Suspicious Matches in 2022 Increase by 34%, Says Sportradar

Sportradar’s unit, Sportradar Integrity Services, announced Tuesday the release of its second annual report titled “Betting, Corruption and Match-fixing in 2022,” outlining the number of suspicious matches flagged last year. The company pointed out that its integrity solutions and services analyzed 850,000 matches from 92 different countries within 12 sports.

The new report revealed that a total of 1,212 suspicious matches were flagged in 2021. This result, when compared to the 2021 figures showed an increase of 34%. Still, Sportradar acknowledged that 99.5% of the sports events were free from integrity threats such as match-fixing and that no sport had a suspicious match ratio that surpassed 1%.

The company pointed out that soccer remained the sport with the highest number of suspicious matches in 2022, a total of 775. Additionally, Sportradar revealed that a significant increase in suspicious basketball matches was observed which saw 220 suspicious reports last year. When compared to the result from 2021, this marked an increase of 250%.

Not unexpectedly, Europe was the region with the highest number of suspicious matches, a total of 630. Next in line was the Asian region with 240 suspicious matches in 2022 followed by South America with 225. “Compared to 2021, the number of suspicious matches has risen in each region except North America and Oceania,” explained Sportradar.

In 2021, the company identified a trend that confirmed that low-level competitions were affected by match-fixing or other integrity threats. Now, the new report reaffirmed that trend with Sportradar explaining that 52% of the suspicious soccer matches in 2022 were within low-tier matches, including youth competitions and regional leagues.

The Company Continues to Monitor the Sports Vertical

Andreas Krannich, Sportradar Integrity Services’ managing director, explained that the company has engaged in a proactive approach when investigating match-fixing in 2022. He acknowledged the implementation of Artificial Intelligence (AI), as well as strengthened relationships with bookmakers via the Integrity Exchange initiative launch.

Krannich said that the company’s leading technology continues to monitor the global betting markets and competitions. He outlined that this monitoring helps deliver Sportradar’s partners accurate data that can ultimately help protect the integrity of sports events around the globe. “We look forward to supporting even more sports federations and law enforcement partners in 2023,” said Krannich in conclusion.

It’s worth saying that Sportaradar’s AI advancements helped enrich its Universal Fraud Detection System (UDFS). As a result, AI technology helped detect 438 of the 1,212 suspicious matches in 2022. At the same time, the company said that its efforts and insights helped in the fight against match-fixing and corruption, with such sanctions increasing from 72 in 2021 to 169 in 2022, up by 135%. This, according to Sportradar, reaffirmed the commitment of sports leagues to ensure the integrity of sports and prosecute breaches or match-fixing.