EUROPEAN STATE LOTTERIES AND TOTO ASSOCIATION

Hosted by:
Société de la Loterie de la Suisse Romande
SWISSLOS Interkantonale Landesloterie
Integrity
& Competition
Challenges
in Sports Betting
June 9 - 12, 2008 Lausanne/Switzerland
Sports Betting
Seminar
During the EURO 2008
28
“Integrity and Competition” –
EL Sports Betting Seminar
Lausanne 9 to 11th June 2008
The programme had a good mix of non lottery
key note speakers and lottery betting
experts when 85 enthusiastic sports and
odds specialists from 20 countries met in
Lausanne, Switzerland, to discuss integrity
and competition in sports betting. Like the
EURO 2008 football championships was
co-hosted by Austria and Switzerland, the
seminar was generously hosted by Swisslos
and La Loterie Suisse Romande. Jean-Luc
Moner-Banet, CEO of La Loterie Swiss Romande,
welcomed the participants and underlined
the importance of both the integrity
and competition issues facing the Lotteries
sports betting operations.
“Can we beat you? Probably not - but
some of us do”
Was the conclusion by Peter Dahlenmark, director
of Betting Analysis, and a professional
punter who earns his living as a punter and
as sports betting lecturer. He outlined the
tools he uses to beat the sports betting operators.
Monitoring of markets and a thorough
understanding of how prices (odds) are set
through a mixture of competition, emotions,
local knowledge and some times over
reactions to rumours are some of the tools
applied by both lottery odds compilers and
professional punters. However, an important
difference, as Dahlenmark explained, is that
punters don’t have to bet but Lotteries must
provide the odds. “Follow the money but go
against the media rumours and public opinions”,
was another piece of advice for punters
wanting to become successful.
Saving the integrity of sports
Representatives of the world’s largest sports
federations, UEFA, FIFA, and IOC demonstrated
how seriously they considered the
integrity issue and how much they were doing
to keep their sports free of manipulation
and match fixing. FIFA representative, Detlev
Zenglein and Pâquerette Girard-Zapelli
of the IOC ethics Commission used the occasion
to inform that they had just entered
an agreement which puts FIFA’s Early Warning
System in charge of monitoring betting
patterns on the Beijing games. The General
Director of the French Tennis Association,
Jean-Francois Vilotte, explained how they
worked to ensure the integrity of their sport
and about their efforts to create internationally
agreed measures. Jens Nielsen from
Danske Spil and chair of EL sports betting
working group outlined EL’s efforts to move
P AN RAMA
Workshops
from a voluntarily based monitoring system
to a professional and full time committed
body.
“Don’t count on voluntary commitments
from gaming operators”
Many governments in Europe are currently
reviewing their gaming legislation and they
should not count on betting operators voluntarily
paying for measures like monitoring
systems, education and development of rules
to ensure a clean sport. “The U.K. Gambling
Act of 2005 does not oblige bookmakers to
pay to maintain a clean sport. With very few
exceptions they simply do not pay” said William
Bush, director of the English Premier
League. Governments must actively address
the impact that the gambling industry has on
sports and it must make clear provision in
the gambling legislation. William Bush gave
an introduction to a paper from Salford University,
February 2008, which examined the
risks to sports of corruption in betting. The
paper also included a list of bet types and
their potential dangers of inducing manipulation.
Bets like “first to get a yellow card”
were “comedy bets” and should be avoided
all together.
Competition and how to do better
Walter Watson, De Lotto and Andreas
Mattes, both members of the EL sports betting
mailing group, showed how EL lotteries’
sports betting sales had developed over
the last thee years. Whilst fixed odds betting
had increased for some lotteries, pools
betting showed a negative trend for all with
the exception of LAE from Spain. Päivi Puhakka,
Veikkaus, explained how they had
hand-picked 100 private retailers for special
treatment with education, exchange of idea
forums and marketing material to the mutual
benefit for both them and for Veikkaus. How
betting was best done in sports arenas in the
Netherlands, the Czech Republic and Sweden
was explained by Walter Watson, Ludek
Rasocha, Sazka, and Lennart Nilsson and Ola
Carlsson of Svenska Spel.
The primary value was not sales in itself but
the opportunity to show the sports betting
brand to the right customer group.
David Sargeant, Finsoft, provoked the audience
suggesting the death of the Long List.
The static paper version should be replaced
by dynamic, multi-sport and yet customized
coupon style lists. In Norway, they aim
at having all online play registered using a
player card before the end of the year. Kai