Sportradar Integrity Services has unveiled its comprehensive annual report titled ‘Betting Corruption and Match-fixing in 2023.’ The report delves into the findings regarding suspicious betting activities across global sports, providing detailed insights and analysis on the landscape of integrity issues in the realm of sports betting.
From the scrutiny of around 850,000 events and matches spanning 70 sports, the report brings attention to 1,329 matches under suspicion in 2023, spanning 11 sports across 105 countries. In comparison to 2022, the data reveals a consistent suspected manipulation rate of 0.21% in all sports, translating to one suspicious match in every 467 games during 2023. Additionally, the analysis affirms that no single sport exhibited a suspicious match ratio surpassing 1%, attesting that 99.5% of monitored sporting events showed no signs of suspicious betting activity.
In 2023, Artificial Intelligence (AI) played a pivotal role in identifying nearly three-quarters (73%, equating to 977 instances) of all suspicious matches, marking a substantial 123% surge from 2022. The incorporation of AI into Sportradar’s Universal Fraud Detection System (UFDS) has significantly elevated detection rates, emphasizing the necessity of human expertise from integrity analysts for precise data interpretation. Sportradar remains dedicated to advancing both AI capabilities and human oversight, reinforcing its commitment to safeguarding the integrity of sports.
Key findings in 2023:
• As the world’s most popular sport for betting, soccer continued to be the most affected by match fixing with 880 suspicious matches, followed by basketball with 205 matches, then table tennis with 70 matches.
• 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.
• Europe had the highest number of suspicious matches (667 vs 630 in 2022), followed by Asia (302 vs 240 in 2022) and South America (217 vs 225 in 2022).
• 1,295 suspicious matches came from men’s sporting events, while 34 came from women’s sporting events.
In the past year, Sportradar Integrity Services’ data and reporting led to a combined total of 147 sporting and criminal sanctions, covering 10 sports in 23 countries and involving 39 cases. This highlights the company’s position as a leading market provider of integrity services, as it collaborates with more than 220 partners worldwide, including sports organizations, state authorities, national platforms, and law enforcement agencies, to uphold the integrity of sports and combat threats like match-fixing, doping, and various forms of fraud and corruption.
Andreas Krannich, EVP, Integrity, Rights Protection and Regulatory Services, said:
Continued investment in the development of technology is key to detecting otherwise hard-to-find occurrences of match-fixing. In combination with access to account-level data, collaboration across the industry and human experts, we have a suite of powerful tools to help both prevent and detect risks to sports integrity. 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.
Sportradar employs a comprehensive and multi-pronged strategy for detecting match-fixing, combining cutting-edge technology with its expert Integrity Services unit. The Universal Fraud Detection System (UFDS) not only analyzes account-level data but also processes 30 billion odds changes in real-time across 600 global betting operators, utilizing advanced AI to identify and alert its global team of integrity analysts to suspicious matches. Complementing this approach is the Sportradar Integrity Exchange (SIE), where over 70 betting operators actively contribute information on suspicious betting, leveraging account-level data to identify and report potential match-fixing instances.
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