United Lotteries for Integrity in Sport (ULIS) has praised FIFA’s revelation that the 2026 World Cup went by without any signs of suspicious betting activity.
An association of lotteries offering sports betting, ULIS is a regular contributor to wagering monitoring during major international sports events like the World Cup and Euros.
The organisation has played a role in supporting the real-time monitoring of betting markets and on-field activity during all 104 matches of the World Cup, which concluded on Sunday 19 July with Spain beating defending 2022 champions Argentina 1-0 in New Jersey.
Having been expanded from 36 to 48 teams by FIFA, the World Cup presented a challenge from a betting monitoring perspective as the global governing body and integrity bodies like ULIS, Sportradar and the INTERPOL dealt with more betting volume than ever before.
ULIS has concluded its contribution to the FIFA Integrity Task Force for the FIFA World Cup 2026™, having supported the real-time monitoring of betting markets and on-field activity across all 104 matches of the tournament.
For its part, ULIS utilised its Ulis Monitoring and Intelligence Group and its global network of lotteries which fed into FIFA-coordinated centralised data collection while also analysing information throughout the tournament.
As the world’s most played sport, football is generally one of the most targeted sports by match fixtures according to the likes of ULIS and the International Betting Integrity Association (IBIA), the other being tennis.
“The FIFA Integrity Task Force provided a strong framework during the FIFA World Cup 2026 for sharing intelligence, assessing potential concerns and coordinating a timely response,” said Liam Rich, FIFA’s Senior Integrity Manager.
“We thank all Task Force members for their expertise and commitment during the competition and we look forward to building on this collaboration at future FIFA tournaments.”
Regulated betting and lotteries continue to face new integrity challenges, however, with predictions widely cited as an emerging field that lottery stakeholders will have to contend with.
The World Lottery Association (WLA) and North American Association of State and Provincial Lotteries (NASPL) have both expressed concern about the potential impact predictions can have on both lotteries and sports.
Despite concerns like these, predictions continue to grow at pace and FIFA itself has partnered with a predictions company – ADI Predictstreet, a Gibraltar-licensed platform based on the ADI Chain, the blockchain system operated by the UAE-based ADI Foundation.