The Global Lottery Monitoring System (GLMS) has published its annual 2021 activity report– underlining the work of its intelligence unit and membership to safeguard the integrity of sports.

2021 was deemed as ‘another pandemic ridden year’ in which the integrity group would successfully monitor the major sports events of the UEFA 2020 Championships, the Tokyo Olympic Games and inaugural FIFA Men’s Arab Cup.

“Every single day there is a new incident of sport competition manipulation reported, this has been particularly true since the outbreak of the pandemic,” echoed GLMS President Ludovico Calvi.

“The sport ecosystem has never been so vulnerable as today and this makes match-fixing one the greatest threats to modern sport. ”  

 The GLMS observed the sports events of its 40 partner members, utilising its Green/Yellow/Red threat alert system (low-to-high) – designed to monitoring suspicious betting patterns and market/odds movements.

During 2021, GLMS systems generated a total of 1402 alerts – of which 1053 were generated by GLMS teams as a pre match/event warning, informing members to be alert of potential suspicious activities. 

A total of 82 alerts were generated based on in-play odds changes. Whilst 267 alerts were triggered after the end of matches/events.

Of the 1402 alerts recorded, 91 were classified as red (high risk) alerts, of which 43 were generated pre-match or during in-play events. 

In all, GLMS teams registered 331 yellow (mid) and 747 green (low) alerts during the course of the year.

As anticipated, football generated the highest number of alerts, recording 1005 – of which 551 were attributed to European matches, as 190 alerts were respectively recorded by Asian and South American leagues. 

Following football’s continued outlier position was Basketball that generated 167 alerts primarily attributed to 97 notifications posted by European leagues.

Submitting a respective 234 and 213 reports, Hungary and the Netherlands were deemed as the countries in which GLMS members held the ‘most active engagement’.

2021 saw the GLMS team prepare a total of 51 Reports, following its system alert triggers. Of the total, 31 reports were independently commission by the GLMS to pass onto wider authorities for investigation.

Meanwhile, 20 further reports were prepared by the GLMS team following specific requests from members and partners, to facilitate various internal investigations/intelligence gatherings.

Operational highlights saw the GLMS participate in The Council of Europe’s ‘FLAGS project’, a partnership that aims to expand  the Global Football Alert Analysis Workshop (GFAAW) with the support of FIFA. 

In addition the organization hosted its executive committee for the period of 2021-2023, that saw Ludovico Calvi retain his position as President, assisted by Gilles Maillet, of Française des Jeux (FDJ) as Vice-Chair.

“It is an important acknowledgement not only to our institutional credibility, but above all, to the quality of the technical and strategic contribution by GLMS and its members to the Council of Europe over the years.” – Calvi concluded. 

“GLMS did also contribute effectively to the success of several prominent education and awareness raising projects to law enforcement, sport and public authorities such as Integriball ERASMUS+ 2020-2021, FIFA/UNODC Global Integrity Workshops, IntegriSport Next and FLAGS.”