GLMS: 41% increase in suspicious betting alerts in 2020
The Global Lottery Monitoring System (GLMS) has reported that it issued 1,113 suspicious betting alerts to members last year.
Switzerland.- The sports betting integrity body for the international lottery industry, Global Lottery Monitoring System (GLMS), has reported that it issued 1,113 suspicious betting alerts in 2020. That’s an increase of 41.4 per cent year-on-year.
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More than half of the alerts (724) were made in Europe. The majority of those were related to football (559) followed by basketball (70) and tennis (29).
The body also issued 191 suspicious betting alerts for Asia, 90 for South America, 64 for North America, 23 for Africa and seven for Oceania.
Football remained the sport that raised by far the most concerns overall. It was responsible for 832 suspicious betting alerts, almost three quarters of all alerts issued last year.
Basketball came second with 134 reports, followed by ice hockey (55), tennis (50), American football (11), esports (10) and volleyball (10).
GLMS also issued five suspicious betting alerts for handball, three for baseball and just one each for table tennis, badminton and the Southeast Asian kick volleyball, sepak takraw. No alerts were issued for hockey, rugby, cycling or boxing last year.
The most common reason for alerts in 2020 was the provision of team-related news (402 cases), followed by significant changes in odds (192 cases) and the wrong opening price (140).
More than half of alerts were rated as “green” alerts, the least serious in the body’s traffic light rating system. It issued 86 of the most serious red-level alerts, which include cases such as suspicious odds changes, rumours of match-fixing from a known source and patterns on Betfair exchange volumes.
As well as alerting its own members, GLMS sent 126 alerts to partners such as sports governing bodies, mainly to FIFA and UEFA.
It also sent reports to the Esports Integrity Coalition (ESIC) and Tennis Integrity Unit.
