Football (soccer) and tennis accounted for 68% of cases

The International Betting Integrity Association (IBIA) reported 56 alerts of suspicious betting to the relevant authorities in the first quarter (Q1) of 2024.

The Q1 2024 total is an increase of 65% when compared to 34 alerts in Q4 2023 and an increase of 12% when compared to the revised Q1 2023 total of 50 alerts. All of IBIA’s alerts are identified using customer account data from IBIA members, which number over 50 companies and 125 sports betting brands, making IBIA the largest integrity monitor of its type in the world.

The 56 incidents of suspicious betting in Q1 concerned six sports, across 21 countries and five continents. Other key data for Q1 2024 includes:

• Football (soccer) had the highest number of alerts by sport with 24, representing a 50% increase on the 16 reported in Q4 2023 and a 60% increase on the 15 reported in Q1 2022.
• Turkey had the highest number of country alerts with 8 (five in football, two in tennis and one in basketball).
  41% of all alerts in Q1 were identified on sporting events taking place in Asia, with North and South America joint second with 18% each.
• There were only 4 alerts identified on sporting events in Europe, which represents a decrease of 76% compared to 17 alerts in Q4 2023.

Khalid Ali, IBIA CEO, said: “The first quarter saw an increase in reported alerts highlighting the ongoing challenge our members, sports and regulatory authorities face from corrupt activity, with football and Asia dominating our Q1 report. IBIA’s alerts are supported by detailed global customer account data only available to IBIA and its membership, which continues to grow, widening our world leading market coverage. That account data provides evidentiary information that is vital for advancing investigations and imposing sanctions. IBIA is committed to continuing to work closely with stakeholders and to providing this important evidence base.”

The Q1 report includes a focus on the availability of sports betting in Canada and a comparison between the licensing approach in Ontario and the monopoly approach in the rest of the country. IBIA recently released a report on the Availability of Sports Betting Products which highlighted Ontario as a leading regulated gambling jurisdiction, with an expected onshore channelisation for sports betting of 92% in 2024 forecast to rise to 97% in 2028. Whereas the rest of Canada combined is forecast to have an onshore rate of around 11% in 2024 becoming 13% by 2028.

IBIA currently represents over 60% of the private sports betting operators licensed in Ontario, with Glitnor recently announced as the latest operator to join the association in that province. IBIA is a not-for-profit body that has no competing conflicts with the delivery of commercial services to other sectors and is run by operators for operators to protect regulated sports betting markets from match-fixing. IBIA’s global monitoring network is a highly effective anti-corruption tool, detecting and reporting suspicious activity in regulated betting markets.

Through the IBIA global monitoring network it is possible to track transactional activities linked to individual customer accounts. IBIA members have over $300bn per annum in betting turnover (handle), accounting for approximately 50% of the global commercial regulated land-based and online sports betting sector, and in excess of 50% for online alone.