Surge in match-fixing
Pandemic behind sharp increase in betting fraud and corruption in SA, world sport
SPORT is facing a massive surge in match-fixing in the Covid-19 era, with fixers diversifying into new areas and targeting especially vulnerable teams, players and officials.
Experts at multinational corporation Sportradar this week revealed that the pandemic was playing a significant part in the sharp increase in betting fraud/ corruption in sports globally, with South African sports being affected too.
Last year Sportradar, a global leader in delivering sports data and content, monitored more than 600 000 matches across 1 000 leagues and competitions in 26 different sports. Its reports and analysis were used in multiple proceedings that led to 102 sanctions being handed down for match-fixing related offences.
The company works with more than 80 sports governing bodies and federations globally – and will work closely with the International Olympic Committee as it prepares for the Tokyo Games, scheduled to begin in July.
In the UK, Sportradar monitors all games in the Premier League and the Championship on behalf of Uefa and Fifa, the European and world governing bodies of football.
They also cover the Fifa World Cup and football at the Olympics, and have a strong relationship with the Confederation of African Football (CAF), and provide bet monitoring services to CAF via their global agreement with Fifa.
Sportradar managing director of Integrity Services, Andreas Krannich, said the pandemic revealed match-fixers targeting a wide range of sporting codes.
“In the past, match-fixers had targeted sports and leagues where profit and turnover were higher, such as football, cricket, tennis and basketball,” said Krannich.
“Now they have diversified into other sports and leagues that have received less attention traditionally. Match-fixers understand that many sports are suffering financially due to Covid-19 and because of this, players, referees, coaches, and even club owners are increasingly vulnerable.
“In the past six months alone, the majority of suspicious matches have been soccer matches.
“The remaining suspicious matches have come from nine other sports, with tennis, table tennis, basketball and ice hockey seeing the most cases, with a number of cases in esports, volleyball, beach volleyball, cricket and handball too.”
Krannich said the systems of manipulation in soccer have become more sophisticated and are focused on the lower tiers and youth competitions, or even friendlies.
He revealed that match-fixing and corruption had become rife in Africa too, and South Africa had been affected.
“In 2020, we detected the first-ever suspicious events in African sport in three countries, including a suspicious event in South Africa,” said Krannich.
“Countries like Egypt, Kenya, Nigeria, Tunisia and Uganda also had suspicious sporting events, as had also occurred in years prior.
“This shows that several countries have clear, recent, and in many cases, ongoing issues with match-fixing in one or more sports.”
Since 2016, Sportradar detected suspicious sporting events in 14 African countries.
“We have strong intelligence that match-fixing syndicates are currently operating within Africa,” said Krannich.
“We recently had a case where someone in South Africa approached footballers on another continent with an offer to fix matches for betting purposes.
“Over the following months, we observed the same individual betting on manipulated tennis matches, and then we identified they were beginning to use family members’ details to open accounts and continue to place bets on these corrupted matches.
“Even more recently we have looked into a match-fixing case involving foreign teams where much of the suspicious betting took place within South Africa through retail betting outlets. Our Intelligence and Investigation Services were tasked to identify the source.”
Last week, Sportradar also detected a suspicious tennis match in South Africa.
“We suspected a player (not of an African nationality) deliberately lost the first set of the match for betting reasons. This type of ‘spot fixing’ can occur in tennis, with players manipulating specific sets, or even games within a set, rather than the match result.
“The player actually went on to win the match 2 sets to 1, something we commonly see with spot-fixing in tennis, where the favourite under-performs in a specific section of the match for betting reasons, and then plays to their full capacity for the rest of the game to try to hide their actions.”
Krannich added that the environment and challenges created by Covid19 had led individuals involved in match-fixing to become more aggressive and diverse in their activities.
“The full financial impact of Covid19 is yet to materialise and we expect match-fixing risks to further increase in the coming years.
“The effect on the sporting landscape from Covid-19 over the next few years will be significant.
“In the past 12 months, we have seen first-hand how criminals are targeting all levels of sport, including competitions that were previously known to be low risk.”
Match-fixers are also approaching athletes via social media, said Krannich.
“The ease of access to athletes is greater than it has ever been; and these platforms are breaking down the barriers previously in place between athletes and fans, but also unfortunately, those with corrupt intentions.”
In a bid to curb match-fixing and corruption, Sportradar last week launched its Universal Fraud Detection System, free of charge, to all sports organisations and federations anywhere in the world .
The system will be available to all sports organisations from October.
“This pulls in betting patterns from legal but also unregulated and illegal sportsbooks around the world, which are monitored in real-time.
“Using a combination of machine learning and algorithms alongside our team of expert integrity analysts, we search for irregularities in the betting markets that might indicate corruption.”