The International Betting Integrity Association (IBIA) has called for more decision-makers and lawmakers in Latin America to preserve sports betting integrity by mirroring Brazil’s recently passed legislation. Their goal is to eliminate integrity concerns as more countries in the region consider passing legal sports betting laws.
The main piece of Brazil’s ordinance mandates licensed sports betting operators to join an independent integrity monitoring body. By joining such a network, IBIA can quickly and efficiently prevent match-fixing from occurring in Brazilian sports betting markets. Now, it’s calling for other Latin American countries to follow suit to curb match-fixing scandals, inspired by Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s actions, signing Bill PL3626/23 into law in January.
“The ordinance’s stipulation that operators in Brazil must join an independent sports integrity monitoring body is helping to drive growth in IBIA’s membership and in our ability to monitor more betting transactions in Brazil’s regulated market,” said Khalid Ali, CEO of IBIA. “Our priorities are to further strengthen our monitoring and alert network and extend our information sharing agreements with partner organizations in Brazil and across the Latin American region.”
IBIA expansion
Brazil already has several licensed sports betting operators, including bet365 and Betfair, aiding the association with cracking down on betting scandals and corrupt match-fixing practices. By 2028, the country is set to earn $34 billion in sports betting turnover, while IBIA represents more than 60% of Brazil’s remote gambling market.
IBIA recently announced a partnership with Genius Sports to share integrity information while prioritizing the prevention of match-fixing practices throughout the Latin American region. IBIA has already seen an uptick in suspicious betting alerts in other countries during 2024. It also pushes for all legal sports betting countries to offer a full range of products to bet on, eliminating the interest in wagering at illegal offshore bookmakers.
“With legalization comes renewed responsibility to protect the sports betting market, sports and consumers from match-fixing,” said Ali. “Brazil has set a high bar on integrity, but there remains a lot of work to do in the wider LatAm region. Our focus must be on creating a robust sports betting integrity ecosystem across the whole LatAm marketplace. IBIA will therefore be working with its widening LatAm network to ramp-up monitoring and strengthen the collaboration between key stakeholders.”
Due to IBIA’s monitoring and alert network technology, its free service is given to sports governing bodies, regulators, and law enforcement agencies to freely cooperate with investigations and prosecute individuals engaging in illegal match-fixing activity.
It can monitor and analyze up to $300 billion in global betting transactions annually while monitoring transactional activity down to the consumer level to find highly detailed data revealing suspicious betting activity. IBIA uses technology that doesn't rely solely on monitoring betting odds movement.
