Australian Sports Wagering Scheme (ASWS) Data and Information Sharing Platform

The Report of the Review of Australia’s Sports Integrity Arrangements (Wood Review) released in 2018 recommended the establishment of the Australian Sports Wagering Scheme (ASWS) as a key pillar of enhancing Australia's sport integrity outcomes.

The intent of the ASWS is to streamline current sports wagering regulation to provide clarity, transparency and consistency across Commonwealth, State and Territory jurisdictions and to ensure sports wagering occurs within a regulatory framework protecting the integrity of sport and ensuring Australian sporting competitions are more resistant to evolving manipulation threats.

The Wood Review determined that current and emerging sport integrity threats cannot be effectively addressed without a formal, national capability dedicated to coordinating the collection, analysis and dissemination of sports wagering related information and intelligence from law-enforcement agencies, sporting organisations and the wagering industry, nationally and internationally. The Wood Review recommended a central clearinghouse function be established within Sport Integrity Australia to receive, assess and disseminate data, information and intelligence from stakeholders to assist with enhancing national capability to address sport integrity threats.

The sport integrity threat environment, particularly with respect to the links between organized crime and sports wagering, is evolving quickly and risks will grow as the sports wagering market continues to develop in size and sophistication.

A major vulnerability is the fragmented oversight and regulatory systems in place, in which responsibility for particular activities and the collection of information takes place across a variety of bodies including international, and domestic sporting organizations, international and domestic bookmakers, state/territory/federal governments, but not harnessed in any coordinated or collective manner.

To protect the integrity of Australian sport against wagering-related integrity threats, Sport Integrity Australia proposes to establish a cohesive national response to ensure that:

• All available sports wagering data and intelligence is systematically collected by relevant stakeholders and shared with a central authority for effective collation, analysis and dissemination of integrity alerts;
• Sharing of this data and intelligence becomes routine, systematic and legislation based;
• Current sports wagering regulatory processes are streamlined to provide clarity, transparency and consistency of the sports wagering regulatory regime for all authorities with regulatory responsibilities to facilitate effective compliance and enforcement mechanisms;
• Suspicious activity reporting requirements are streamlined to provide clarity to all stakeholders and ensure that the right information and intelligence is received by the right authority at the right time on every occasion.

The provision of information and data to Sport Integrity Australia is critical to it fulfilling its functions and providing value to regulators, Sport Controlling Bodies and Wagering Service Providers. It is recognized that Sport Integrity Australia’s ability to identify risks and alert industry as required is best achieved if it receives as much relevant data as possible. It is acknowledged it will also be necessary for Sport Integrity Australia to build this capability over time. In establishing this capability, Sport Integrity Australia will seek to minimize negative impact on stakeholders. Sport Integrity Australia also intends to provide clarity through a comprehensive data privacy and use policy.

For the purposes of informing the development of a business case to pursue this capability, Sport Integrity Australia seeks an understanding of the current products, options, capabilities, best practices, implementation options, and indicative costs for the development of a platform that will provide this capability and facilitate either real-time or non-real-time data collection.

The users and their needs

Potential users will include government agencies, law enforcement agencies, industry groups, Wagering Service Providers (WSPs) and Sport Controlling Bodies (SCBs).

Sport Integrity Australia estimates that the Data and Information Sharing Ecosystem will handle between 350-400 million transactions per month.

Sport Integrity Australia anticipates there being up to <1000 individual users of this Ecosystem. Please refer to the Overview Requirements attachment for further detail.