The pandemic has made match fixing more of a possibility, while a lack of information about COVID-19 outbreaks on teams has put sportsbooks at greater risk of putting up the wrong line.
That was the focus during the Integrity in Sports Betting panel Tuesday at the SBC Barcelona Summit Digital.
“The new normal is clearly different regarding sports integrity,” said Gilles Maillet, the director of sports integrity for FDJ, the French betting operator. “The key message is the financial deficiencies of sports worldwide are creating large opportunities for organized crime to develop match fixing.”
Maillet said that’s why in July, the International Olympic Committee, INTERPOL and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime urged cooperation among teams and other stakeholders in sharing information. Otherwise, global sports would be in danger.
Faiz Kabir, senior integrity manager with data company SportRadar, said one new challenge for the sports betting industry is identifying athletes and teams impacted by COVID-19. Another is the unstable financial picture of sports teams around the world that have lost revenue streams, such as gate receipts, caused by the coronavirus.
“A significant number of global sports teams may not make it through the pandemic, and we believe match fixers are likely to target these clubs,” Kabir said. “In areas where match fixing was already occurring, it’s almost been worsened by the pandemic.”
As for the coronavirus impacting matches, Kabir said there have been examples where a team has had several positive tests, but it hasn’t cancelled their matches. Some teams have fielded youth players and reserves instead.
Oliver Lamb, head sportsbook controller with Kambi, a provider of sports betting services to gaming operators, said, “Everybody gets it now — the value and importance of integrity.”
That’s especially true with the return of high-level soccer matches in September and how sports can be impacted by the coronavirus, Lamb said. It will be a challenge to know what players teams are fielding, for example.
“The initial lockdown, as chaotic as it was, was a global lockdown and there were no regional differences,” Lamb said. “In the future, we will see more localized impacts from COVID, with only certain countries or individual sports within regions impacted. It’s about maintaining our vigilance and following the news and maintaining procedures and being ready to adapt at any time. If you approve a soccer tournament, you have to keep following the news and making sure you have the information and a daily verification of what we want to offer is still valid.”
Niels Erik Folmann, CEO of Denmark betting operator Danske Licens Spil, said one of the lessons learned from COVID-19 is to be even more careful of what betting options are offered to ensure integrity isn’t compromised. Betting operators, for example, added table tennis and when questions of integrity rose, they later dropped it from their menu.
The panel discussion was hosted by Silvia Paleari, senior public affairs manager at the International Betting Integrity Association.
