SPORTS BETTING

Switzerland – Sportradar report: 34 per cent rise in suspicious matches across 2022

By William - 22 March 2023

Sportradar Integrity Services’ second annual report, ‘Betting Corruption and Match-fixing in 2022’, has revealed that the company identified a 34 per cent rise in the total number of suspicious matches.

1,212 suspicious matches were identified across 2022 within 12 sports and in 92 countries from 850,000 matches the company monitors across more than 70 sports globally.

The AI model developed by Sportradar for its UFDS in 2022 directly identified 438 suspicious matches (36 per cent of annual total), leveraging the vast amount of data the company already has on suspicious betting activity and reflecting the important role that technology can play in the monitoring process.

Soccer continued to have the highest number of suspicious matches (775), but one of the key trends of 2022 was the sharp rise in suspicious basketball matches (220), which increased by approximately 250 per cent compared to 2021.

Europe continues to see the highest number of suspicious matches (630) followed by Asia (240) and South America (225) in total across all sports. Compared to 2021, the number of suspicious matches has risen in each region except North America and Oceania.

The trend from 2021 of lower-level competitions being affected has continued. In 2022, 52 per cent of suspicious soccer matches came from the third tier or lower, including regional leagues and youth competitions.

While reflecting an increase of 34 per cent from 2021, the total number of suspicious matches indicates that match-fixing occurs at a low percentage within global sport. Overall, the data confirms that 99.5 per cent of sporting events are free from match-fixing, with no single sport having a suspicious match ratio greater than one per cent.

Advancements in Sportradar’s Artificial Intelligence (AI), integrated with the Universal Fraud Detection System (UFDS), has helped to detect 438 of these matches. The application of this technology in the system has increased the amount of data points processed for every single match the company monitors to 500+ including odds, turnover, and statistical data related to the game state.

This processing is happening continuously through the life cycle of a match’s betting markets, from the moment it is first offered to the moment it ends. Annually, this equates to analysing 30 billion odds changes from more than 600 betting operators.

AI also analyses account-level betting data to help confirm otherwise undetectable micro-level suspicious betting activity. The model is periodically retrained on the latest data to ensure it can evolve and detect new methods of match-fixing. When all markets are settled, the model computes a prediction as to whether the match is potentially suspicious or not – providing our expert analysts with all the necessary information required to make an informed decision.

In addition to advances in technology, in 2022, the number of criminal and sporting sanctions the company supported its partners with also increased from 72 to 169, up 135 per cent from 2021, reflecting a focus by leagues and federations to address the threat that match-fixing presents to the integrity of sport.

Using Sportradar Integrity Services’ findings as evidence, sanctions were imposed by sport federations or criminal courts on those deemed guilty of cheating sport and breaking the law.

Andreas Krannich, Managing Director, Sportradar Integrity Services, commented: “We’ve taken an even more pro-active approach to uncovering match-fixing in 2022, from implementing a new AI model to developing more formal working relationships with bookmakers through the launch of our Integrity Exchange, which resulted in more than 300 alerts.

“Our technology enables us to monitor more matches on a deeper level, providing more precise and accurate insights to help aid partners, clients and the wider sports industry in efforts to safeguard sporting events from corruption. We look forward to supporting even more sports federation and law enforcement partners in 2023.”

Sportradar Integrity Services used its UFDS to monitor more than 850,000 sports matches in 2022 and to provide an in-depth analysis of the match-fixing landscape. As a large representative sample size, it can be taken as a strong indication of the true rate of match-fixing globally. The annual report serves to highlight the extent of match-fixing and raise awareness of the latest and most extensive data and trends.