Sportradar has released its annual integrity report, ‘Betting Corruption and Match-fixing in 2023.’ The report details Sportradar’s findings on match-fixing and other suspicious sports betting activity throughout the year, consisting of data gathered from roughly 850,000 events.
In total, Sportradar found 1,329 suspicious matches, taking place across 105 countries in 11 sports. This reflects a suspected manipulation rate of 0.21% or one in 467. No sport showed a manipulation rate higher than 1%, meaning over 99% of monitored events showed no suspicious activity. Of the 1,329 suspicious matches, 977, or 73%, were detected using AI; a 123% increase from last year.
When compared to last year, suspicious match activity in Europe and Asia grew by 5.9% and 25% respectively. There could be several explanations for this, including the growth of the Asian gaming market as a whole following Covid-19 (examples include the growth rate of revenue in Macau). Looking ahead, the report stated ‘Asia is likely to retain its position as the continent with the second-largest number of suspicious matches, as significant levels of match-fixing have been established over a long period of time in each continent.’
Rates in LatAm, meanwhile, fell 3.6%. This could be due to several factors, including the developing regulation of sports betting, which was approved by the Brazilian Senate in December.
When it came to the sports most impacted by match-fixing, football came out on top, with the report counting 880 suspicious matches in 2023. This was followed by basketball with 205 reports and table tennis with 70 reported matches.
1,295, or 97.4% of suspicious matches originated from men’s events, with the remaining 34 suspicious matches being attributed to women's sports.
On the results, Sportradar EVP, Integrity, Rights Protection and Regulatory Services Andreas Krannich 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.”
