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Despite a 34% increase since 2021, the total number of suspect matches shows that match-fixing is still largely uncommon in international sports.
Overall, the data shows that match-fixing does not occur in 99.5% of sporting events, and no sport has a suspicious match ratio higher than 1%.
The Universal Fraud Detection System (UFDS) and Sportradar’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) advancements have assisted in the detection of 438 of these matches.
In 2022, the number of criminal and sporting sanctions the company supported its partners with increased from 72 to 169, up 135% from 2021. This increase was due to technological advancements, as well as a focus by leagues and federations to address the threat that match-fixing poses to the integrity of sport.
Penalties were imposed by sports federations or criminal courts on persons found responsible for cheating in sports and violating the law using Sportradar Integrity Services’ findings as evidence.
Meanwhile, football continued to have the most suspect matches (775), but one of the most notable developments of 2022 was the steep growth in suspicious basketball matches (220), which jumped by around 250% compared to 2021.
With regard to all sports combined, Europe continues to have the most suspicious matches (630), followed by Asia (240) and South America (225). Andreas Krannich, Managing Director of Sportradar Integrity Services, said: “We’ve taken an even more proactive approach to uncover 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.”
