T
he International Betting Integrity Association (IBIA) released on Tuesday both Spanish and Portuguese translations of the Optimum Betting Market Study, which was released on June 2021 and provides an insight into best practice regulatory models for betting around the world, as well as an analysis of IBIA operators market and integrity data covering $137 billion in betting turnover annually.
The translations not only contribute to the ongoing betting market and integrity discussion in Spain and Portugal, but also assist the development of betting policy considerations across Spanish and Portuguese speakers in Latin America.
To that end, the study assesses the existing regulatory models in Colombia, Mexico and Argentina, and it is hoped that this will assist the development of betting regulation in other regional countries such as Brazil.
The study was conducted by global gambling data and intelligence company H2 Gambling Capital, which was commissioned to evaluate various regulatory frameworks for betting around the world. H2 Gambling Capital valued the Latin American betting market at $1.3 billion in gross win in 2020 and it is forecast to see a near threefold increase to $3.4 billion by 2025.
Gambling trade associations BGC, BOS, EGBA, Jdigital and NOGA were also involved as project partners.
The study, now available in English, Spanish and Portuguese, seeks to:
- evaluate the regulation in 20 jurisdictions
- examine the impact of product restrictions
- determine the cost of match-fixing to regulated operators
- provide an optimum betting market solution in the form of ten regulatory pillars
Khalid Ali, CEO of IBIA spoke in a press release about the translations and said: “The burgeoning Latin American sports betting market is an increasingly important focus for IBIA members’ business operations. It is also unfortunately the focus of corrupters seeking to manipulate sporting events to defraud betting operators. Indeed, between 2017 and the end of the third quarter of 2021, IBIA alerted the relevant authorities to 112 cases of suspicious betting across 15 Latin American countries and 4 different sports.”
“It is hoped that this report will provide some assistance to Latin American policymakers, sports and betting operators in responding to the threat to the integrity of sport and to developing effective betting regulation. Integrity has been a core part of the betting market discussion in North America, with the integrity standards recently published by Ontario seen as a best practice model; IBIA would like to see this focus and approach replicated across Latin America and beyond.”, he added.