The Hungarian Supervisory Authority for Regulatory Affairs, The Greek National Platform and Cscf Foundation for Sport Integrity join Glms family
The Global Lottery Monitoring System (Glms) is delighted to share the approval, by its Executive Committee, on 5 May 2022, of the associate membership of three entities to the Glms family– the
Cscf Foundation for Sport Integrity, the
Hungarian Supervisory Authority for Regulatory Affairs (Sara) and the
Greek National Platform (Epathla).
Glms is a not-for-profit association ensuring sports betting integrity and contributing to the fight against the manipulation of sports competitions.
Its Statutes permit associate membership to all entities engaged in enhancing sports integrity (public entities, sport entities, suppliers to lotteries and other entities generally involved in the fight against sports manipulations), to facilitate secure exchange of information and enable enhanced coordination with the lottery member. With these types of memberships, Glms endeavours to play its role in encouraging such coordinated actions in education, detection and investigations.
Ensuring a concrete framework for exchange
Cscf has been an important partner -and now member- of Glms, coordinating three of its partner projects, namely Integrisport and Integrisport Next, for law enforcement and judiciary on addressing sport integrity, and Integriball, developing an educational curriculum on the same topic for children and senior female footballers. The projects have led to an increased engagement of law enforcement in particular with Glms and its national level members.
Sara, as a supervisory and regulatory authority, enjoys a positive working relationship and strong cooperation with Glms lottery member Szerencsejáték Zrt, thus paving the way for promising inter-stakeholder collaboration in education and betting integrity in Hungary as a public associate member.
Finally, the
Greek National Platform and the Ministry of Culture & Sport and Glms have enjoyed an excellent collaboration, as both are in the Macolin Committee Statutory Committee, which Greece currently chairs, while Opap is also a very active Glms lottery member in Greece. This new membership aims to boost Greece’s collaborative work in addressing manipulation of sports competitions.
Achieving our objective to protect sports integrity
Luca Esposito Poleo, Glms General Secretary commented on the new memberships, “Exchanging information is paramount in the fight against manipulation of sports competitions, expanding our membership to include the growing stakeholders involved in the sports and sports betting community helps us in achieving our objective to preserve the integrity of sport.”
Commenting on Epathla’s new membership, the Greek Secretary General of Sport at the Ministry of Culture and Sport, and Chair of the Macolin Committee, George Mavrotas said, “Manipulation of sport competitions is a global threat for sport and its values. It’s a threat that requires national and international coordination and cooperation for addressing it. During the last years Greece has made significant steps for combating match-fixing, we strongly believe in value-based sport and this agreement between Epathla and Glms, a leading partner in the field, is another step towards this direction. It is essential to join forces and exploit synergies in order to protect sport from the corrosive phenomena that devalue it”.
Remarking on the membership of Cscf, Director and former Hungarian Lt. Colonel and Intelligence Officer at Europol (European Police Office), Dr. Norbert Rubicsek, commented, “ Cscf has been working with Glms intensively within projects and related activities, and has appreciated the strong relationship we have built over the years, fostering a greater understanding and concrete activities, notably with regard to law enforcement and judiciary, as well as in curricula for young and female athletes. It has been enlightening for our country partners to engage with Glms and with the Glms lottery member at national level, resulting in concrete national actions. Becoming an associate member can further strengthen our collaboration, in education and regulatory issues as well as building a stronger inter-stakeholder relationship, combining efforts and encouraging consistency across domains".
Finally, The Supervisory Authority for Regulatory Affairs of Hungary President, Dr. Marcell Biró, shared: “We are glad that the Global Lottery Monitoring System (Glms) has supported our authority’s application to become an associate member of Glms. This cooperation will contribute to our efforts as a regulatory authority to fight match-fixing via gaining information on the risks endangering the integrity of sports and on effective prevention tools.”
Their membership was further supported by the lottery member, Szerencsejáték Zrt. Ceo Dr. Alex Bozóky, who commented, “As a responsible national lottery operator, Szerencsejáték Zrt. has long been dedicated to safeguarding the integrity of sport. To this end, beyond our internal rules and regulations we also advocate the most stringent guidelines of international federations, furthermore we welcome all efforts that aim to further strengthen this mission. We are convinced that the decision by the Supervisory Authority for Regulatory Affairs to join the Global Monitoring System is also another important step in this field.”
A growing GLMS family fighting sports manipulations
As Glms Associate Members, Cscf, Sara and Epathla accept the Glms Code of Conduct and its Statutes as applied to associate members and will be linked to the Glms visual identity and overall operations.
They will benefit from workshops, studies and projects in which Glms is involved or organizes, receive Glms global alerts and be part of the global information network, engaging with other members.
Finally, the new associate members will be able to actively participate in Glms key working groups, bringing with them a detailed understanding of the challenges and opportunities related to their respective stakeholders, countries and activities.