Ensuring the integrity of sports competitions at Paris 2024
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has been monitoring sports betting across all Olympic events at Paris 2024 in order to detect any illegal activities that could impact the integrity of the competitions. This work was led by the Olympic Movement Unit on the Prevention of the Manipulation of Competitions (OM Unit PMC). Using a combination of sophisticated algorithms, smart IT platforms and human intelligence, the Unit, which works with strategic partners, plays a central role in ensuring the integrity of the Olympic Games.
Games-time monitoring and intelligence processes
During the Games, the OM Unit PMC, via its Integrity Betting Intelligence System (IBIS), monitored sports betting on all 32 sports and a total of 329 events on a 24/7 basis. In this massive undertaking, the Unit was supported by its long-standing partners, the United Lotteries for Integrity in Sports (ULIS) and the International Betting Integrity Association (IBIA), which both shared additional intelligence and information.
The Unit was also assisted by a joint monitoring taskforce, which brought together additional cooperation partners, such as intergovernmental organisations (including INTERPOL, the Council of Europe and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC)), major betting regulatory authorities, a large number of sports betting entities from around the world, including Sportradar, and relevant service providers.
In addition to these strategic partnerships, anyone could report issues or suspicions via the IOC Integrity Hotline.
Any reported incident can constitute the initial trigger for further investigations. As per the relevant rules, no person accredited for the Games is allowed to place a bet on an Olympic event. The National Olympic Committees (NOCs) and International Federations (IFs) were fully engaged and informed, thanks to a number of webinars conducted before and during the Games by the OM Unit PMC. This empowered them to brief their delegations about the threat of competition manipulation and how to prevent it, and share the relevant rules.
Tackling competition manipulation is a team effort, and we highly appreciated the valuable support of all our collaboration partners at this Games edition. A special thank you to IBIA and ULIS for also allocating resources to cover monitoring shifts and ensuring the 24/7 monitoring of the Games, and, of course, to our long-standing partner Sportradar for providing strong support as ever.
“The assistance of betting entities and intergovernmental organisations such as the Council of Europe and its network of national platforms was also paramount,” Martens added.
Sport-specific pre-Games risk assessments
The monitoring of all Olympic events is essential and has been in place since London 2012. This experience has helped to continuously improve the processes in place and identify breaches more easily. The thorough preparations for Paris 2024 started over a year ago.
Over the past year, the OM Unit PMC monitored all continental games (including Olympic qualifiers), enabling a better understanding of new betting trends in Olympic sports. With the support of Sportradar, the IOC also conducted in-depth risk assessments for each sport on the Olympic programme, which were shared with all Olympic Summer IFs.
Coordinating sports disciplinary and law enforcement action
In the event of a potential breach of the rules, the OM Unit PMC swiftly passes on the information to the IOC Chief Ethics and Compliance Officer, and, in line with the relevant procedural rules, a disciplinary process is started, with the possible creation of a Disciplinary Commission. If there is a criminal dimension, the local authorities initiate an investigation in parallel. To optimise the coordination efforts between the sports disciplinary side and the law enforcement authorities at Paris 2024, the IOC, together with the French authorities (including the French betting regulatory authority, “ANJ”), set up a Joint Integrity Unit (JIU), enabling the quick exchange of relevant information and intelligence between both sides.