The Badminton World Federation has reaffirmed its commitment to fighting illegal betting, match fixing and corruption in sport by signing up to the International Olympic Committee’s Integrity Betting Intelligence System (IBIS).
As an intelligence-sharing digital platform, IBIS will enable BWF and its 180 members associations to access an extensive network of monitoring and data-sharing across sports, event owners and the major sports-betting entities.
The objectives set out by the IOC through the implementation of IBIS are three-fold:
- To safeguard sports from the threat connected to illegal sports betting
- To support international federations and multi-sport event organisers with intelligence and information exchange
- To create a framework for transparency, confidentiality and trust across all users
BWF joins the seven Olympic winter sports federations and a growing number of Olympic summer sports federations (e.g. FIBA, IRB, ITF, UCI, FIVB) which have already joined IBIS in view of the upcoming Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro 2016.
BWF President Poul-Erik Høyer (right) noted this partnership and access to a vast platform of data and intelligence will bolster BWF’s efforts to ensure badminton is a clean sport that upholds the principles of fair play.
“We are pleased to join with IOC and other international federations in the fight against corruption in sport. We expect IBIS to have a positive impact and we look forward to benefiting from it,” he said.
“This is a significant ideal to which we all subscribe – that sport must be played in an environment devoid of illegal betting, match fixing or any other forms of corruption or manipulation – and BWF will continue to do its utmost to uphold this and to spread this philosophy among its global membership.”
To mark this partnership, BWF recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the IOC and implementation of the IBIS system will be effective from January 2015.
IOC Sports Director Kit McConnell said: “The IOC applauds BWF for signing up to the IOC’s initiative for clean competitions – the ‘Integrity Betting Intelligence System’ (IBIS). IBIS will be in place not only for the badminton competitions at the Olympic and Youth Olympic Games, but also for BWF’s major tournaments.”
He added: “IBIS was successfully in operation for the first time during the Olympic Winter Games in Sochi with all Olympic Winter IFs taking part in the project. The objective is now to integrate all Olympic Summer IFs in the run-up to the Olympic Games 2016 in Rio.”
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