SBC News Voice of the Sports Betting Industry
l’Autorité Nationale des Jeux (ANJ) has joined French sporting bodies in support of the ‘Paris 2024 Objective’ to strengthen the fight against the manipulation of sports competitions.
Yesterday, ANJ, France’s unified gambling authority, hosted Minister of Sports, Amélie Oudéa-Castéra and executives from the Olympic and Paralympic Games to showcase French betting’s new sports manipulation monitoring system.
The new system put in place during the Rugby World Cup, on the eve of the France vs Italy match, recorded “€75m staked on France with no signs of manipulation observed.”
The tighter scrutiny of betting activity has seen the ANJ implement a new daily monitoring procedure which excludes easily manipulated bets and low-level competitions from being wagered on in France.
Operators must log all online bets with the ANJ to help identify “atypical bets hidden among operators as well as abnormal odds”. Should the ANJ suspect manipulations, the regulator has the direct authority to suspend a specific betting market or competition.
Preparing for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, the ANJ will spearhead directives of the Copenhagen Group, a network of European stakeholders formed under the Macolin Convention to improve international cooperation against the manipulation of sports.
In 2020, the ANJ was established as the ‘single regulatory body’ to govern all regulated gambling activities for sports betting, casino, horseracing, lottery and online gambling.
The ANJ serves as a key member of the Sports Ministry’s ‘National Platform against Sports Manipulation’ – a cooperative that was integrated into France’s Sports Code in 2022. Since January 2023, platform members have processed 76 notices regarding potential manipulations.
France serves as a guarantor of the Macolin Convention of 2014, in which its national sports bodies must enhance their monitoring and network capacities against sports manipulation.
The Paris 2024 Objective will see deeper collaboration between ANJ and national sports bodies focused on “training and surveillance”, with ANJ also educating volunteers on betting regulations and reporting procedures.
