based on sharing information and communicating volumes, but does not go as far as exchanging data on gamblers accounts in the event of an alert. In 2010, ESSA issued 58 alerts which were the subject of in-depth enquiries, four of which were considered highly suspicious. 128 Interview on 7 June 2011, https://www.european-lotteries.org/home.php 129 Interview on 8 March 2011, http://www.eu-ssa.org/ 74
Sports betting and corruption: How to preserve the integrity of sport The use of service providers by sporting organisations - Sportradar 130 Sportradar, a commercial company, has developed the most successful system for monitoring betting operations. It was established in 2000 and currently has 300 employees, its activity having grown considerably in recent years. The company is present in 10 countries, primarily in Europe but also in Hong Kong and Russia. It specialises in football but is increasingly diversifying to other sports (handball, tennis, basketball, ice hockey). The tools it has developed for monitoring live betting are among the most sophisticated in the market. Sportradar is in contact with about 300 sports betting operators, including lotteries and private operators, primarily in Europe. It derives 70% of its income from providing sports data to these operators (the Betradar system) and 20% from selling information to the media. In parallel, it provides the sporting movement with fraud detection systems specifically to help them monitor the integrity of competitions (BFDS: Betting Fraud Detection System). This service is operated by a staff of 10. Sportradar has been collaborating with UEFA since 2005 and also works directly with national professional leagues (particularly in Germany and France), and occasionally with the public authorities. The monitoring system focuses on two indicators: changes in operators odds and bets laid with Betfair. The BFDS system analyses three types of data to provide information on variations in odds: pre-match odds, live odds, and lastly the Asian handicap run by the largest operators. The company also has a data archive that is updated instantly by a computerised matrix that captures the history of matches and the way their scores evolve. This system of aggregating data provides specific information on players and referees based on the course of matches in which they have participated. These data - which are not available to the general public - enable a wide range of criteria to be cross checked and help to identify leads in the event of suspicion. The system also serves to determine warning thresholds, which are set according to levels of imbalance , from 20% (green level) to 50% (orange level) to 100% (red alert). Red alerts are transmitted to the sports federations so as to enable them to take action if necessary. It should be noted that 1% of matches fall into the orange and red zones. Based on its observations, Sportradar therefore estimates that 300 professional football matches might potentially be rigged each year in Europe 131 . - Early Warning System (FIFA) and International Sports Monitoring (IOC) EWS was set up on the initiative of FIFA in 2006 to monitor the movements of bets during the World Cup, and since then has endeavoured to monitor all international matches 132 . Six people are employed to do this and the annual cost to FIFA is about 1 million. ISM, which is a sort of branch of EWS, is based on the same technical infrastructure but is financially independent and is set up only from time to time, in fact to follow Olympic competitions. 130 http://www.sportradar.ag/ 131 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11789671 132 http://fifa-ews.com/ 75
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Sports betting and corruption: How to preserve the - SportAccord

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