March 4, 2024 3 min read

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Sportradar: Suspicious Matches in Asia and Europe on the Rise

After analyzing a staggering 850,000 sports events in 2023, Sportradar Integrity Services uncovered 1,329 suspicious matches

The world’s leading sports technology company, Sportradar, announced the release of its latest annual integrity report. The new annual report was released by Sportradar’s integrity unit, Sportradar Integrity Services, revealing insights regarding suspicious betting on global sport.

The report, “Betting Corruption and Match-fixing in 2023,” revealed that 70 sports were monitored throughout last year. A whopping 850,000 sports events across the globe have undergone analysis.

As a result, a total of 1,329 suspicious matches were identified as suspicious. Those matches were across 11 sports played in 105 countries around the world. The figure from 2023, compared to 2022, showed a steady suspected manipulation rate of 0.21%. This means that there was one suspicious match on every 467 matches during 2023.

Sportradar revealed that in 2023, there was no sport that had a suspicious match ratio that was greater than 1%. Moreover, the company explained that in 99.5% of the sports events that have undergone monitoring there was no suspicious betting activity identified.

Andreas Krannich, Sportradar’s EVP, integrity, rights protection and regulatory services, spoke about the importance of investment in innovative technology that helps detect “otherwise hard-to-find occurrences of match-fixing.” He added that the company successfully fuses account-level data, innovative tools and human experts that help identify difficult suspicious matches.

At the same time, Krannich said that this robust approach helps prevent different sports integrity threats. “Further advancements in the fight against match-fixing will be possible as the AI models continue to learn and we will keep honing our expertise to protect sport from manipulation,” he said in conclusion.

Europe and Asia See Uptick in Suspicious Matches

A breakdown released by Sportradar reveals that soccer was the sport with the highest number of suspicious matches. According to the company’s latest report, there were a total of 880 suspicious soccer matches identified in 2023. The sport with the second-highest number was basketball with 205 matches, followed by table tennis with 70 matches.

According to Sportradar: “Account-level betting data was used to detect 85% of suspicious matches in volleyball, and 100% of suspicious matches in tennis and table tennis, underscoring the importance of collaborating closely with the sports betting industry to combat match-fixing and integrity threats.”

Throughout 2023, Europe had the highest number of suspicious matches. In 2022, the region was responsible for 630 matches, a number that increased to 667 suspicious matches in 2023. The report confirmed that 302 suspicious matches were uncovered for the Asia region, an uptick when compared to the 240 results from 2022. Additionally, 217 suspicious sporting events were identified in South America, a decrease when compared to the 2022 figure which was 225.

William Velichkov is a research-driven writer. His strengths lie in ensuring factual accuracy, vetting government documentation and reaching out to regulators and other officials. He is particularly fond of financial reporting, the sports betting industry, B2B partnerships and esports betting developments. William is a strong asset to the GamblingNews team as he adds a bedrock to our reporting.

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