The Sports Betting Integrity Forum (SBIF) announced the official report of its Sport and Sports Betting Integrity Action Plan for 2016.
The Sports Betting Integrity Forum is a special structure that represents a number of companies and organisations, including the UK Gambling Commission (UKGC), the British Horseracing Authority (BHA), Paddy Power Betfair, Ladbrokes Coral, bet365, the Association of British Bookmakers, etc. It was established in 2012, with its major focus set on keeping sport and sports betting protected from corruption.
The SBI Action Plan, which comes for short of Sport and Sports Betting Integrity Action Plan, was first published by the SBIF in September 2015, aiming at addressing the current risks to the sport and sports betting integrity. Now, the SBIF revealed how far the progress of the Action Plan has reached a “good progress”. The organisation revealed that 9 of the plan’s 10 actions have been delivered successfully, and made an overall assessment of the first ever SBI Action Plan.
According to the Sports Betting Integrity Forum, the Plan has already made sure that the UK would deliver the actions necessary for a number of commitments, which on the other hand came as a proof of the SBIF’s commitment to its engagements.
The first-ever annual report of the organisation has been issued by the Forum to announce the progress made while working on the key priority actions. In its 2016 full-year progress report, SBIF summarised the work on the actions included in its SBI Action Plan, explained that 9 of the overall 10 goals were achieved and provided evidence on the matter.
Here are the actions which the organisation managed to achieve since the official implementation of its plans:
- Action 1, supported by SBIF – Announcing progress on the SBI Action Plan delivery by using a public facing website to ensure transparency of the achievements.
- Action 2, supported by SBIF – Creating and establishing information exchange protocols in correspondence to the UK legislation and Data Protection Act.
- Action 3, supported by Sports Betting Group (SBG) – Making a review of the Sports Betting Group’s Code of Practice adoption.
- Action 4, supported by Commission/DCMS – Creating a SBIF communication portal in order to make communication between partners easier.
- Action 5, supported by SBG – Making a review of the sports education programmes’ efficiency to prevent betting corruption.
- Action 6, supported by SBG – Collaborating with various relevant sports for sharing good practices, data and information, etc.
- Action 7, supported by Law Enforcement – Reviewing and assessing the engagement with Crown Prosecution Service in order to improve the sports betting corruption cases’ management.
- Action 9, supported by SBIF – Undertaking risk assessment actions of various activities.
Action 8, which was supported by the UK Gambling Commission, and was related to reviewing the terms of reference of the Sports Betting Intelligence Unit (SBUU) was described by SBIF as partly achieved.
The overall assessment made by SBIF for its SBI Action Plan was positive, “good progress” has been made on the Plans’ goals, with nine actions being fully delivered. The organisation also explained that further efforts will be invested into the delivery of the remaining action, which was described as “partly achieved”.
SBIF announced that an update of the Plan will be published later in 2017, with the organisation’s key goals being outlined.
- Author
Daniel Williams
