Sportradar and the Brazilian Sports Law Institute - IBDD held a webinar to discuss the integrity of sports betting and the manipulation of results in Brazilian sport.
The webinar was attended by Marcello Presilla, from Sportradar’s Italian unit; Juan Matias Mendez, from Sportradar Uruguay; Juan Crespo Ruiz-Huerta, from the Spanish unit; and Tiago Horta Barbosa, former director of Business Development LatAm, from Sportradar Brasil, along with lawyer Mariana Chamelette, from IBDD, and Gustavo Delbin, vice president of the São Paulo Football Federation.
The fight against the manipulation of results was the central topic of the meeting, as highlighted by the vice-president of the São Paulo Football Federation. “We have been working with Sportradar for years and we always try to work harder so that the manipulation of results is curbed. We know how difficult this is all over the world, but at FPF we are striving to ensure that this does not happen in São Paulo.”
Marcello Presilla, Integrity Executive at Sportradar in Italy, spoke of the importance of knowing the most important characteristics and elements for identifying result manipulation around the world and how much Sportradar is dedicating itself to the topic. According to him, it is important to review laws and regulations to strengthen integrity in sports, training professionals to be attentive to any indications that a result has been manipulated for the benefit of interests outside the game itself.
For him, it is very important, for example, to be attentive to illegal bookmakers, "because they are favorites by ‘fixers’due to the lack of controls and little willingness of these establishments to cooperate with the authorities.” According to Presilla, "bookmakers could be part of the solution to the problem, but it is important that they are part of a legal and controlled system."
Juan Matias Mendez, Business Development Manager at Sportradar in Uruguay, pointed out that services to ensure integrity in sports depend on very serious studies and closely monitored by companies like Sportradar, but with the attention of federations and other sports entities, referees and the whole society. For him, the analysis of matches and championships, following the performance of athletes and results, guarantee the identification of attempts to manipulate results and are the key to inhibiting such practice.
According to him, manipulators will always look for new ways to avoid monitoring and detection with more sophisticated schemes and that is why everything needs to be very well analyzed, as Sportradar does. "Since the beginning of our work, Sportradar's integrity services have detected more than 5,500 handled matches around the world," he said.
Juan Crespo Ruiz-Huerta, Sports Integrity consultant at Sportradar Spain, said that it is very important for sports organizations to engage with good practices in their work to identify the manipulation of results. "In all sports there are risks of match fixing and for that reason programs such as the FIFA Integrity Program and the Tennis Integrity Unit should be encouraged, which create actions and define legal rules and control mechanisms to combat manipulation."
Tiago Horta Barbosa, from the Integrity Committee of the Paulista Football Federation, a member of IBDD and former director of Business Development LatAm at Sportradar in Brazil, said that the regulation of sports betting in the country is essential to contribute to the end of the manipulation of results. “It is an illusion to say that banning sports betting would be the solution to curb manipulation. This only pushes the bettor into an unregulated and gray market, which makes it difficult to obtain information that can lead to better protection of this environment,” he said.
“When the São Paulo Football Federation became associated with Sportradar and tightened the siege against match fixing, the criminals went to look for matches in other federations, which demonstrates the importance of developing a network to combat the practice,” he said.
Source: GMB
