Sportradar AI capabilities help boost discoverability of suspicious betting patterns

Sportradar Integrity Services, which is a Sportradar unit, has published its second annual report that focuses on the tracking of suspicious betting signals. The "Betting Corruption and Match-fixing in 2022" report saw 1,212 suspicious matches played across 12 sports and 92 countries.

The suspicious events were singled out of a total of 850,000 monitored matches and 70 sports globally demonstrating Sportradar’s capabilities in deploying powerful solutions to guarantee the integrity of sports anywhere in the world. The number was actually a 34% increase from 2021, Sportradar said, but overall, the data confirms that 99.5% of all sports events are free from manipulation and match-fixing.

No sport was posting numbers above 1% of their total matches played, which demonstrated that efforts to tackle corruption in sports on all levels, and particularly in manipulating game results, were progressing as intended.

Sportradar has been able to significantly enhance its monitoring capabilities as well, deploying powerful Artificial Intelligence (AI) solutions directly into its Universal Fraud Detection System (UFDS), which is the division’s core platform for safeguarding sports. The UFDS is so powerful that it can analyze 30 billion odds and changes every year.

The system works with more than 600 operators globally. This new AI model has been quite helpful indeed. Sportradar Integrity Services Managing Director Andreas Krannich had this to say:

"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."

The AI model alone was able to detect 438 suspicious matches, helping human investigators significantly cut down the time they spent on tracking suspicious signals or verifying data themselves. In terms of which sports were the biggest culprits, the company’s data was not particularly surprising. A total of 775 suspicious matches in soccer happened in 2022 – the biggest of all reported sports.

Basketball came up next with 220 suspicious matches detected. Meanwhile, Europe produced the most suspicious betting alerts, Sportradar said with 630 matches, compared to 240 for Asia, and 225 in South America.

Krannich confirmed that Sportradar’s tech and solutions allow the company to monitor more matches and on a deeper level, analyzing the data more precisely and helping to protect the sports betting industry as a whole. Sportradar’s UFDS continues to be at the forefront of monitoring and integrity efforts.

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