The federal sports watchdog agency famous for spearheading the effort that stripped Lance Armstrong of his world cycling titles may now expand to handle monitoring integrity in the newly legal sports betting industry.
According to an ESPN report, the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) is exploring the possibilities of broadening it role to monitor suspicious betting activity in land-based and online sports books, using the same analytical detection methods it uses to spot red flags suggestive of doping.
USADA was created in 2000 and is the designated national-level drug testing entity for several sports, including Olympic athletes in the U.S.
“If legalized sports gambling and potentially match-fixing situations continue to come to light, it would be important to have a regulatory body to put rules in place and hand down any sanctions necessary,” said Travis Tygart, chief executive officer of USADA in Colorado Springs, in an interview with ESPN. “USADA would consider expanding our scope. We have had high-level conversations with several in the industry and folks on (Capitol) Hill.”
The USADA proposal to expand an existing federal agency to monitor sports wagering integrity offers a clear alternative to the U.S. Senate bill to establish federal oversight of sports betting, introduced last week.
Senators Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Chuck Schumer (D-New York) introduced the Sports Wagering Market Integrity Act of 2018, calling for a federally controlled central clearinghouse of betting data from around the country, that would be analyzed to monitor for suspicious betting patterns.
“It’s in the gaming market’s interest as well as clean athletes’ to have a fair, honest playing field, Tygart told ESPN. “If someone has an unknown advantage through doping, the gaming industry suffers from an inability to equitably set the odds. Cooperative relationships have to take priority in order for clean athletes and a corrupt-free gaming market to prevail.’
