IBIA calls for LatAm jurisdictions to adopt robust sports betting integrity provisions

9 July 2024: The International Betting Integrity Association (IBIA) today called for Latin American decision-makers to increase their focus on creating a robust sports betting integrity ecosystem to tackle match-fixing.

The new Brazilian regulatory framework, which includes the requirement that licensed sports betting operators should join an independent integrity monitoring body, provides a template that should be replicated across the LatAm region.

ibia

The adverse impact of match-fixing on the Brazilian betting market and sport continues to be an issue of significant importance. IBIA therefore welcomes the recent publication of Ordinance 827/2024 and its integrity reporting requirements as a vital step towards addressing any integrity concerns. Brazil is poised to become an integrity leader in LatAm, which has seen IBIA report 127 cases of suspicious betting to the relevant authorities in the region over the last 5 years.

Khalid Ali, CEO of IBIA, said: “The Ordinance’s stipulation that operators in Brazil must join an independent sports integrity monitoring body is helping to drive growth in IBIA’s membership and in our ability to monitor more betting transactions in Brazil’s regulated market. Our priorities are to further strengthen our monitoring and alert network and extend our information sharing agreements with partner organisations in Brazil and across the Latin American region.”

The new regulatory regime has made Brazil an attractive market for licensed sports betting operators: it is projected to achieve $34bn in sports betting turnover by 2028, according to a recent study by H2 Gambling Capital. IBIA already accounts for more than 60% of the remote gambling market in Brazil, a figure that continues to grow, and has recently agreed an integrity information sharing and wider anti-match-fixing partnership with Genius Sports. IBIA is therefore well placed to support a crack-down on match-fixing in Brazil and wider LatAm as new gambling legislation gathers pace across the region.

Khalid Ali, CEO of IBIA: “With legalisation comes renewed responsibility to protect the sports betting market, sports and consumers from match-fixing. Brazil has set a high bar on integrity, but there remains a lot of work to do in the wider LatAm region. Our focus must be on creating a robust sports betting integrity ecosystem across the whole LatAm marketplace. IBIA will therefore be working with its widening LatAm network to ramp-up monitoring and strengthen the collaboration between key stakeholders.”

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 provides a free integrity monitoring and alert service to sports governing bodies, gambling regulators and law enforcement agencies, enabling all parties to cooperate in investigating, prosecuting and deterring sports betting related match-fixing.

IBIA’s monitoring and alert network is the largest and most effective of its kind. It harnesses the collective resources of the world’s biggest sports betting operators and can monitor and analyse $300bn in global betting transactions per annum. By monitoring transactional activity at the consumer account level it provides much more detailed and accurate information on suspicious bets to support investigations than systems which simply monitor betting odds movements.