News

Significant Decline In Suspicious Betting

The International Betting Integrity Association (IBIA), has reported a significant decline in suspicious betting alerts for 2019. IBIA is a non-profit association whose members include many of the world’s largest regulated betting operators. Bet365, WilliamHill, Betfred to name a few. The board of directors has consisted of managers from WilliamHill, Betway, Ladbrokes, PaddyPower Betfair, etc. It worths mentioning that Pinnacle and some of the biggest Asian powerhouses are not members of the Association. Keep that in mind when reading the report.

Members of the association have full access to the integrity watchdog’s monitoring and alert platform, while also allowing them to share suspicious activity reports along with a network of other operator members. 

The figure is down

A total of 183 alerts across 12 different sports were reported to authorities during 2019. The figure is down 31% compared to 2018. Most bettors consider football as the most manipulated sport. But IBIA’s data shows that Tennis generates most concerns with 101 reports for the year. Football generated 49 alerts, while basketball followed with just eight alerts. Other popular sports like table tennis, volleyball and ice hockey attracted a number of alerts.

IBIA – UK in the top

Europe was responsible for the majority of reports, totalling 87 alerts. The report surprised us massively showing the UK is the country with the most generated alerts in Europe. Countries that were expected to be on the top of the list are almost lost at the bottom. Asia generated 52 alerts, 34 of which were related to tennis while only 10 alerts were linked to football. The report provides details for suspicious betting activities in several countries and sports.

IBIA’s alerts, and data from members, has been used in numerous successful investigations conducted by Interpol’s Match-Fixing Task Force to tackle corruption.

In the event of a warning being received, members of the association reserve the right at their absolute discretion, to suspend the offering of any betting event and delay or withhold payments, until the integrity of such event has been confirmed by the relevant sports federation via IBIA. That explains why bookmakers and exchanges remain silent and act slowly when freezing the balances of their clients on corruption based cases.

Conclusion

In addition, in the case of active event manipulation being confirmed by IBIA, its members reserve the right, at their discretion, to suspend any bets placed on such events, either by any individual identified by IBIA as having possessed insider betting knowledge or information or by any other individual who in the reasonable opinion of the bookmakers or sports governing bodies, is connected in any way with such individual.

It is our belief that much of the suspicious betting activity is channelled to Asian unlicensed bookmakers, where betting limits are much bigger and KYC processes are more relaxed compared to European high street bookmakers.