The growth of sports betting and the match-fixing cases that have occurred in other sports have put the UCI on alert, considering it a threat to cycling similar to that posed by doping or technological fraud.
Illegal sports betting has become a real problem in some sports, as demonstrated by the recent scandals uncovered in the NBA and the US Baseball League. Cycling, due to the ease of manipulation, could be a sport vulnerable to being influenced by illegal betting, so the UCI has decided to take action and closely monitor any suspicious situation.
Currently, cycling represents a relatively small market for sports betting; however, the characteristics of this sport make it easy to manipulate certain moments of the race. Which cyclist crests a mountain pass first, a rider in a two-man breakaway who subtly lets the other team win, a team that pulls hard even when they have nothing to lose to reel in a breakaway, cyclists who negotiate mid-race to be allowed to win… these are situations as old as cycling itself, yet sports betting could make them far more common, damaging the image of a sport that has had to contend with the scourge of doping for years.
To prevent this as much as possible, the UCI is monitoring the types of bets offered by different platforms, looking to correlate them with what happens in competition to try to find unusual patterns that indicate illegal betting is taking place. In fact, the UCI has had an article in its regulations since 2019 that refers to sports betting, prohibiting all license holders of any type from organizing bets on cycling events and placing bets, either directly or through intermediaries, on events in which they might participate, under penalty of a two-year ban.
Now the UCI is further tightening its policy on sports betting by prohibiting certain types of easily manipulated bets, such as head-to-head bets where bets are placed on which of two cyclists will achieve the best result.
Furthermore, cycling’s governing body has regulated sponsorship by betting companies so that teams cannot give visibility to these companies to avoid the risk that the interests of these companies could influence and manipulate races.
Although no abnormal situation has yet been detected in cycling, the UCI, after seeing what has happened in other sports, has preferred to anticipate and toughen its stance regarding betting to avoid any kind of scandal that could damage cycling’s already precarious image.
Source: www.brujulabike.com