North America is maintaining its ability to provide a safe environment for betting activity, according to Sportradar Integrity Services’ betting corruption and match-fixing review.
In 2023, Sportradar detected 1,329 suspicious matches in 11 different sports. The total of suspicious fixtures, which included 105 countries, was flat compared to 2022’s results.
Out of the suspicious matches detected by Sportradar, only 34 were from women’s events.
“Continued investment in the development of technology is key to detecting otherwise hard-to-find occurrences of match-fixing,” said Sportradar EVP of Integrity, Rights Protection and Regulatory Services Andreas Krannich. “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.”
Sportradar’s ability to monitor matches was bolstered by artificial intelligence, which detected 73% of all suspicious matches in 2023. The company integrated artificial intelligence into its Universal Fraud Detection System, which launched in 2005.
North America a safe betting region
Sportradar monitored roughly 850,000 events across 70 sports in 2023 and found that North America continues to be a region with limited instances of suspicious wagering. Last year, Sportradar detected 35 suspicious matches in North America, up from 24 for the year prior. Despite the uptick, the results in North America were lower than in other regions.
Europe emerged as the region with the highest number of suspicious matches last year at 667, up from 630 in 2022. The Czech Republic led Europe with 67 suspicious fixtures.
Asia closed 2023 with 302 suspicious matches, up from 240 for the year prior. South America, led by Brazil’s 109 suspicious matches, reported 217 suspicious fixtures during the year. The results were a decline from the region’s 225 suspicious matches in 2022.
Africa had 108 suspicious fixtures in 2023, up from 93 for the year prior. Oceania finished last year as the only region in the world to not have a suspicious match detected by Sportradar. In 2022, Oceania was also the only region to not have any suspicious activity.
Sportradar reports an increase in soccer
As the world’s most popular sport, soccer continued to lead the way in match-fixing with 880 instances of suspicious activity in 2023, up from 775 for the year prior. Basketball finished second in suspicious activity with 205 matches impacted by match-fixing, which was a decline from the 220 suspicious basketball matches detected throughout 2022.
Table tennis rounded out the top three with 70 suspicious fixtures detected in 2023. The results were an increase from the 62 table tennis matches with suspicious activity in 2022.
Despite instances of suspicious activity, Sportradar has determined that 99.5% of sporting events are free from match-fixing as no sport has a suspicious match ratio greater than 1%.
