With the influx of online casino gambling, many sports are now having to deal with the issue of online sports betting. One company in particular The International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) has put into production a system to help preserve and protect soccer integrity.
Early Warning System (EWS) GmbH was put into place in 2007 with the hopes of tracking suspicious gambling patterns in soccer. Another aspect of protection was included to prevent the fixing of a match.
Now the Lithuanian Football Federation has completed a deal that will incorporate the Early Warning System. The deal came at a crucial time for the Lithuanians because they begin the eight-team A Lyga next month. For this league Lithuanian is working hard to improve their expertise in track betting.
“In Lithuania they think there may be a danger in their own league and wanted to know more about sportsbetting,” said Wolfgang Feldner, Head of Strategy for Zurich-based EWS.
Feldner continued to show support to Lithuania in order to help ease their concerns by saying, “Maybe they have had some rumours in the country but there was never any evidence. A lot of associations don’t know how to handle sportsbetting. In Lithuania they asked us for help and we’ve given them support coaching people.”
The current fear is provided by the fact that although this sport generated $20 billion last year in legal online betting, there is no way to track transactions that transpired online with illegal bookmakers.
Eastern Europe appears to be a prime target for fixing results of matches even though these games are often not highly publicized. With the increasing number of online bookmakers is becoming more difficult to monitor these types of activities.
The Lithuanian A Lyga league begins on April 5 in continues through the month of November. It is predicted that 200 operators will offer online betting wages each week. It is suspected that this is where gamblers will look as the European leagues are on hiatus.
