United World Wrestling Partners with IOC to Reinforce Fight Against Illegal Betting

By United World Wrestling Press

CORSIER-SUR-VEVEY, Switzerland (June 24) -- United World Wrestling has reasserted its commitment to fighting illegal betting, match-fixing and corruption in sport by signing up to the International Olympic Committee (IOC)'s Integrity Betting Intelligence System (IBIS).

As an intelligence-sharing digital platform, IBIS will enable United World Wrestling and its national federations 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:

1. To safeguard sports from the threat connected to illegal sports betting

2. To support international federations and multi-sport event organizers with intelligence and information exchange

3. To create a framework for transparency, confidentiality and trust across all users

United World Wrestling joins the seven Olympic winter sports federations and a growing number of Olympic summer sports federations (e.g. BWF, FIBA, FIG, FIVB, IRB, ITF, UCI, etc.), which have already joined IBIS in view of the upcoming Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro 2016.

“The IOC applauds United World Wrestling for signing up to the IOC’s initiative for clean competitions – the ‘Integrity Betting Intelligence System’ (IBIS),” IOC Sports Director Kit McConnell said. “IBIS will be in place not only for the wrestling competitions at the Olympic and Youth Olympic Games, but also for United World Wrestling’s major tournaments.” 

McConnell added that IBIS was first implemented during the Olympic Winter Games in Sochi with all Olympic Winter IFs taking part in the project and that the IOC hopes to have the same participation by summer IF’s in leading up to the 2016 Games in Rio.

United World Wrestling signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the IOC and implementation of the system, which comes into effect during the Senior Wrestling World Championships 7-12 September 2015.

“The IOC has our full commitment towards clean competition,” said United World Wrestling president Nenad Lalovic. “Wrestling will use IBIS and we will be better prepared to deal with illegal betting, match-fixing and corruption. There is no place in sport for illegal activities that threaten the purity of sport competition.”