MGA says sparse suspicious betting reports can signal strong controls

The Malta Gaming Authority has concluded that a licensee submitting few or no Suspicious Betting Reports is not automatically a sign of poor integrity controls, according to findings reported by CasinoBeats.

The regulator published a thematic review on Tuesday 27 October, the result of work carried out across most of 2025 targeting operators whose reporting activity had been unusually thin or non-existent since the rules took effect.

Supervisors examined how both B2B and B2C licence holders detect, assess and escalate possible match-fixing or integrity concerns. The fieldwork, carried out between the second and fourth quarters of 2025, combined supervisory meetings with document checks, and the 23-page report presents its conclusions in anonymised, pooled form.

One driver of low reporting numbers was deliberate risk avoidance. Several operators had imposed tight stake caps, kept their product range conservative and withdrawn markets they judged particularly vulnerable to manipulation, citing certain youth competitions as an example of events they avoid altogether.

A second factor was dependence on external integrity monitoring providers. Where that was the model, internal reviews tended to start only once a third-party partner flagged something, meaning silence from that feed translated directly into fewer internal cases.

The review also uncovered a gap in understanding among groups holding licences in multiple jurisdictions. Some had been reporting suspicious patterns to overseas regulators without realising that activity touching players on their Maltese licence must also be reported to the MGA. The authority said it clarified this obligation during the engagements.

Every operator in the sample had some mechanism for escalating concerns, but the formality of those processes varied widely. A common shortfall was that written policies rarely defined the duties of the Key Compliance Function, despite that role carrying out reporting and acting as the liaison with the MGA in day-to-day practice.

In some cases firms could describe their process verbally during meetings but had never set out in writing how a detected issue moved through to a formal report. Training requirements and procedures for suspending a market were likewise absent from some policy documents.

Among the practices the MGA highlighted favourably were live monitoring systems, routine coordination across risk, trading and compliance functions, and safeguards intended to prevent athletes and other sports participants from betting on their own competitions. The regulator wants automated detection paired with human review as standard, including at operators that rely on a B2B supplier's monitoring feed.

Licensees asked the MGA for sharper guidance on what qualifies as suspicious activity, including defined thresholds. The authority said it had noted the request but intends to keep its approach open-ended, warning that fixed thresholds risk discouraging firms from flagging activity that still merits scrutiny even if it falls short of a set bar.

Operators also raised the idea of a shared register of professional athletes. The MGA said that sits outside its own remit but suggested sports governing bodies might want to explore it. None of the licensees reviewed had a formal agreement in place with a sports governing body, though the regulator noted such agreements are not a requirement.

Integrity monitoring has drawn heightened attention this year, with seven markets linked to the World Cup flagged for suspicious betting activity over the summer. The Italian trade outlet Jamma also covered the MGA's findings, reporting them on Wednesday.

The MGA said it will monitor how licensees respond to the review through ongoing supervision and will draw on the findings when shaping future guidance and setting supervisory priorities.