The Global Lottery Monitoring System (GLMS), the sports betting integrity body for the lottery industry, has revealed that it flagged 157 matches to its partner network for potentially suspicious activity in 2019, with football once again dominating.The vast majority of these alerts were sent to football’s world and European governing bodies, FIFA and UEFA, with alerts generated for 98 matches. During the year 12 alerts were sent to the International Olympic Committee, with 78 sent to other governing bodies. GLMS noted that certain events were sent to more than one body.
Members, meanwhile, received 787 alerts after detecting irregularities in betting patterns. While this was once again subject to some duplication, Europe accounted for the bulk of these, with 570 sent. Football again dominated, accounting for 450 of the 570, followed by 62 for basketball and 16 for tennis.
Asia followed with 88 alerts, of which 67 were for football, 16 for basketball and 4 for tennis. South America came third with 65 alerts, with 59 for football, five for basketball and one for tennis.
Of these 787 alerts, 50 were “code red”, where serious irregularities were identified or allegations of match-fixing made by a named source were made. Yellow events, triggered by unexplained odds changes, rumours of match-fixing or information provided by members, accounted for 160 of the total.
The majority (420) were classed as green alerts, in which minor odds changes, team-related news or wrong starting prices were to blame, with a further 157 sent at the request of members.
Alerts tended to be generated before a match started, with unusual activity flagged pre-match on 583 occasions, far ahead of the 186 alerts generated in-play. Just 18 matches were flagged after they had concluded.
GLMS president Ludovico Calvi described 2019 as a successful year for the monitoring body, in which it had expanded its partner base, signed up new members and expanded its educational efforts.
“As we look ahead to 2020, we will continue in our effort to expand our global membership base,” Calvi said.
He revealed GLMS will continue to expand into new territories by opening an integrity hub in Canada, following the launch of a similar centre in Hong Kong, with efforts to ramp up its presence in North America also underway.
“We also look forward to further supporting the Council of Europe with the promotion and implementation of the Macolin Convention, which is clearly the most comprehensive and global legal instrument acting against the manipulation of sport competitions world-wide,” he added.
