BWF, IOC sign deal to fight corruption in sports

The Badminton World Federation (BWF) Tuesday reaffirmed its commitment to fighting illegal betting, match fixing and corruption in sport by signing up with International Olympic Committee's (IOC) Integrity Betting Intelligence System (IBIS).

As an intelligence-sharing digital platform, IBIS will enable BWF and its 180 member associations to access an extensive network of monitoring and data-sharing across sports, event owners and the major sports-betting entities.

The objectives set out by the IOC through the implementation of IBIS are: to safeguard sports from the threat connected to illegal sports betting, to support international federations and multi-sport event organisers with intelligence and information exchange and to create a framework for transparency, confidentiality and trust across all users.

BWF joins the seven Olympic winter sports federations and a growing number of Olympic summer sports federations like FIBA, IRB, ITF, UCI, FIVB which have already joined IBIS in view of the upcoming 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.

BWF president Poul-Erik Høyer said this partnership and access to a vast platform of data will bolster BWF's efforts to ensure badminton is a clean sport that upholds the principles of fair play.

"We are pleased to join with IOC and other international federations in the fight against corruption in sport. We expect IBIS to have a positive impact and look forward to benefiting from it," he said.

"This is a significant ideal to which we all subscribe, that sport must be played in an environment devoid of illegal betting, match fixing or any other forms of corruption or manipulation and BWF will continue to do its utmost to uphold this and spread this philosophy among its global membership."

The implementation of the IBIS system will be effective from January 2015.

IOC sports director Kit McConnell said: "The IOC applauds BWF for signing up for IOC's initiative for clean competitions. IBIS will be in place not only for badminton competitions at Olympics and Youth Olympics but also for BWF's major tournaments.

IBIS was successfully in operation for the first time during the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics.