European Sports Ask Online Gambling Sites to Help Fight Fixes
The Danish national online gambling operator, Danske Spil, has been chosen by UEFA, the organization that regulates European soccer, to lead a monitoring group seeking to prevent gambling corruption and match fixing. According to a report in Politiken, a new body known as the European Lotteries Monitoring System will play watchdog for Champion's League play, as well as European national team games and play for the European Cup.
Danske Spil agreed to form a branch of the company solely concerned with reviewing data from online casino operators and searching for patterns indicating corruption. The Danish operator was chosen because it has been a leader in bringing Internet gaming operators and European sports leagues together in fighting corruption for over five years, said the head of Danske Spil's sports betting department, Jens Nielsen.
Nielsen said bribing and intimidation of players and officials is on the rise, and is most easily detected by unusual gambling patterns.
‘It (corruption) usually occurs when there are a lot of teams from smaller countries, and in games where teams from Eastern Europe or the Balkans are involved,’ said Nielsen.
European attitudes are markedly different than those of sports commissioners in the US. While leagues in Europe have gratefully used cooperation by Internet gambling companies to thwart fixing, US leagues lobby to keep sports betting illegal, denying their invaluable assistance in preventing undue gambling influences.
