The rapidly mushrooming number of illegal sports betting websites is heightening concerns among authorities about global corruption, money laundering and gambling addiction. There are now an estimated 15,000 such sites on the World Wide Web, including some 13,000 illegal ones, shuffling around 15 billion euros (23.6 billion dollars) a year, according to the authorities.
These dizzying figures have finally stung sports authorities into action. Late last year, International Olympic Committee (IOC) president Jacques Rogge compared the gambling issue to the gangrene caused by doping in sports. He proposed the creation of a world surveillance agency based on the model of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), which leads the fight against drugs in sport.