Sportradar Reports Decline In Match-Fixing Instances For 2024

Sportradar, one of the sports betting industry’s leading operators for protecting sports integrity worldwide, reported a 17% decline of match-fixing instances across the world in 2024 that included notable downturns in both soccer and basketball.

It cited more sophisticated AI integration into its Universal Fraud Detection System (UFDS) and growth in the Sportsradar Integrity Exchange (SIE), which is now comprised of 117 sports betting networks, as key reasons for the improved integrity. Sportradar reported 1,108 overall confirmed instances of match fixing in 12 sports spanning 95 countries and claimed to help resolve 18 disciplinary cases in multiple sports that led to 104 sporting sanctions of players and teams.

“While these results give us reason to be optimistic, they also highlight the continued need for vigilance and innovation in sports integrity given the number of suspicious matches detected is still significant,” said Andreas Krannich, Sportradar’s executive vice president of integrity, rights protection & regulatory services, in the foreword of the report.

Though Europe again led the count of match-fixing instances with 439, that also represented a 34.2% decline from the 668 reported in 2023. Asia (310) and South America (245) rounded out the top three. North America had a total of 43 instances, up eight from the previous year.

Soccer and basketball remain top targets

A majority of the 2024 match-fixing instances — 721 — occurred in soccer, which was down 18.2% versus the previous year. Most notably, suspected manipulation in Brazilian soccer matches tumbled by nearly half to 57 from 110 a year earlier. Of those 57 matches cited, only four took place in competitions organized by its governing soccer body — the Confederação Brasileira de Futebol (CBF). Despite the sizable decrease in Brazil, the overall amount of instances originating in South America ticked up two to 208.

The decline in basketball was less pronounced, with the 187 reported instances down 8.8% from 2023. Sportradar noted no sport exceeded a manipulation rate of 0.5% in 2023, with soccer the highest at 0.43% (1 per 233) and basketball second at 0.32% (1/317).

Rounding out the top three was eSports with a 0.08% ratio with 1 per 1,190 instances. The overall ratio of manipulation was 0.16% (1/615) compared to 0.21% (1/467) a year ago.

AI integration and the SIE

Sportradar’s enhanced AI capabilities allowed that to become the main integrity monitor for four sports: tennis, table tennis, team handball, and volleyball. The technology contributed to the monitoring of more than 300,000 matches across the four sports, and of the over 125 suspicious matches flagged, more than 93% were detected by Sportradar’s AI algorithm.

The increased number of operators in SIE — up 52% from the end of 2023 — led to a total of 843 matches being reported for suspicious activities, an increase of 88%. Of those instances, 291 were confirmed by Sportradar’s UFDS system — a ratio of slightly higher than 1 in 3, which remained in line with previous years despite the notable uptick in reports. Additionally, account-level betting data helped identify 55% of the 1,108 instances, which was up from 51% in 2023.

Other findings

Sportradar’s report noted that live betting continues to be the primary source for potential match-fixing, with 82% of the reports generated on such wagers. That was down from 95% in 2023, but the first half of matches continues to be a focus for potential match-fixers — 64% of the instances covered the first half and opening 15 minutes of contests.

“Combined result manipulations,” which would include a specific losing margin with a minimum goal amount as an example, represented 43% of the suspicious match-fixing instances. The manipulation of total goals, what Sportradar calls “Overs only,” was second at 30%.