The United Lotteries for Integrity in Sports (ULIS) and the South American Football Confederation (CONMEBOL) have entered into a Cooperation Agreement, strengthening their commitment to uphold the integrity of sports competition and partnering on an international level.
The Cooperation Agreement solidifies the collaboration both entities have developed recently, mainly through various forums where both organizations are actively engaged, such as the first CONMEBOL Integrity Summit that took place in Paraguay in November last year.
The Agreement outlines how ULIS will support CONMEBOL through active monitoring, risk assessments, and reporting of unusual and suspicious betting patterns within the territory of the CONMEBOL member associations or linked, directly or indirectly, to CONMEBOL competitions. The two organizations will continue to exchange perspectives and best practices and collaborate on specific projects of mutual interest to foster dialogue among sport integrity actors.
This partnership will have a positive impact on tournaments organized by CONMEBOL, including the prestigious Libertadores and Copa America. ULIS has activated its UMIG (ULIS Monitoring & Intelligence Group) composed of lottery members worldwide to monitor the Copa America 2024 taking place in the United States and will provide CONMEBOL with a risk assessment on the Libertadores every year, enhancing the quality of prevention measures and the information shared.
Alejandro Dominguez, CONMEBOL President, said “This agreement with ULIS will provide an extra layer of security to our competitions. Being part of the ULIS network will help us ensure the integrity of our matches and protect the interests of our teams, players, and fans.”
Luca Esposito, ULIS Secretary General, commented, “We are proud to support CONMEBOL in their efforts to maintain the integrity of their competitions. This agreement aims to bolster ULIS and CONMEBOL’s joint commitment to safeguard the integrity of sports competition in the region. Signing this agreement with CONMEBOL affirms ULIS' international network of partnerships to raise global sport integrity standards.”
About ULIS:
ULIS is a non-profit association of state lotteries conceived to safeguard the integrity and core values of sports from corruption, specifically, from the manipulation of sports competitions. As the only betting integrity body to hold an observer status to the Council of Europe’s Macolin Convention, ULIS provides its stakeholders with a global, systemic, surveillance framework for the monitoring of sports betting in order to detect suspicious betting patterns. It brings together state lotteries, national and international actors in the field of sport integrity and seeks to act as a platform for sharing information, best practices and experience among its members.
About CONMEBOL:
The Confederación Sudamericana de Fútbol, better known as CONMEBOL (which comes from the acronym used in cable releases: Confederación Sudamericana de Fútbol), is the confederation of national football associations (federations) of South America. Founded on July 9, 1916 in Buenos Aires, it is the first Confederation in the world, established almost 40 years before the next ones to be formed. CONMEBOL originated from a tournament between countries of the South American continent. The first Copa América was held in 1916 in Buenos Aires in celebration of the hundred years of Argentina's independence. This was the beginning of the institution, originally composed of the associations of Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Uruguay. Later on, the other South American associations joined CONMEBOL: Paraguay (1921), Peru (1925), Bolivia (1926), Ecuador (1927), Colombia (1936) and Venezuela (1953).
It is the only soccer confederation in which all its associations are also members of FIFA and the International Olympic Committee (IOC). Its ten member National Associations are the pride of CONMEBOL.
