The International Betting Integrity Association’s (IBIA) recently released Q2 2019 integrity report has revealed that suspicious alerts are on a downward trend when compared to 2018.
With this being said, the association flagged a total of 51 instances, which were spread across five continents, an increase of 38% when compared with figures received in Q1.
Tennis, which previously caused concern in Q1 after receiving the most alerts (17), kept up the unfortunate trend in Q2, accounting for almost half of all reports with 25 noted incidents. Although a worrying statistic, it is important to note that this figure is still a 43% reduction on 2018’s Q2 figures of 44 tennis related alerts.
Regarding continental figures, Europe replicated its Q1 figures of 25 alerts – 13 of which were football related. In fact, football was again the second highest reported sport, with a total of 18 incidents. The other five of which were reported across the continents of Asia (two), South America (two) and Africa (one).
Within Europe, the UK was joined by Bulgaria as the nation with the highest amount of reported activity, however, both paled in comparison with the Asian country of Uzbekistan which received eight separate reports in tennis alone.
The IBIA is the leading global voice on integrity for the licensed betting industry and was formerly known as ESSA (Sports Betting Integrity). The group’s Q3 results are set to be released in October, and if the current improvement surrounding the sport of Tennis continues, then it can be expected that the general downward trajectory of suspicious alerts will follow suit.
