Sportradar: Suspicious matches up 34% in 2022

The total number of suspicious matches recorded in 2021 was 903 – a record for Sportradar at the time.

This was reported in Sportradar’s second annual betting corruption and match-fixing report. The sports were monitored by its Universal Fraud Detection System (UFDS).

Although the number of suspicious matches rose, the report stated that over 99.5% of sports events have no instances of match-fixing, and no one sport had a suspicious match ratio of over 1%.

Football was once again the sport with the highest rate of suspicious matches, coming in at 775 for 2022 – 64% of the total. This was a rise of 11.5% year-on-year.

More than half of suspicious alerts for football took place at the third tier or lower. These made up 51.8% of the total suspicious matches.

The number of suspicious matches for basketball skyrocketed by 249.2% to 220, while the number for tennis and table tennis ticked up by 41.5% to 75.

Geographical spread

Suspicious matches took place across 12 sports and 92 countries.

Just under half of the matches took place in Europe, totalling at 630. The continent with the second highest number of suspicious matches was Asia at 240, followed by South America at 225. Africa was the fourth highest with 93, while North America had 24 instances of suspicious matches.

Sportradar provided the top 10 countries in which the most match-fixing took place. Brazil had the highest number of suspicious alerts for the year, at 152, followed by Russia at 92. The Czech Republic was third with 56 suspicious sporting events, while Kazakhstan was fourth with 43 instances.

A collaborative effort

Andreas Krannich, managing director at Sportradar Integrity Services, said that the company’s integrity strategy had performed well in 2022.

“Our multi-layered approach to sports integrity is paying off, as 2022 saw a record number of 169 sporting and criminal sanctions delivered which were supported by Sportradar Integrity Services data and reports,” he said

However, Krannich added that Sportradar Integrity Services could not prevent match-fixing on its own, and that those involved in sports need to prioritise integrity measures.

“Yet for the long-term anti-match-fixing outlook to significantly improve, there needs to be a greater emphasis placed on integrity from sporting stakeholders, as there remains a significant lack of investment and allocation of resources,” said Krannich.

“We offer bet monitoring free of charge but sports and governments need to invest in preventative measures such as education, and proactive and reactive intelligence collection – including carrying out end-to-end investigations and the acquisition of evidence that can be used in disciplinary and criminal proceedings – that will ultimately create a strong deterrent.”

Earlier this month, Sportradar reported a 30% rise in revenue for its full year 2022 results – an increase attributed to its growth in the US.