you know, really bringing about this legalized market is better for the industry, it’s better for individuals, and it gives us an opportunity to address these problems that we may not have had before. SP: You’re absolutely correct. The fact that these instances are being detected and reported is actually the success of a well-regulated betting market. Regulated operators are not the ones fixing matches, they’re actually fighting against this happening, they are risk management measures to avoid that. Now, there is a link and close relationship between integrity and sports betting regulation. Because if there are restrictions in the market, then consumers would be pursuing that product or that market somewhere else. And somewhere else most of the time means in illegal or black markets and regulated operators will not be able to see instances of possible fraud and will not be able to report it. Operators in the black market don’t have any incentive to monitor and report back those instances, whereas the regulated operators are actually participating actively in the market, and they are making investments in that specific market. So the last thing they want to see is their product being damaged through match faxing as that would mean that consumers would lose faith in the product itself. So it’s in all their interests to put in place those measures, and it’s in everyone’s interest to operate in a well regulated market that allows them to offer the wide variety of products. AB: Vlastimil, I want to invite you to talk about some of the successes you’ve seen. VV: This integrated piece is very important. eSports is a global phenomenon. It’s not just one country, one special League. Yitles like League of Legends are played across the globe. Integrated area is a big topic we are discussing with publishers and exactly this kind of sharing of knowledge. We will probably do something and on IP as well, because it’s a very important piece. The publishers that organize tournaments, they don’t want fraudulent players to be part of the ecosystem and they want to get rid of them. And this can be done only through information sharing, and we all participate in this and make the ecosystem better. And it’s definitely not, going to happen if there is no openness and transparency around this. I’d just like to add to that match fixing will happen anyway, whether it’s regulated or not. But I agree, if it’s regulated, we can be open, speak about it, and it’s much easier to identify. We can say these are the bad actors just do something with them and just don’t accept the bets and so on. And the amount of this in eSports is similar to traditional sports. So it’s happening, we cannot say that it’s not, but it’s not at super big levels. It’s similar to soccer or NFL sports. But there is a big push right now in eSports to do something about that. PL: Getting back to successes, for example, in the eSports. area, and also related to IP, the online gaming sector understands the sports sector and it is also starting to understand more what esports are about. There’s still a lot to do, but at least there’s an understanding that if the assets are not controlled by the sports leagues, if for example, they’re controlled by the publishers, it’s a big problem. AB: Staying on the positive side I just want to get quick thoughts on these because we touched on them a little bit earlier. Silvia, we have seen significant growth and interest in women’s sports. I want to get your thoughts on how sports betting comes into that equation. SP: Well, as I said before, there is a symbiotic relationship between sports and sports betting. So sports betting can actually also help drive certain sports that are not necessarily popular. And it’s one of the cases that we have seen with women’s sports. We always hear there is a rise in interest in women’s sports but we don’t really have any data to support that. We recently released a study on women’s sports and women sports betting and we wanted precisely to dive into this issue. And what we have seen from data is that actually women betting on women’s sports is rising. And we have seen for example, in football, we have 20% yearly growth on betting on women’s sports, and also a general 10% in growth in the number of bets in the volume of bets and the numbers of betters in basketball, tennis, cricket, and volleyball. So this growth can also help and support the growth of women’s sports when it comes to the commercial relationship with broadcasting. Some of our members are also buying broadcasting rights and streaming sport on their own platforms So data like this is another area where sports betting can help drive and support certain sports that are not so popular. AB: eSports has been growing organically like crazy for many years. But have you seen the same kind of trend with
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