IBIA reports 38 cases of suspicious betting across five sports in 15 countries

The International Betting Integrity Association (IBIA) has reported 38 cases of suspicious betting activity to the relevant authorities in the second quarter of this year (Q2) for further investigation.

Betting alerts have been raised in five different sports: tennis, football, beach volleyball, table tennis and e-sports, with violations affecting 15 countries.

According to the latest IBIA Integrity Report, the majority of cases were in Europe, with 18 cases suspected questionable bets.

Table tennis has attracted the most dubious bets: nine suspicious bets were placed four times each in Germany and Russia and once in Ukraine.

In total, IBIA recorded seven football bets in Croatia (2), as well as one alert each in Gibraltar, Moldova, Russia, Spain and the Netherlands.

Spain also received two suspicious tennis bets.

Five bets in South America were considered unusual, four of which were on Brazilian football.

Another five cases of suspicious betting activity were found in Asia. It is also reported that three - in football in Georgia, Israel and Kazakhstan, two - in tennis in Kazakhstan.

However, despite new cases of possible foul play due to betting on certain sports, the 38 detected cases showed a decrease of 41% in the quarter.

The drop in cases is mainly due to only six warnings reported for tennis, the lowest in the sport since the IBIA began compiling quarterly integrity reports in 2015.

Of these six warnings, two have been reported to the International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA) as they do not relate to events sanctioned by the main tennis tours.

However, some of the players who have participated in these events may still be exposed to the ITIA Tennis Anti-Corruption Program.

Khalid Ali, CEO of IBIA, said: “38 cases in the second quarter added to 64 cases in the first quarter, bringing the total number of warnings reported by the association to 102 at mid-year.

“During this period, football has received the most warnings with 28, followed by tennis (24) and esports (23). These three sports account for nearly 75% of all warnings recorded in the first half of 2021,” he added.

Overall, between 2017 and 2020, 150,000 football betting markets were offered annually by IBIA members.

On average, for every 2900 matches, there were 52 betting alerts or one suspicious alert.