International sports betting integrity body ESSA reported 72 cases of suspicious betting to the relevant authorities during the third quarter (Q3) of 2017.

This was made up of 46 cases in tennis, followed by football and table tennis with 8 cases each, basketball with four and two cases each for badminton, snooker and volleyball. A total of 152 cases of suspicious betting have been identified and reported by ESSA and its members during the first three quarters of 2017.

ESSA Secretary General Khalid Ali said: “The figures for this quarter again demonstrate the ongoing threat that faces the regulated betting sector and our sports and regulatory authority partners. ESSA has redoubled its efforts to meet that challenge and invested in a number of key initiatives and activities. Partnership working remains at the heart of that approach, with our recent betting integrity event and general stakeholder engagement programme a testament to that.”

The Q3 integrity report includes articles by international law enforcement body INTERPOL on the organisation’s actions to tackle organised criminal activity related to betting and match-fixing, and also by Matt Fowler, ESSA’s Betting Integrity Officer, who outlines his role and the positive impact of having a dedicated resource in this area for ESSA members and our partners alike.

ESSA holds positions on match-fixing and betting policy forums at the European Commission, Council of Europe and the IOC. It is driving a number of important initiatives aimed at addressing match-fixing and is currently involved in four anti-match-fixing projects (see here), having recently hosted an international betting integrity conference at Lords Cricket Ground in London attended by over 150 senior officials from sports bodies, regulatory authorities, policymakers and other key stakeholders.

A copy of ESSA’s Q3 2017 integrity report can be accessed here (also attached), along with previous reports.

About ESSA:

ESSA represents many of the world’s biggest regulated sports betting operators, serving over 40 million consumers in the EU alone. Concerned regulated bookmakers created ESSA in 2005 to monitor betting markets and alert sporting bodies and national regulators to suspicious betting patterns. The goal was, and is, to protect consumers from potential fraud caused by manipulating sporting events. ESSA helps to combat this with evidence-based intelligence it provides to sporting bodies and regulators.

Every year, our members invest over €50m in compliance and internal security systems in order to help combat fraud. They also give back to sport and society by spending €400m on sponsorship around the world – €250m of that in Europe alone. This increases substantially when advertising and photo and video-streaming rights are taken into consideration. ESSA and its members also co-fund an education programme on gambling with EU Athletes that reaches out to 15,000 athletes/players across at least ten different sports in 13 EU countries.

ESSA continues to play a key role as the regulated betting sector’s representative body at national and international match-fixing policy forums and holds positions on working groups at the European Commission, Council of Europe and the International Olympic Committee (IOC). The organisation is continually reassessing and improving its alert and reporting systems and has established information sharing arrangements with a range of sports bodies and regulatory authorities.

ESSA members include: 888sport, ABB, Bet-at-Home, Betclic, Betdaq, Betsson, BetStars, BetVictor, Betway, bet365, bwin, Expekt, Fonbet, Gamesys, Interwetten, Ladbrokes Coral, Paddy Power Betfair, Sky Bet, Sportingbet, Sporting Index, Sportium, Stanleybet, Stoiximan, Unibet and William Hill.

International betting integrity body ESSA is to engage in three new anti-match-fixing projects that have been granted funding from the European Commission’s Erasmus+ programme. It will see the association involved in a total of four anti-match-fixing projects simultaneously and is part of ESSA’s on-going policy to participate in and promote integrity efforts on behalf of its members, which include leading global sports betting brands.

Khalid Ali, Secretary General for ESSA, welcomed the successful funding applications stating: “These projects have the potential to make a significant positive impact in the fight against match-fixing. They represent an important part of ESSA’s goal to protect our members, consumers and sporting events from betting related corruption, in collaboration with key stakeholders. We look forward to working closely with our partners and contributing fully to all of the projects we are involved in.”

ESSA has supported the EU Athletes’ player betting education programme since 2010 and its new PROtect Integrity+ project is one of the three that have received Erasmus+ funding. The new project’s aim is to combat the cross-border match-fixing threat to European sport by providing the first European-wide, athlete-led whistleblowing system. Implemented in the first stage in seven countries and five different sports, the secure mobile application reporting tool will encourage athletes to report approaches and suspicions of match-fixing.

ESSA will also be involved in the T-PREG and Fundacja Ekstraklasy anti-match-fixing projects. The Lisbon and Milan Catholic University coordinated T-PREG project will roll out a programme of workshops designed to educate and deter match-fixing, enhancing the know-how on reporting systems across all levels of sport in at least five EU countries. The Polish football managed Fundacja Ekstraklasy programme will conduct a comprehensive assessment of the reasons motivating match-fixing in European football and seek to implement preventative actions.

These three programmes add to ESSA’s existing engagement in Transparency International’s Anti Match-Fixing Top Training programme, which was granted Erasmus+ funding last year. It is focused on delivering tailored training for top decision-makers in sport and the media to promote increased understanding, and effective policy action guidelines to the European Commission. ESSA has also recently finished a successful 18-month collaboration with the Council of Europe led Keep Crime out of Sport (KCOOS) project promoting the Convention on the Manipulation of Sports Competitions.

The announcement coincides with the EU’s annual European Week of Sport (23-30 September), designed to promote sport and physical activity across Europe.

The last six months have seen three significant changes within ESSA. First, we announced that Heike Mayer would pick up the baton of Chair after Mike O’Kane, a veteran of over 40 years in the industry stepped down following his retirement from Ladbrokes. Mike did a great job in repositioning the association and has been an influential and vocal advocate of ESSA members and our sector in general and I would like to thank him for all his hard work over the last five years. Heike, who is responsible for Public and Regulatory Affairs at GVC, is well-versed in the issues facing our sector and I look forward to working with her to deliver and implement a strategy that meets those challenges.

Second, we expanded our Board of Directors to reflect our growing membership and I’m delighted that Paddy Power Betfair and Betway will be bringing their wealth of experience to the table to help drive us forward to achieve our goals.

Third, we employed our first full time Betting Integrity Officer, Matt Fowler, who was previously at Paddy Power Betfair in a similar positon.
The creation of this role was part of our strategic objective for 2017 and it highlights our desire to continue to improve the association and build upon its two main aims of representing the views of members on integrity issues and to developing and utilising the ESSA alert platform to combat the menace from betting related corruption. In a future edition of the quarterly report Matt will be explaining his role in more detail.

In other significant news, I was contacted by the Council of Europe (CoE) which has asked ESSA to deliver a report on behalf of the private sports betting industry to feed into their ongoing efforts to ratify the CoE’s match-fixing Convention. The principal focus of the report will be the information exchange between operators, sports and national platforms and how to identify risk and improve risk management.

ESSA is well-placed to lead on this and it is an excellent opportunity for us to put forward our views and participate in a high-level international conference planned by the Council of Europe in early 2018. It will also feed into our own integrity conference at Lords Cricket Ground in London on 12 October, for which an attendee registration page is now available on the ESSA website.

In this edition of the quarterly report you will find an article from Professor Nolte, from the Institute of Sports Law at the University of Cologne, who has analysed the gambling regulation currently in place in Germany and finds that it has failed to adequately protect the betting related threats to the integrity of sports competitions. We also have an article from Ian Smith who is the Commissioner for the eSports Integrity Coalition (ESIC). Ian explains how a lack of governance in the sector and the growth of betting on eSports saw the ESIC created to deal with betting related fraud and wider threats to the sector.

Khalid Ali
Secretary General

You can read the rest of the report here!