Matthew Holt: “We continue to push collaboration and transparency in sports betting”

In this conversation with Matthew Holt, President at U.S. Integrity, we touch on a range of topics, including the need for tighter integrity protocols to guarantee the fairness of sports competitions in the age of rapid sports betting legalization. Our conversation with Holt delves into how U.S. Integrity ensures that its clients benefit from the same quality service, and how the company continues to push for collaboration and transparency in sports betting.

Q: Matthew, we catch up with you at an exciting time for U.S. Integrity. Your company has announced a merger with Odds On Compliance. How has this partnership come to be?

U.S. Integrity and Odds On Compliance have been working on collaborative efforts for almost two years. In March of this year, the two companies launched their first official joint venture in Prohibet, the industry’s first practical solution to the prohibited bettor problem. With shared vision and goals aligned, the two companies decided to merge with the idea of starting to build the first true reg tech rollup in the sports betting and iGaming space.

Q: What are the immediate priorities for your unified product and core offer and where are Odds On Compliance/U.S. Integrity's efforts going to focus next?

The first priority of the combined firms is to immediately provide the industry with the best of class, efficient, and affordable bundled compliance services. Operators have been left with no other option but to buy nuanced compliance products from several providers specializing in just one product set.

This requires operators to integrate with and pay retail rates to a dozen or more vendors for compliance services alone. The goal is for us to allow integration with one platform, which provides various compliance services. This platform would save the operators money, allow for fewer integrations, and allow operators to receive services from one trusted vendor.

Q: Having observed and worked in the market with U.S. Integrity, what is your impression of the current integrity of sports in light of the rapid legalization of sports gambling in the US and beyond?

I think the U.S. has taken the foundation of integrity protocols built in other jurisdictions and expanded on them. The need for technology and data additions to global integrity protocols was obvious and we’re hopeful that the future of integrity monitoring in regulated sports betting someday mirrors that in other highly regulated industries like financial services. Sports betting integrity monitoring should be driven by data and technology, and there’s too much at stake to allow it to be a subjective process.

Q: US Integrity has signed up numerous partnerships to help protect the integrity of various leagues and sports this league, has this ever-expanding client portfolio made it more challenging for you to perform your day-to-day activities as a company?

Rather than focusing on profits as our client base significantly expanded, we focused on growth and thus hired dozens of new employees. This allows us to ensure that each and every client receives the same excellent service that made U.S. Integrity the preferred integrity monitor to almost every major professional sports league, collegiate sports league, and regulated operator in North America.

It’s important to remember that regulated legal sports betting in the U.S., outside of Nevada, is just over five years old. Therefore, it’s best to be patient with state regulators as they identify the challenges with integrity monitoring and other regulatory issues with sports betting. The appropriate changes to regulations to ensure integrity will come, but it may take some time.

Q: What do you think needs to change in the way we approach sports betting and sports in general to guarantee a higher level of game integrity, or is it more of a continuous process that custodians such as US Integrity ought to uphold in order to ensure the fairness of the game?

I do think that we need to push data and technology more and enforcement of operator obligations. If we have one top-five operator averaging an alert every four weeks and another that hasn’t sent one in three years then the one that hasn’t sent one in three years likely isn’t being as thorough in identifying instances of suspicious activity. It is the role of the regulators to ensure that operators are identifying and reporting such issues to their licensed integrity monitor.

We need to continue to push collaboration and transparency when it comes to sports betting integrity to ensure the market can thrive and reach its known potential. Integrity issues in other jurisdictions have shown us what devastating effects that match-fixing and other integrity issues can cause to the overall ecosystem when the proper regulations and guardrails are not in place. Once the public trust is lost, it’s very difficult to earn it back.

Image credit: Casino Guru News