Sportradar Integrity Services, a global provider of sports integrity solutions and partner to more than 100 sports federations and leagues, has detected more than 1,100 suspicious matches since the pandemic began in March 2020, with 655 of those matches detected in the first nine months of 2021 .
Over the past 18 months, Sportradar has used its betting monitoring system, the Universal Fraud Detection System (UFDS), to track suspicious activity in 12 different sports in over 70 countries.
These insights are published when the group officially begins providing its UFDS betting tracking service free of charge to federations, sports leagues and authorities around the world in its ongoing commitment to protecting the integrity of global sport and making the system accessible to all .
According to UFDS data, football is the sport with the highest risk of irregularity related to betting, with more than 500 suspicious matches detected so far. Approximately 40% of suspicious activity reported comes from third-tier leagues and below, including youth tournaments.
Andreas Krannich, Managing Director of Integrity Services at Sportradar, said: “As our analysis shows, match-fixing is evolving and those behind it are diversifying their approach, both in the sports and competition they target, and in the way they approach athletes, as the rise of digital approaches”.
Krannich added: “To help resolve this, Sportradar has made a significant investment to make it possible to offer the UFDS free of charge to global sports organizations and leagues. The reason for this is that we are committed to supporting the sustainability of global sports and using data and technology for good.”
Sportradar points to the most affected modalities and regions
The growing popularity of electronic sports has made it a target and has led to a rapid increase in the number of suspicious matches reported. More than 70 suspicious games have been detected by the UFDS since April of last year in five different games, with more than 40 malpractices identified since January of this year.
In addition to the suspicious football and eSports games detected this year, Sportradar’s UFDS identified strange activities in Tennis: 37 matches; Basketball: 19; Table Tennis: 11; Ice Hockey: 9; Cricket: 6, although suspicious activity has also been recognized in Volleyball, Handball and Beach Volleyball.
Globally, the UFDS has detected 382 suspicious matches in Europe this year, with Latin America recording 115 suspicious matches in the same period. This is followed by the Asia-Pacific region with 74, Africa with 43, 10 in the Middle East and 9 in North America as of January this year.
