Sports betting and corruption: How to preserve the - SportAccord

Sports betting and corruption: How to preserve the integrity of sport
by the market open the way for methodical, balanced and dispersed placements, making it
possible to circumvent the warning systems.
- The exchange of information between operators on client accounts (provenance, dynamism,
resources etc.) is difficult, for various reasons: laws protecting personal data and file
exchanges, competitive environment, obligations of confidentiality with regard to clients etc.
- These monitoring systems are developed mostly in Europe, but the monitoring culture does
not exist among Asian operators. However, there is no doubt the latter have multiple channels
of detection that they use particularly in the event of reversals of odds that might have
benefited gamblers. In these cases they frequently cancel doubtful debts. On the other hand,
they do not clearly communicate suspicions of match-rigging.
- Lastly, given the integration of the markets and the widespread practice of hedging risks
among operators themselves, bets on rigged matches may be spread across different markets
and placed with different operators. As a result monitoring systems do not always enable the
initial origin and provenance of match-rigging to be identified.
The regulator’s role as an interface
It is possible to see nowadays that memoranda of understanding between operators or operator
associations and sports organisations are still insufficient to generate shared monitoring mechanisms.
A system of points of contact would therefore seem essential between operators, sports, federations
and/or leagues (depending on the discipline or competition), because it is important to have precise
and direct routes to the regulator in any case of suspicion, whether it originates in sport or among
operators, in such a way as to be as responsive as possible (particularly pre-match). This type of
system would enable sufficient elements of information to be brought together to a single contact
person in record time and then investigations could either be abandoned or pursued in more depth in
order to activate the polito-legal lever if necessary.
The system must be centralised by the regulator, who would be responsible for ensuring the
monitoring of alerts and notifying the sports movement on one hand and operators on the other. This
idea of an interface within the regulatory authority would appear to provide a way of fostering
improved control and extended visibility in the event of an alert being raised by one or more operators.
The regulator may centralise information and thereby establish a sort of safe where all data are
retained and accessible, then alert the sports movement him/herself in the event of a serious alert
generated by a monitoring system. It is important not to multiply or duplicate processes, and this
process would appear to avoid that. For example, operators could be obliged to provide quarterly
activity reports including topics such as the dynamism of the market in certain sports, clubs, and/or
competitions, accompanied by cross-sectional analyses of any anomalies observed.
The regulator could also be in charge of cross-checking certain data in order to verify that people
prohibited from betting do not have client accounts with operators.
It is this same logic that led to the establishment within some regulatory bodies of units dedicated to
the integrity of sport. In 2010 the Sports Integrity Panel in the United Kingdom, for example,
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