ESSA reports 50 suspicious betting cases in Q1
The integrity body has reported that the amount represents an increase on the 27 that were reported in 1Q17.
US.- ESSA, the international betting integrity body, has released its quarterly report, in which it details that there has been an increase in the suspicious betting cases during the first three months of the year.
The entity revealed that there have been 50 cases in the first quarter, which is a significant increase from the 27 that were reported during the same period in 2017. Tennis is once again the sport with the biggest amount of suspicious cases with 27 reports on its own, while football appears in the second position with 11 reports. Table tennis completes the third position with four cases, while volleyball and badminton generated two each. Basketball, eSports, ice hockey and beach volleyball generated one each.
Khalid Ali, ESSA secretary general, said: “The publication of the interim report on integrity issues in tennis has understandably focused attention on that sport. Tennis makes up over half of our alerts in the first quarter of 2018, but it is important to highlight that it is one of nine sports on which alerts were reported. Therefore, ESSA has continued the expansion of its information sharing partnerships throughout the first quarter.”
“This has seen important agreements concluded with the Rugby Football Union, International Cricket Council, State of Victoria Police, Portuguese gambling regulator and UEFA. In addition, ESSA’s betting integrity officer was seconded to the IOC to help monitor the Winter Olympic Games. This proved to be a resounding success and will hopefully pave the way for similar stakeholder engagement and integrity partnership working with other sports during their high-profile events.”
The ESSA alert system primarily works on the input provided by its members, notably alerts created by members relating to suspicious transactions detected by their own internal control systems. If such an alert is issued, which occurs through ESSA’s alert platform, members are required to respond quickly confirming whether or not similar trends have been seen elsewhere in their markets.
