The Global Lottery Monitoring System (GLMS) has identified 358 suspicious sports betting alerts throughout the third quarter of 2021, with Europe accounting for the majority of alerts.

Publishing its Q3 update, the GLMS reported that it was alerted to 169 cases of suspicious wagering activity in Europe – a trend which was demonstrated in its Q1 2021 report earlier this year – followed by 79 in Asia, 62 in South America, 21 in North America and 17 in Africa.

A total of 26 notifications and alerts were subsequently sent to GLMS international partners, as well as eight integrity reports, of which 12 were sent to FIFA, 10 to UEFA and nine to other organisations.

Of the 358 cases the body was alerted to, 272 were pre match bets, 66 were post-match and 20 were in-play, whilst 186 were classified as ‘green notifications’, which GLMS states can be ‘useful for tracking trends’.

Detailing its objective to ‘fight against Match Fixing and the safeguard of Sport Integrity and Values cooperating with public and private stakeholders globally’, the organisation highlighted a number of partnerships and event appearances throughout the quarter, including attendance at two SBC Summit events and participation in the FIFA Global Integrity Workshop.

“We have been explaining the way our alerts and monitoring works, to sports and law enforcement partners within our partner projects, Integrisport Next, Integriball and KCOOS+ and have been contributing with our monitoring activities to the work of the Council of Europe’s Group of Copenhagen,” the organisation said in the report.

“Operationally, we conducted our second internal working group activity of the summer, the Tokyo Games and had daily interactions and contact with the International Olympic Committee, in order to together work with our respective members and NOCs to ensure a safe competition.”

In particular, the GLMS highlighted the recent SBC Summit Barcelona event, in which its members including Sporting Solutions, SISAL and La Française des Jeux featured across a range of panels.

Earlier in the year, GLMS President Ludovico Calvi appeared at the SBC Digital Italia conference, where he moderated a conversation between key industry figures regarding Italian authorities efforts to counter match-fixing.

Addressing stakeholders in the update, Calvi said: “During the last 3 months, GLMS team has been extremely busy with all major sports competitions such as Euro 2020, Copa America 2020, the Tokyo Olympics generating a lot of attention.

“The beginning of the new sports season and the various leagues has also heavily engaged the resources of our integrity hubs given the nature of such a very compressed sporting year. 

“Further to that, the absence of athletes from competitions due to COVID cases throughout the whole sporting ecosystem, and the countless strict protocols implemented by all governments have created extra monitoring activities for our colleagues in the GLMS Hubs.”

Lastly, the organisation also offered a breakdown of Q3 2021 from a sporting perspective, with a total of 290 alerts raised by football, whilst the remainder were spread across esports at 29, basketball at 18, tennis at 17, American football at two and lastly handball and ice hockey at one alert each.