IBIA and MGA sign agreement
The betting association IBIA and the Malta gambling regulator have announced that they signed an integrity cooperation agreement.
Malta.- The International Betting Integrity Association (IBIA) and the Malta Gaming Authority’s (MGA) recently created a Sports Integrity Unit, which has highlighted the commitment to protecting consumers, sports and betting markets from corruption with the signing of a betting integrity information-sharing agreement, which came into force on Thursday.
The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) is the first agreement between the MGA’s new Unit and a betting monitoring system. It underlines the desire of both parties to tackle betting-related corruption.
Khalid Ali, CEO of the International Betting Integrity Association, said: “The creation of the Sports Integrity Unit and its focus on tackling match-fixing is a very welcome move, which is why I am delighted to have reached this agreement with the MGA that will allow us to work collaboratively on integrity. For its part, IBIA will utilise its unique global betting monitoring system, which includes many of the largest MGA licensed operators, to provide information on suspicious betting to the Unit with the aim of preventing sports betting-related corruption.”
Antonio Zerafa, the MGA’s Sports Integrity Officer, said: “The MGA has made the fight against the manipulation of sports competitions a core part of its licensing and regulatory policy. Working in partnership with other stakeholders, notably betting operators, is critical to the success of that approach and the MoU with IBIA is therefore of particular importance. IBIA and its members bring a wealth of market and consumer data that will undoubtedly serve to significantly strengthen the information and intelligence gathering ability of the Unit.”
IBIA welcomed ITF’s decision regarding betting
The association has issued a statement in favour of the International Tennis Federation (ITF) decision to allow official live scoring data for US$25k matches to continue to be sold to betting operators.
The association said that such measure reflects discussions with the Independent Review Panel (IRP) which saw the latter’s initial proposal to discontinue live data for all of the ITF World Tennis Tour, comprising US$15k and US$25k events, limited to US$15k. The sport has agreed to implement that proposal thereby preserving US$25k data sales used to create in-play betting products that are popular with many consumers, IBIA said.
