Betting is rapidly expanding worldwide, with major markets like Brazil and the US legalising sports betting. This growth brings increased responsibility for sports organisations to ensure that betting practices remain legal and safe.
Tennis, in particular, is aware of these challenges. The International Betting Integrity Association (IBIA) reported in its 2023 report that, for the first time, tennis had fewer suspicious betting alerts than football, recording 54 – a 49% decrease from the 106 alerts in 2022.
The IBIA commended the sport of tennis, specifically highlighting the efforts of its integrity bodies, such as the International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA). Nick Iliffe, Director of Intelligence at the ITIA, spoke to Insider Sport about the agency’s efforts to achieve this milestone and the ongoing measures needed to continue combating betting-related integrity issues.
Insider Sport: What do you see as the primary challenges facing tennis integrity today, and how does your organisation approach these challenges?
Nick Iliffe: Tennis is a global sport with no real off-season. We cover roughly 1400 tournaments and over 110,000 matches a year and even as one of the largest sports integrity bodies in the world, this can be challenging from a resource perspective.
For this reason, it’s vital that we take a risk-based approach to the work we undertake to ensure that we are allocating organisational resources where they are needed most. We also know that those attempting to corrupt individuals within our sport continue to develop new tactics and techniques, so we must ensure that we also continue to evolve and innovate in our preventative and investigative work.
IS: How does the ITIA adjust its strategies based on lessons learned from integrity cases or investigations in other sports?
NI: We work extremely closely with other sports integrity bodies across the world. We know that corruptors don’t work in silos or respect international boundaries, so it’s important that we share intelligence and learnings across the cases we work on with other sports.
A good example of this would be the workshop we held in conjunction with the IBIA in New York in the summer of 2023, which was attended by the major US professional sports leagues where we gave an overview of our work and recent case studies.
We have also benefited from other sports integrity bodies’ expertise in certain areas, while our Betting Integrity Analyst has conducted knowledge-building sessions with other sports.
IS: Can you outline the measures currently in place to promote transparency and accountability in the relationships between sports entities and betting operators?
NI: Our relationship with betting operators is key to how we build successful cases. We enter into Data Sharing Agreements with operators to ensure that account-level data can be shared with the relevant safeguards, publish full decisions of sanctions on our website including details of operators who have provided account-level data where appropriate, and provide regular six-monthly updates to operators on the status of ITIA investigations.
Over the past few years, we have collaborated closely with bodies such as the IBIA and United Lotteries for Integrity in Sport (ULIS) to continue to develop our relationships with operators and to understand what information we can share that will assist them and their risk management processes.
IS: To what extent do education and awareness initiatives among athletes, officials and stakeholders contribute to preventing and detecting integrity breaches, and what specific initiatives does your organisation prioritise in this area?
NI: Education is a fundamental part of our work, and as an organisation, we have also prioritised being approachable. We attend tournaments all over the world, as well as Officiating Schools and other events to provide information, and updates and be available to answer questions.
In the last few years, we have prioritised delivering education sessions – group and individual, face-to-face and online – to players at the beginning of their journey in the sport. We also talk to coaches, medical staff and agents to ensure that they all know we are there to support them.
We also work with the ITF, ATP and WTA on their development programmes so that players making their way through the levels of the sport are given support to help them make the best decisions.
IS: In what ways do international differences in regulatory frameworks impact efforts to combat match-fixing and other integrity issues, particularly in regions lacking regulation?
NI: The different regulatory frameworks across the world can be particularly challenging to us in a global sport. Over the past few years, we have seen a number of countries legalise and regulate sports betting, such as the USA and shortly, Brazil.
These changes can prove beneficial to sports integrity bodies in a number of ways. Most notably regulation enables us to request account-level data from operators through bodies such as the IBIA. Requests must be justifiable and proportionate, but the account-level data that operators in regulated markets provide are vital to how we build cases.
IS: What are the anticipated key insights that attendees of your panel in Lisbon will gain regarding integrity issues?
NI: Collaboration is key for us. The ability for us to ask questions of operators, and for operators to ask questions of us is really important. If we push back or request more information, it means we are keen to fully investigate a potential issue or to interrogate the data before we make a call on whether it needs investigation.
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Nick Iliffe will be sharing his views at the SBC Summit in Lisbon, taking place from 24-26 September 2024. The event will see countless other betting and sports stakeholders discussing a range of topics.
Secure your spot with a special offer granting access to all three core days of the event, including the exhibition floor, conference agenda, and evening networking parties, all for the discounted price of just €400.
