With the Covid, the number of suspicious sports betting has jumped and “all sports are concerned”
It is one of the scourges that plague world sport and France is no exception: the manipulation of competitions and its counterpart, match-fixing and suspicious bets. This phenomenon has gained momentum with the Covid-19 pandemic. Maintenance.
Rigged sports betting has exploded since the first confinement. This is one of the lessons of a conference organized this week by IRIS (the Institute for International and Strategic Relations). No matches, no more competitions, no spectators and yet, the number of suspicious bets has jumped: a 45% increase in reports for serious cases between 2019 and 2020 within the GLMS (Global Lottery Monitoring System), a group of around thirty countries, including France, to fight against the manipulation of sports competitions. Gilles Maillet, director of sports integrity at La Française des Jeux, is its vice-president.
FRANCE INTER: Why did suspicious sports bets not disappear with the end of competitions during the first confinement in 2020?
GILLES MAILLET: “Certainly, there were no more competitions for two to three months in 2020, but afterwards quickly resumed, even without an audience. The problem is that during this time, the economy has they suffered in a lot of countries and therefore sport has suffered a reality, everywhere in the world, sport has been weakened economically and that is what makes the bed of organized crime. in demand, in need of money quite simply. Whether it is clubs or sometimes athletes. Athletes have had much less income, if not more income at all. And there are championships where income is extremely low. I is not necessarily talking about France, precisely, and that is the whole problem. ”
Over this period, there has been a fairly significant increase in serious cases of fraud!
“Yes, absolutely. This is what we verified by monitoring sports betting. These cases that we consider sufficiently serious, we classify in our gradation, the yellows and the reds, from the most serious to the less serious with corroborating elements. There were 210 in 2019, 303 in 2020, so an increase of 45%. And today, we see that the effect lasts since we are barely 5% below the number of cases of 2020. It is the economic impact of the pandemic which lasts and which creates precisely the conditions favorable to the risks of manipulation. or badminton. “
Doesn’t the resumption of competitions with the public make it possible to curb this phenomenon?
“We are still at an impasse. Finally, there is no reason that the pandemic spares sport more than other sectors. There were also no support and recovery systems in all. countries as was the case in France. In some countries, support for championships or certain sports is not necessarily the priority of governments. In fact, the impact of the pandemic is still lasting and will last for a while . “
At the same time, you have observed another phenomenon: the increase in betting on esports, video game competitions. It’s new ?
“Esports betting has indeed developed a lot in 2020, especially when there was the cessation of classic sports competitions. This is not the case in France because this practice is prohibited. But many sites of paris elsewhere in the world have offered more bets on esports. So it has strongly boosted betting and suddenly, this movement has remained. But it is rising, and it really benefits from the phenomenon of pandemic 2020. ”
In this sector, where there are very few regulations, there is a risk of slippage and drifts?
“There is no International Esport Federation, or even a national one. In France, there is a sports code, for example: it is the law that applies to the entire sports movement, but that is not does not apply to esport. It is also a sector closely linked to the world of game publishers. There is no supervision or governance as organized as in sport, which creates a fairly favorable ground for Fortunately, there is an organization that we know, called EA Sports Integrity Commission, which tries to self-regulate this market and which moreover pronounces sanctions. But we are obviously far from an organization of surveillance and sanction as it may exist in the world of sport. “