Former Toronto Raptor Jontay Porter was banned from the NBA for life after admitting to competitive manipulation of games.Phelan M. Ebenhack/The Associated Press
Concerns around gambling risks escalated in Canada when single-event sports betting was legalized in the summer of 2021.
Problem gamblers were a prominent concern, but far from the public eye were other potential issues. Leagues and federations are vulnerable to inside information from athletes, coaches or staff that can be exploited by those looking to make a profit. On the flip side are watchdogs, operating largely in private, trying to keep everything in check.
Former Toronto Raptor Jontay Porter is the most widely known case of such a problem. He pleaded guilty last year to conspiracy to commit wire fraud after admitting to competitive manipulation in two NBA games. The league banned him for life after an investigation determined he had disclosed confidential information to sports bettors and placed bets on games, including bets that his team would lose.
This is where the work of integrity monitors comes into play.
These independent third parties work with legalized sports books, analyzing millions of bets in search of irregularities and scenarios that could be primed for manipulation. The most notable of integrity-monitor companies are IC360 (formerly Integrity USA), Sportradar and Genius Sports.
Stephen Thurley is head of integrity partnerships at London-based Genius Sports, which works with about 150 sports leagues or federations globally, providing a range of integrity services. Among the company’s clients are the NFL, the PGA, the CFL, the English Premier League and the German Football Association.
Genius monitors bets for its clients using algorithms that predict how the betting market should be trading in real time. Combining that task with its access to global betting data, it can warn clients of potentially suspicious activities.
“If, for example, we see that the market is heavily exploited at a certain time and there’s no supporting information to justify why that’s happened, we’d alert the league (or) federation about the information so they can take action,” Thurley says. “That’s our principal service and that’s kind of a pro-active 24/7 operation.”
Situations such as Porter’s catch the ire of suspicious fans. Experts counter that cases like these are examples of a system that’s working.
“Every single pattern, every single referee, every single game, every single individual player, (integrity monitors) look through this,” says Ryan Butler, a senior analyst at Covers, a Nova Scotia-based website that studies the gambling industry and aims to inform sports bettors on gambling dynamics.
He claims that without legal sports books, suspicious activity could go unchecked.
Kevin Bean, executive director of sport integrity at the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport (CCES), saw his role expand with the legalization changes in 2021. His focus on the world anti-doping code evolved to include competition manipulation and working through the development of policies and systems around it.
While integrity monitors are poised to catch suspicious activity, Bean and the CCES educate athletes, coaches and staff of leagues and federations to better understand competition manipulation. He says over the past couple of years the group’s online course has reached more than 80,000 people.
“It incorporates elements of the Olympic Movement Code … on the manipulation of sports competitions, that highlights the need to never bet on your own sport. Never manipulate a competition, never share inside information, and always report when you suspect that competition manipulation might be going on.”
Bean says he would like to see the Canadian government ratify the Macolin Convention: the only rule of international law on the manipulation of sports competitions. It came into existence in 2019, and it has been ratified by 44 countries.
“What it does, in part, is require the co-operation between the betting regulators, the operators, the independent monitors, sports associations and organizations and law enforcement to come together and co-operate in a way that allows instances of competition manipulation to be fleshed out and addressed effectively,” Bean says.
While Bean and the CCES continue to advocate for that policy change, Thurley says there are deterrents in place that are getting increasingly stronger. Genius travels internationally to educate its clients on their susceptibility to inside information and says that seeing punishment for suspicious activity flagged with violating parties, as happened with Porter, should help curb problematic gambling situations.
Butler struggled to find an example of any blind spots the monitors may have.
“If you’re going to do this, you’re going to get caught, realistically,” he claims. “It’s just so hard to be able to circumvent that.”