SBC News Voice of the Sports Betting Industry
International betting integrity body ESSA has published its integrity report for the first quarter of 2018, reporting 50 cases of suspicious betting to the relevant authorities during the period.
Breaking down those figures sees nine sports involved, with tennis having the most cases with 27, followed by eleven cases in football and four in table tennis.
Of the rest, both badminton and volleyball saw two cases each reported, whilst there was one each in basketball, ice hockey, beach volleyball and esports.
Amongst the Q1 report is an article for European football’s governing body Uefa, who work alongside a range of partners to protect the integrity of its games, which was enhanced via an information sharing memorandum of understanding, signed with ESSA earlier this year.
Nicholas Raudenski, Uefa integrity officer, details that through his organisation’s policy to tackle match fixing, also encompassing varying degrees of disciplinary processes, the body outlines a four pillar approach including monitoring and investigations, education, legal framework and sanctions.
Khalid Ali, ESSA Secretary General, said: “The publication of the interim report into integrity issues in tennis has understandably focused attention on that sport.
“Tennis makes up over half of our alerts in the first quarter of 2018, but it is important to highlight that it is one of nine sports on which alerts were reported.
“Therefore ESSA has continued the expansion of its information sharing partnerships throughout the first quarter.
“This has seen important agreements concluded with the Rugby Football Union, International Cricket Council, State of Victoria Police, Portuguese gambling regulator and UEFA.
“In addition, ESSA’s betting integrity officer was seconded to the IOC to help monitor the Winter Olympic Games.
“This proved to be a resounding success and will hopefully pave the way for similar stakeholder engagement and integrity partnership working with other sports during their high-profile events.”
