MGA thematic review details sports betting integrity good practice for low-reporting licensees

The Malta Gaming Authority (MGA) released a thematic review on 27 October 2026 that looks at how licensees detect, assess and escalate possible sports betting integrity concerns. The work focused on businesses that had submitted very few suspicious betting reports, or none, in recent years.

The review was announced in the regulator's February 2025 supervisory plan, which said data from its Suspicious Betting Reporting Mechanism would be used to identify such licensees. Fieldwork ran from the second to the fourth quarter of 2025 and covered a risk-based sample of B2C operators and B2B suppliers. The MGA collected evidence through supervisory reviews and meetings, submitted documents and follow-up clarifications. It did not name the companies or say how many took part, and the findings were published in anonymised, aggregated form.

The MGA concluded that low reporting stemmed from a mix of operational, strategic and structural factors. Many businesses applied restrictive betting limits, kept conservative market offerings or removed events seen as involving many vulnerable persons, such as certain youth competitions. Many also depended on external integrity monitoring bodies and generally opened internal investigations only after receiving an alert from them. Without such an alert, the regulator said, suspicious activity was less likely to be detected or reported. In its words, low volumes reflected risk management processes and reliance on external monitoring, rather than a simple absence of detection capability.

The review sets out good practice across six themes: reporting behaviour, monitoring, escalation, policies, athlete safeguards, and relations with integrity and sports bodies. Operators are encouraged to monitor betting in real time with human oversight, to keep access to betting data when using a B2B provider, and to document each step from detection to reporting. The responsibilities of the key compliance function and the reporting deadline should be explicitly recorded. Written procedures should match actual practice and be reviewed regularly, and licensees should identify athletes and sports personnel and restrict accounts with conflicts of interest.

Several points matter for groups holding licences in multiple jurisdictions. Activity involving players under the MGA licence must be reported to the MGA even if it was mainly spotted under another regulator, something some companies had not realised. Suspicious activity must be reported within set timeframes whether or not financial harm occurred, and the MGA prefers an open approach over fixed thresholds, encouraging reports of all potentially relevant cases.

Licensees also proposed a centralised register of professional athletes. The MGA said this lies outside its remit but that sports associations may wish to explore it, noting issues of accuracy, maintenance, data protection and international applicability. It will keep monitoring progress through supervisory work and use the findings in future guidance and priorities.