Sportradar reports 34% suspicious match increase in 2022
Sportradar has recently published an annual report covering its operations in 2022, which showcased an increased number of suspicious matches in the year.
The sports integrity solutions provider recorded over 1200 suspicious matches in the year across a dozen sports in over 90 countries. The firm stated that since its integrity solutions’ launch in 2005, this is the first time it has seen over 1000 suspicious matches in a single year, however, the over 1200 figure is only a small portion of the 850 thousand yearly events Sportradar examines.
The report detailed that the number of suspicious matches grew by 34% in 2022, although they still remain quite uncommon, constituting about 0.5% of all events. Moreover, Sportradar stated that out of the dozen sports that experienced some form of match-fixing, none of them had suspicious matches making up over 1% of their total events.
Breaking down the statistics by sports, football was the one that had the most suspicious matches with 775 flagged events. Basketball followed with 220 events, which represented an over 250% rise in comparison to 2021’s figures. Closing off the top three was tennis with 75 suspicious matches.
Sportradar also mentioned that Europe had the most suspicious events of any region, as almost half of all of the firm’s flagged matches took place on the continent. Asia and South America followed next with 240 and 225 suspicious events respectively. Interestingly, the Oceanian region experienced no suspicious matches at all, making it and North America the only continents where match-fixing was not on the rise in 2022.
“In 2022 we took our integrity efforts to the next level with the implementation of new artificial intelligence-powered solutions and the expansion of our partner network to cover more sports. We are eager to help even more organizers establish a high degree of integrity for themselves in 2023, and we are looking forward to signing contracts with new sports federation partners in the near future.”
remarked the Managing Director of Sportradar’s Integrity Solutions, Andreas Krannich.