The International Olympic Committee (IOC) knows that competitions can be fixed as football has had its share of match scandals over the years. In light of this the IOC has set up the International Sports Monitoring (ISM) group to stop illegal gambling. The group will be monitoring trends and watching for unusual spikes in bets on specific events and then reporting them back to the IOC.
IOC president Jacques Rogge said at a news conference Sunday that the committee thinks that someday there will be match fixing in the Olympics and that this is the reason the new program has been put into place. Football has been hit with match fixing in Europe and the US has seen gambling scandals in the NBA and MLB. Most recently a former referee in the NBA was convicted for gambling on the games he was refereeing.
The ISM will monitor the 2012 games in London. Online sports betting is hot in the UK so there will be a lot of extra attention paid to betting patterns at the next games.
