The Malta Gaming Authority has concluded that a low count of Suspicious Betting Reports from a licensee is not, on its own, proof that the operator is failing to watch its markets. The regulator published the findings of a thematic review on Tuesday 27 October, after spending most of 2025 examining licensees that had filed very few reports, or none, since the reporting rules came into force.
According to the MGA’s announcement, the exercise looked at how B2B and B2C licensees spot, assess and escalate possible integrity issues. The fieldwork ran from Q2 to Q4 2025 through supervisory meetings and document reviews, and the results are presented in anonymised, aggregated form.
Why the numbers were low
The full 23-page report traces the low figures mainly to tight risk management. Many operators had set restrictive stake limits, kept their market offering conservative and pulled events judged especially open to manipulation, with certain youth competitions named as an example. The MGA said those choices cut exposure to integrity threats in the first place.
A second factor was a heavy reliance on outside integrity monitoring bodies. In those set-ups, internal investigations usually began only when a third-party partner raised an alert, so a quiet feed meant fewer cases. The review also found that some groups with licences in several jurisdictions, which mostly saw suspicious patterns under foreign regulators, had not realised that the same activity involving players on their MGA licence also has to be reported to Malta. The authority says it corrected that view during the engagements.
Paperwork lagging behind practice
While every licensee in the sample had some form of escalation process, the regulator found big differences in how formal those processes were. A recurring gap was that written policies rarely spelled out the role of the Key Compliance Function, even though that person handled reporting and liaised with the MGA in practice. Some firms explained their workflow verbally in meetings but had not documented the route from detection to report, and training and market suspension practices were also missing from policy documents in some cases.
Good practice included real-time monitoring tools, close cooperation between risk, trading and compliance teams, and checks designed to stop athletes and other sports personnel from betting on their own events. The MGA wants monitoring to pair automated alerts with human oversight, including for operators that depend on a B2B provider’s feed.
No fixed definition of suspicious
Licensees told the authority they wanted clearer guidance on what counts as suspicious activity, along with thresholds. The MGA acknowledged the feedback but said it prefers an open approach, arguing that rigid thresholds could deter firms from passing on information that still deserves review. Operators also floated a central register of professional athletes; the regulator said this falls outside its remit, but that sports associations may want to look at the idea.
None of the sampled operators had formal agreements with sports governing bodies, though the MGA stressed these are not mandatory. Integrity monitoring has been a busy area this year, with seven World Cup markets flagged for suspicious betting during the summer. Italian trade outlet Jamma also reported the findings on Wednesday. The MGA said it will track progress through ongoing supervision and use the review when setting future guidance and supervisory priorities.
The post MGA review finds low suspicious betting reports reflect tight risk controls appeared first on CasinoBeats.
The Malta Gaming Authority says low Suspicious Betting Report numbers often reflect tight risk controls, but wants clearer escalation procedures from licensees.
The post MGA review finds low suspicious betting reports reflect tight risk controls appeared first on CasinoBeats.