Sports Are Going Global. Integrity Is Not (Yet).
Sports betting has gone global. Oversight hasn’t. Leagues, betting platforms, and sports data now operate across borders, but integrity enforcement and regulation remain fragmented by country and jurisdiction.
Why it matters: Threats like match-fixing, suspicious wagering activity, and athlete harassment already operate transnationally. National-level safeguards cannot fully detect or disrupt globally networked risks.
The expansion problem: Major leagues — including the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, and NCAA — are rapidly expanding internationally while also partnering with global betting and prediction-market platforms. That growth is outpacing integrity infrastructure.
The key gap: Current integrity efforts are too siloed. Effective safeguards require coordinated information sharing among leagues, governments, sportsbooks, tech companies, regulators, and sports data firms.
What comes next: The most practical first step is a real-time international information-sharing hub with standardized reporting, trusted-access protocols, and coordinated threat monitoring before a larger integrity crisis forces action. U.S. law enforcement could lead the way in this effort.
Last summer, during the doldrums of the MLB season there was a brief spate of publicly reported incidents of bettors harassing players over lost bets. One of the more prominent episodes involved Astros pitcher Lance McCullers. The investigation led by the Houston Police Department uncovered that the offending bettor was a drunk man “located overseas.” This episode ended without any physical harm, but it illuminates something quite important: betting, data, and leagues are global; oversight is not.
International affairs do not often come to mind when you think about sports integrity, but as all the major American leagues expand internationally, to say nothing of leagues like Formula 1, the ATP, or the WTA, international cooperation and collaboration must start to be critical elements of integrity operations both for the leagues and government entities. Sports integrity now requires coordinated international action across governments, leagues, operators, and tech actors—not just siloed partnerships.
You may be asking, ‘Why is this a problem now?’ Digital platforms—whether online sportsbooks or prediction markets—are not just available across a variety of jurisdictions, but they allow for wagering on events across borders as well. Integrity threats like match-fixing and athlete harassment already operate transnationally. National frameworks or policy initiatives cannot see the full picture, nor can they solve any singular issue, let alone a complex web of them.
I got similar questions when I worked at DHS in international affairs. ‘This is homeland security, so why do we need to engage with foreign partners?’ Similarly, threats exist across borders and you want to try and mitigate them as far away from our country as possible. Cross-border threats require pre-existing relationships, cooperation, and trust from partners. They also require real-time information sharing. The threats related to sports gambling lag behind where some other more traditional threats are, which means defenders in that space can learn a lot from the well-worn paths I worked against at DHS.
Those well-worn paths can easily be overlaid one of the most obvious reasons for potential cross-border issues: expansion. The NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, and NCAA are all featuring prominent games in international markets now and some are even eyeing expansion teams in Europe and elsewhere. This will likely be coupled with sponsorships and other agreements inked with international betting platforms or prediction markets. This leads to a mismatch. Games will be hosted in a given country. Bets will be fielded around the world. And oversight will be split. Expansion is easily outpacing integrity efforts and integrity infrastructure. This will create blind spots for defenders that malicious actors will be able to exploit.
All of this points to the need for increased international cooperation. It cannot be limited to just teams and leagues or just governments sharing information or playbooks. These concerted efforts need to involve operators, sports data companies, and tech platforms. The risks exist at the boundaries or seams between these entities, not within the individual ecosystem operators. As prediction markets grow, they also need to be incorporated into these efforts. The platforms in the U.S. obviously have separate regulatory regimes they must conform to right now and they are different from others in this space. But they are globally accessible in many instances, and the threats around them are similar.
The next logical step here is to examine where coordination should focus. From a security perspective, I think it makes sense for stakeholders to share intelligence on clearly defined cross-sport priorities. In some cases there may even be justification for joint or cooperative investigations. From an integrity standpoint, I think it would be helpful to establish common reporting standards and thresholds along with an alignment of sorts on enforcement. By that, I don’t mean collusion, but rather agreed upon levels of what tiers of infractions or types of enforcement actions.
The last area for common, coordinated focus I would highlight is technology, which has two parts. The first is building a platform for real-time information sharing, along the lines of the hub I’ve called for in the past. The second part is investment. Teams, leagues, (and international government partners) need to invest in technological tools that not only improve fan engagement or their bottom line, but also that truly bolster integrity and security and allow for cooperation and coordination. It needs to be a priority and not simply an afterthought to check a compliance box.
I think the easiest place to start, and the one that can most quickly show a return on investment for all stakeholders, is an information sharing hub that connects regulators, leagues, teams, operators, social media platforms, law enforcement and others. It can offer real time alerts, standardized reporting and data formats, and trusted access environments that can balance privacy and enforcement. Taking these steps now can keep malicious actors farther away from the field of play and make a true crisis far less likely. The sports ecosystem is clearly ready for global expansion. Games will soon increasingly cross borders and threats certainly already do. The next phase of global sports growth will not be defined only by new markets, teams, or betting products. It will also be defined by whether leagues, governments, and platforms can build integrity systems capable of operating across borders before bad actors exploit the spaces in between.