Luca Esposito, WLA Executive Director, Piet Van Baeveghem, EL Secretary General, and Jean-Luc Moner-Banet, ULIS President, shared their thoughts during the final Strategic Dialogue: “What must we lead in the next 3 Years?”, which echoed many of the themes examined during the event.
Esposito:
“Ultimately, leadership is not about reacting to change. It is about anticipating it, shaping it, and ensuring that our industry continues to operate with integrity, security, responsibility, and a clear commitment to the public good.”
Van Baeveghem:
“Fighting illegal gambling requires legal clarity, coordinated action, and effective tools, and sports integrity starts with ensuring that betting activity is well-regulated.”
Moner-Banet:
“An association is only as strong as the intelligence it receives and the trust it builds. That is true for ULIS, and it is equally true for our joint work with WLA and EL.”
Next steps for maintaining global sports integrity
WLA Focus
Esposito explained the WLA’s intention to continue its multi-layered approach to combating illegal operators while protecting sports integrity, operational security, and the long-term sustainability of the industry. This involves:
- Working with trusted partners such as ULIS, regional lottery associations, regulators, law enforcement agencies, academic institutions, and others to facilitate knowledge sharing, collaboration, and collective action.
- Raising awareness and facilitating dialogue, knowledge exchange, sharing best practices and discussing issues that matter most to industry. Together with regional associations and partners, organize seminars, workshops, conferences, and leadership forums that bring together regulators, operators, academics, law enforcement agencies, sports organizations, and other stakeholders.
- Developing practical tools, standards, and resources to support members, including the continued development of the standardized methodology to estimate illegal gambling markets, and guidance on anti-money laundering, security, responsible gaming, and other emerging challenges.
- Taking a clear stance on issues that affect the credibility and future of the industry, with position papers on Bulk Sales following the Texas Lottery case and, more recently, on Prediction Markets.
WLA takes a stand on prediction markets
Esposito elaborated on the challenge prediction markets pose to the global state-regulated lottery and sports betting industry, why they matter, and why WLA published a Position Paper on the topic.
“Prediction markets offering sport-event or lottery-based contracts without a proper local licence are operating illegally. Rebranding bets as 'contracts' and players as 'traders' does not change the legal nature of the activity.”
The Key message to all regulators (whether gambling or financial) is to apply the functional test — if it pays out on an event outcome, it is a bet; regulate accordingly
WLA calls for urgent alignment between gaming and financial market regulators to close regulatory gaps and ensure prediction markets are subject to the same licensing, integrity, and consumer protection standards as betting.
Strengthening WLA's position as global reference point
Pursuing a broader ambition to strengthen the WLA’s position as the global reference point for lotteries and sports betting operators, and to assist members navigate change, seize opportunities, and continue delivering value to society in a responsible and sustainable manner, work is ongoing to:
- Leverage WLA internationally recognized standards while continuously expanding services, knowledge, and member support; building on the key work of regional associations and ensuring that innovations and best practices developed in one region can benefit the entire global community.
- Invest in research and innovation, for instance WLA collaboration with the University of Lausanne and the project with East Carolina University on young adults and gambling behaviors.
- Develop sustainability guidelines for the industry, helping members better understand and implement sustainable practices while demonstrating the positive contribution lotteries make to society.
- Build on the success of the partnership with the University of Lausanne, moving from the pilot phase to implementation, supporting members in applying as tandardized methodology, to estimate illegal gambling markets and generate actionable insights.
- Further strengthen collaboration with the United Nations through the UN Guiding Principles initiative and continue expanding digital services available to members.
- Evolve projects such as the Unified Data Collection, which leverages industry-wide data, to better understand market developments, identify emerging trends, benchmark performance, and anticipate where the industry is heading.
- Bring people together to discuss, share intelligence, knowledge and best practices for addressing large-scale issues affecting our global industry, such as maintaining sports integrity by combating match fixing, and tackling illegal gambling markets.
The 2026 World Lottery Summit
Esposito mentioned the forthcoming World Lottery Summit to be held in Sydney, in November, which will gather lottery leaders, regulators, suppliers, academics, and policymakers from across the globe to address the most important opportunities and challenges facing industry.
Featuring world-class speakers, thought-provoking discussions, a tradeshow, and valuable networking opportunities, participants will also have the opportunity to experience one of the world's most iconic destinations, with the spectacular backdrop of Sydney Harbour providing a fitting setting for global dialogue, innovation, and collaboration.
European perspective
Van Baeveghem noted that in the European region, there is a clear vision of the future and we are optimistic that we can win the fight against illegal operators. The pilot project with White Bullet is to see the effectiveness of the Digital Service Act.
"Law enforcement is very important. Illegal gambling is a regulatory and legal enforcement challenge. It is all about collaboration, reaching out to the right people to take the right action at the right moment. For instance payment and website blocking. These actions will become increasingly impactful, but they take time. We believe in the future there will be much tighter controls of the internet."
Gambling regulation should remain nationally controled and be seen as a strength, to protect consumers and fight criminal activities. He also underscored the shared responsibility of stakeholders to protect consumers and support nationally regulated markets.
Facing trends of highly adaptive, well-organized illegal gambling markets with greater opportunities for manipulation, the European zone requires stronger cooperation to tackle cross-border challenges.
He summarized EL’s response which is to work to share knowledge and best practices to tackle illegal gambling; develop its pilot project to monitor and identify illegal operators and behaviors; ensure enforcement within the existing European legal framework; raise awareness about the phenomenon among stakeholders, and promote blocking measures, and develop abroad sector wide alliance.
United Lotteries for Integrity in Sports
ULIS is focused on four pillars:
- Hub Teams working and improving the monitoring tool to answer the criminal activity, integrating predictive AI, improving information exchange and quality, with sports federations and law enforcement agencies.
- Extending membership and broadening the network. We would like all WLA and EL members who offer sports betting to be members and convinced of the added value.
- Contributing to best practices and education. We need to develop this especially with young athletes, so that they understand the full impact of getting involved in illicit activities.
- Communication. ULIS is doing extremely well but we must let the world know. We want all possible stakeholders to know what we do to protect sports betting and support sports and the public good in general which is the ultimate goal of lotteries.
A first joint edition that proved its value
Three days ago, we opened this seminar as the first joint edition between WLA, ULIS and EL. We close it today with the confirmation that this was the right choice. Integrity, risk and security are no longer separate conversations, they are three sides of the same responsibility. What we discussed here, from cybersecurity and illegal betting to operational resilience and competition manipulation – all points to the same conclusion: lotteries that protect sport must also protect themselves, their consumers and the systems on which public trust depends.
Takeaways on illegal gambling and risk assessment
The sessions on illegal markets, the academic work onmarket estimation, the regional monitoring models presented, and the discussions on payment flows and digital platforms reminded us that illegal betting does not occur in a vacuum — it is an infrastructure. Disrupting it requires data, cooperation beyond our traditional partners, and a clear-eyed understanding of channelization. On the risk side, the WLA and EL frameworks showed that structured governance, cybersecurity readiness and operational resilience are not bureaucracy, they are what keep our markets trusted and sustainable in a fast-changing environment.
ULIS role in maintaining sports integrity explained
First, the roundtable moderated by Cristina Swan, with our partners from the IOC, UEFA, FIFA, Interpol and the Council of Europe, illustrated clearly how ULIS acts across the full integrity chain — not only monitoring, but also regulation, investigation, prevention and education. It showed that our cooperation with these organizations is operational, structured, and built on trust.
Second, the strategic discussion between WLA, ULIS and EL, in which Luca Esposito (also ULIS General Secretary), Piet Van Baeveghem (EL General Secretary), and I had the privilege of taking part, confirmed a shared ambition to align our voices and priorities in the years ahead.
And third, the use by ULIS of AI technology, presented by Daniel Chan, showed us the importance of using this technology to the benefit of monitoring and detection.
Broader message for our community
Our sector is moving decisively from a reactive posture to an anticipatory one. Anticipating risk, fighting illegal practices, and looking forward are no longer ambitions — they are operational requirements. None of this works without the engagement of our members.
An association is only as strong as the intelligence it receives and the trust it builds. That is true for ULIS, and it is equally true for our joint work with WLA and EL.
