Learfield and US Integrity Create College Betting Fraud Detection Venture

Learfield and US Integrity have announced a new joint venture, BetDetect, which will focus on ensuring the integrity of collegiate athletics contests. The company will seek to enable athletic departments across the United States to monitor, track and educate college students on the newly-emerging online sports betting markets focused on collegiate-level sports.

College Sports Fans Are Avid Bettors

By one estimate, sports fans are already spending $11 billion on collegiate games every year in the Power 5 conferences alone, says US Integrity. The amount of money placed offshore is significant, although falling quickly as more states are allowing betting on sports betting.

Most recently, New York launched its own online betting market and allowed collegiate-level betting with a small caveat – teams hailing from the state or games hosted in the Empire State will be non-betting events.

BetDetect will seek to enable college institutions to have the means necessary to safeguard the integrity of individual events and eventually win over legislators that betting on college sports does not undermine their fairness. Commenting on the move, Learfield CRO John Brody said:

“We’re deeply committed to serving the industry, and with US Integrity’s exceptional reputation and services, we’re confident together we will enable growth and also protect the stakeholders in and around college athletics.”

Learfield CRO John Brody

Brody is confident that combining Learfield’s expertise in college-level competitions together with US Integrity’s impeccable track record for maintaining the overall safety and security of competitions will prove a successful formula. BetDetect will unit US Integrity’s unique online sports betting fraud prevention tools and expertise.

College betting is an important segment for sports betting operators, and protecting the integrity of such games makes a lot of business sense. According to one survey by Scarborough Research, 86% of college sports fans are likely to have participated in some form of betting.

Protecting College Sports Integrity Makes Business Sense

This is far more than the general population of sports fans. The need to protect games can offer direct financial windfalls for all stakeholders, from schools to businesses offering wagering opportunities.

US Integrity already has experience working with a variety of leagues and sports bodies, including the SEC, Pac-12, and the NBA, to name a few. US Integrity co-founder and CEO Matthew Holt confirmed the general desire among colleges to avoid match-fixing:

“Schools want to avoid game manipulation, match-fixing, and other potentially nefarious behavior that could materially damage the good reputation of their storied athletic programs.”

US Integrity co-founder and CEO Matthew Holt

Holt confirmed that unless adequate monitoring and protection systems are integrated, “a lot could go wrong.” As a result, BetDetect will be able to provide real-time protection, which will assess anomalies in the wagering activity and seek answers as to why people have been betting one way or another, but more importantly – look if those aberrations are part of a bigger pattern pointing to match manipulation.

Already, BetDetect is enjoying a warm reception among heads of athletic programs. Virginia Tech’s Whit Babcock praised the solution:

“BetDetect gives us assurance that we have the industry’s leader monitoring the transactions and providing us insights – all day, every day – to ensure compliance and mitigate risks with a holistic approach.”

Virginia Tech’s Whit Babcock

More importantly, colleges and schools can now take a look at the opportunities that the legalization of online sports betting has created. They can do so securely with BetDetect’s help.