SM will be responsible for monitoring gambling trends and watching for unusual spikes in bets on certain events, then reporting them to the IOC. "One day there will be match fixing in the Olympic games," said IOC President Jacques Rogge, at a news conference on Sunday. "That is why we built a company which has already monitored the Beijing and Vancouver games."
Although it is a precaution, Rogge stressed that the IOC needs to be out in front of any possible match fixing schemes. Rogge also alluded to a time when doping was not big in Olympic competition.
Doping has become in the past two decades a major story at all Olympic competitions. Olympians have lost their medals after it was determined that they used performance enhancing drugs to increase their odds of winning. Rogge wants to be sure that the gambling scandals do not reach the level of doping.
Soccer has been plagued by match fixing in Europe, while in the US, gambling scandals have taken place in professional baseball and basketball. The latest incident involved former NBA referee Tim Donaghy, who was convicted for his role in gambling on games he was refereeing.
ISM will be responsible for monitoring the 2012 Olympic Games in London. The UK is one of the hot spots for online sports betting, so there will be extra attention paid to the betting patterns at the London games.
