IBIA welcomes sanctioning of ten snooker players for match-fixing

The International Betting Integrity Association (IBIA), a world leading industry-led sports integrity organisation, has today welcomed the sanctioning of 10 Chinese professional snooker players by the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association (WPBSA) for various offences relating to the manipulation of snooker matches. The punishments follow the provision of detailed betting data provided by IBIA and its members to the WPBSA, which triggered the initial investigation.

IBIA identified suspicious activity on the following 2022 matches as part of the investigation (sanctioned players in bold):

• Aaron Hill v Zhao Jianbo (Northern Ireland Open Qualifiers)
• Bai Langning v Zhou Xintong (British Open)
• Chang Binyu v Jamie Jones (British Open)
• Yuan Sinjun v Jimmy White (Northern Ireland Open Qualifiers)
• Lu Ning v Robert Milkins (European Masters Qualifiers)

Reacting to the news of today’s verdict, Khalid Ali, IBIA CEO, said: “We would like to congratulate the WPBSA on successfully prosecuting this case. It highlights the vital role played by well-regulated betting markets in deterring corruption and sends a very clear message to all athletes about the risks of engaging in match-fixing.”

IBIA is committed to sharing data with sports, regulators and law enforcement that enables those bodies to identify, investigate and prosecute match-fixers. What sets IBIA apart from commercial monitoring systems is the ability to track transactional activity linked to individual consumer accounts rather than analysing simple odds movements. No other sports integrity solution can provide access to IBIA members’ data, which covers over US$137bn in sports betting turnover per annum and over 120 sports betting brands, making IBIA the largest and most effective integrity network of its nature globally.

Ali added: “IBIA’s responsible regulated betting operators have a significant incentive to help crack-down on match-fixing, which is aimed at defrauding those companies. Our leading market position enables us to provide a highly accurate analysis and effective deterrent against corruption in the regulated sports betting market. IBIA is committed to being at the forefront of this preventative action globally.”

IBIA’s Optimum Betting Market Study, published in 2021, confirms that balanced and efficient sports betting regulation is part of the solution to sports betting related match-fixing. Suspicious betting and potential match-fixing on regulated markets accounts for a very small proportion of all sporting events globally. The Optimum Betting Market Study found that there were no suspicious betting alerts on 99.96% of the 650,000 sports events offered by IBIA members annually between 2017-2020.