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Both William Hill and Paddy Power are two of the massive British Brand names which are deeply involved in the online casino, bingo, live poker and sports betting arena. They are also the two latest brands to add their name to the growing fight against match fixing and other types of sports result alterning activities. They have done this by joining forces with ESSA and this now brings the list of total operators on this body to fifteen.

ESSA is the European-based sports veracity watchdog which acts as an early warning system to protect the integrity of sports. They have a mandate to monitor betting activities as well as work with both gambling operators and sports governing bodies. Their true function is to educate players with regards to the prevention of influencing the outcome of sporting events, in other words those two nasty words – match fixing!

Fraudsters have long been left held unaccountable for these types of actions and yet it seems almost certain that the influencing of the outcome of sporting events occurs more frequently than we might have perceived. ESSA stands for the European Sports Security Association and they have the ability to offer intelligence on irregular activities, suspicious sports betting patterns or insider betting.

William Hill and Paddy Power intend to work closely with ESSA too, and as far as the Secretary-general of ESSA, Khalid Ali, is concerned these two new memberships considerably enhances their status. In the strive to ensure that match fixing is kept out of sports, ESSA was established in 2005 and is an association of the leading online sports book operators throughout Europe. Party Gaming is already a member, as is BWIN, Unibet, Sportingbet, Bet-at-home and BetClick. It is essential that all sports stakeholders join forces to combat what is considered to be totally contrary to sporting-like behaviour.

Bill South who is the William Hill Director of Security commented that they are “constantly aware of the need to work together to combat match fixing”. The European Sports Security Association has excellent links with governing bodies, intelligence units and regulators which makes it an ideal platform for the coordination of their efforts to counter this scourge. Sports integrity is vital in order that punters get a fair deal when they lay a wager on an event or events.

We do not tolerate casinos with crooked roulette wheels and therefore should not tolerate crooked sports people who fix a game to go their own way. What really surprises us is that fans do lose faith in the integrity of sports when match fixing takes place and this obviously has a massive knock-on effect on the gambling or sports betting sector of this industry. Why place a bet if you suspect the match has been fixed anyway, there is certainly no fun in knowing you will just be screwed out of your wager.

Check out both Paddy Power and William Hill for all your online gambling needs, they are both fabulous sites.