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IBIA Finds Fifty Suspicious Bets Placed Between April And June 2023

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The International Betting Integrity Association (IBIA) has released its Integrity Report for the second quarter of 2023. Fifty violations occurred over the three-month span, according to Q2 findings.

Between April and June of this year, 68% of all registered alerts occurred in Europe. This is a trend that dates back to 2018.

Top Four Sports Receiving Alerts

  • Soccer – 19
  • Tennis -14
  • Table Tennis – 8
  • Darts – 5

Shrewd observers may have noticed that American football is rarely represented in these quarterly reports. That’s because betting on the NFL and NCAA College Football is mostly popular in the United States, where it faces hefty domestic regulation.

All NFL franchises and NCAAF programs are located in the same country and governed by the same body. This scenario makes irregularities much easier to keep control of.

That’s no indication of a lack of irregularities, however, as we’ll later discuss that there have been players involved in wagering in recent years. The absence is largely due to the international location of the books that participate in the study.

International soccer is a sport that is played in most civilized countries on the planet. The widespread global popularity of the sport makes it much tougher to eliminate pregame fraud.

Tennis is another of the world’s most popular sports to bet on, with touring players hailing from remote destinations around the globe. The one vs. one nature of tennis competition also makes fixes easier to conceal. There is no collusion required for a single tennis player to impact the outcome of the match.

What Is The IBIA

The International Betting Integrity Association’s goal is to collect data from its participating sportsbook companies from many different nations and share the findings with sports leagues and their respective governing bodies.

Identifying unusual trends in sports betting can serve to better identify fraudulent activity and potential match-fixing. Sharing this information across the board helps create a safer environment for online sports betting for both the books and the gamblers.

Think of it like all law enforcement agencies across a given country sharing data – it makes the most sense if the common goal is to expel criminals.

Recent Football Betting Irregularities

While the report does not mention any recent irregularities regarding betting on NCAA Football or the NFL, a quick glance at the sportsbooks participating in the study reveals the lack of many major brands that serve the USA.

There are indeed vendors listed that take action on US football, but the lack of DraftKings, FanDuel, BetMGM, Ceasars, and other big-time domestic sportsbooks certainly skews the data.

We can state this with certainty due to recent occurrences of active players betting on NFL and college football games. In June, four NFL players were suspended for betting on pro football games or sports gambling while inside team facilities.

While the NFL does not ban betting on sports by players, coaches, and personnel, wagering on NFL games is strictly forbidden. So is gambling of any kind while present at team facilities.

In July, Iowa State Cyclones quarterback Hunter Dekkers left the team amid an investigation into his alleged sports betting activities. He is accused of placing 26 bets on Iowa State games during the 2021 season. He was not a starter at that time.

Not only are Dekkers’ alleged actions forbidden by the NCAA, but at the time, he was under the legal domestic betting age of 21 in Iowa. Other Iowa State players were accused of betting on sports as well. Together, all ISU athletes placed over 1400 bets with a domestic book.

While this data is not a part of the IBIA’s quarterly data reports, it does provide further evidence of the need for monitoring the industry for irregularities.

The IBIA’s Q2 Integrity Report