Colombia’s Dimayor launches Genius integrity programme

The governing body for Colombia’s leading football competitions División Mayor del Fútbol Profesional Colombiano (Dimayor) has struck a partnership with Genius Sports through which it aims to safeguard its leagues and tournaments against match fixing and betting-related corruption. Dimayor will conduct a review of its integrity policies through the partnership, enhancing rules around insider information and processes related to investigations, ultimately introducing international best practices, regulations and procedures. Using Genius’ Bet Monitoring System, it will also be able to monitor real-time odds movement across the regulated and unregulated betting industry, flagging any unusual activity. This will be supported by a series of educational workshops, to be led by the supplier’s integrity team, informing players, coaches and officials about the new rules and regulations. The agreement will also see Dimayor give Genius Sports control over the collection of data and statistics from its competitions, which include the top two division of Colombian football, Primera A and B, the Superliga and Copa Colombia. The partners will look to stamp out unauthorised data collection at matches, ensuring it can sell the official feed to a global audience. “Dimayor is committed to the integrity of football and transparency around our competitions,” Dimayor president Jorge Enrique Velez commented. “This is why the arrival of Genius Sports is a demonstration of our interest in tracking betting in Colombian Professional Football, through monitoring and market analysis, to prevent irregularities that may involve stakeholders from our football competitions. “Genius Sports is the largest company worldwide to guarantee control over this and will work alongside us in all of the games of our competitions,” he added. “We are the first league in South America to engage integrity and transparency directly.” Genius Sports chief executive Mark Locke said Colombia had been central to the supplier’s international expansion, with its Latin American headquarters based in the city of Medellín. It also hosted the region’s first sports integrity summit in the capital Bogota in 2017. “It is a real honour to have been chosen by Dimayor as their trusted data and integrity partner, ensuring their fans can have faith in a fair and transparent contest and the league is equipped with the information and tools to maintain a clean, honest and unpredictable sport.” In recent months, Genius has also struck similar integrity deals with Brazil’s National Basketball League, and Superliga Argentina, the top division of Argentine football.