Suspicious matches up 34% in 2022, according to Sportradar's sports corruption report

Sports integrity monitoring and intelligence supplier Sportradar Integrity Services has issued its second annual report, Betting Corruption and Match-fixing in 2022, revealing the company identified 1,212 suspicious matches in total in 2022, within 12 sports and in 92 countries from the 850,000 matches the company monitors across 70+ sports globally.  

While reflecting an increase of 34% from 2021, the total number of suspicious matches indicates that match-fixing occurs at a low percentage within global sports. Overall, the data confirms that 99.5% of sporting events are free from match-fixing, with no single sport having a suspicious match ratio greater than 1%, according to Sportradar's integrity unit.

Advancements in Sportradar's Artificial Intelligence (AI), integrated with the Universal Fraud Detection System (UFDS), have 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," the firm noted.

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 analyzing 30 billion odds changes from 600+ betting operators.

AI also analyzes 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, explains Sportradar Integrity Services. 

"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," the sports integrity solutions highlighted.

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% 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 sports federations or criminal courts on those deemed guilty of cheating sports and breaking the law.

Key findings from Sportradar's integrity report are as follows:

• The AI model developed by Sportradar for its UFDS in 2022 directly identified 438 suspicious matches (36% of annual total), leveraging a vast amount of data the company already has on suspicious betting activity.
• 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% 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% of suspicious soccer matches came from the third tier or lower, including regional leagues and youth competitions.

Andreas Krannich, Managing Director of Sportradar Integrity Services, said: "We've taken an even more proactive 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 federations and law enforcement partners in 2023."