IBIA and IXUP Forge Strategic Partnership to Bolster Integrity in U.S. Sports Betting

This collaboration brings together two industry leaders dedicated to safeguarding the integrity and social responsibility of sports wagering ecosystems.

Advancing Integrity and Compliance

IBIA and IXUP will work together to develop integrity-compliance products and services aimed at strengthening the protection of the U.S. sports betting landscape.

The primary goal is to provide better-informed operators, regulators, and sports governing bodies with the tools they need to uphold the integrity of sports betting in the United States.

Promoting Innovative Solutions

As part of this partnership, IBIA will promote IXUP’s PlayPause® encryption matching network to its U.S. member operators. PlayPause® is set to become the go-to athlete identification and involuntary exclusion program for professional sports leagues. In return, IXUP will leverage its extensive relationships with U.S. sports betting operators, regulators, and sports leagues to promote IBIA’s gold-standard integrity monitoring solution.

IBIA CEO Khalid Ali emphasized the significance of this collaboration, stating, “Both IXUP and IBIA recognize the critical importance of maintaining integrity within U.S. sports betting. We will continue to explore new collaborative technologies and solutions to support operators in achieving this goal.”

In addition to their joint efforts, IBIA and IXUP may also explore opportunities to provide complementary services to other entities in the sports wagering ecosystem, including sports governing bodies and teams. This initiative aligns with IBIA’s mission to monitor wagering integrity across the U.S. sports betting landscape.

With IBIA’s extensive licensing throughout the United States and its provision of integrity monitoring services to member operators, covering over 70% of U.S. sports betting handle, this partnership is poised to make a significant impact on the industry.

IXUP’s operation of BetStopTM, the National Self Exclusion Register in Australia, showcases their commitment to protecting vulnerable patrons while adhering to stringent data privacy laws. Concurrently, IXUP is actively working to onboard operators, regulators, and sports leagues into a U.S. Pilot, called PlayPause®, to streamline voluntary exclusion lists and sports involuntary exclusion lists into a single real-time API. This move aims to improve matching accuracy and reduce false positives without compromising data privacy.

Kevin Vonasek, representing PlayPause®, summarized the collaborative vision at an IBIA gathering, stating, “We are not here to point fingers or smear your names across the press. We don’t want to know your data, nor should we ever see your data. We are simply a B2B encrypted fuzzy matching service helping operators, regulators and leagues better detect, investigate, and ultimately prevent wagering activity that is in direct conflict with our industry’s rules and codes of conduct.”

This partnership between IBIA and IXUP promises to be a game-changer in fortifying the integrity and compliance of the U.S. sports betting industry.