SBC News Voice of the Sports Betting Industry
The International Betting Integrity Association (IBIA) has signed a betting integrity information sharing agreement with the Sports Integrity Unit, a new unit launched by the Malta Gaming Authority (MGA) this summer as part of an initiative to increase the focus on the fight against the manipulation of sports competitions.
The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) is the first agreement between the MGA’s new Unit and a betting monitoring system, which underlines the desire of both parties to tackle betting related corruption.
Khalid Ali (pictured at Betting on Sports 2019) is the IBIA CEO. He said: “The creation of the Sports Integrity Unit and its focus on tackling match-fixing is a very welcome move, which is why I am delighted to have reached this agreement with the MGA that will allow us to work collaboratively on integrity.
“For its part, IBIA will utilise its unique global betting monitoring system, which includes many of the largest MGA licensed operators, to provide information on suspicious betting to the Unit with the aim of preventing sports betting related corruption.”
Antonio Zerafa, the MGA’s Sports Integrity Officer, added: “The MGA has made the fight against the manipulation of sports competitions a core part of its licensing and regulatory policy. Working in partnership with other stakeholders, notably betting operators, is critical to the success of that approach and the MoU with IBIA is therefore of particular importance.
“IBIA and its members bring a wealth of market and consumer data that will undoubtedly serve to significantly strengthen the information and intelligence gathering ability of the Unit.”
It comes in the same week that the IBIA praised tennis authorities for allowing the continued sale of official live scoring data to betting operators for International Tennis Federation (ITF) matches at the $25k level. The organisation played a key role in revising initial proposals put forward by the sport’s Independent Review Panel (IRP), which suggested discontinuing the data for both $15k and $25k events.
