A new report says there was a record number of suspicious sports matches in 2021, which offers a reminder of the lingering and evolving threat of match-fixing.
The study was prepared by Sportradar Integrity Services (SIS), a supplier of sports integrity solutions and a division of Sportradar, a global sports technology company.
According to the report, “Betting Corruption and Match-fixing in 2021,” Sportradar’s bet-monitoring service discovered questionable activity in 903 events last year. Those events spanned 10 different sports and 76 different countries.
The tally for 2021 was the highest reported number of suspicious matches in the 17-year history of SIS. It was also a 2.4% increase from 2019’s previous record high of 882 incidents.
Sportradar’s findings come amid the expansion of legal sports betting in both Canada and the United States, a process that has caused lawmakers to consider potential match-fixing concerns.
They also come as online sportsbooks are expanding their reach, making it possible for bettors to wager on far more events and leagues than in the past, some of which could be more vulnerable to attempted match-fixing.
“There is no easy short-term solution to the match-fixing issue, and we’re likely to see similar numbers of suspicious matches in 2022, if not more,” said Andreas Krannich, managing director at SIS, in a press release. “As the market has developed, so the threat of match-fixing has evolved. Now, would-be corruptors take an increasingly direct approach to match-fixing and betting corruption, with athletes messaged directly via social media platforms.”
Soccer tops list
By Sportradar’s estimate, global sports betting handle amounted to almost $1.6 trillion last year, just over half of which was wagered on soccer. The company's report estimated around $182 million in match-fixing betting profit was made in 2021, some of which may have flowed to organized crime.
Because soccer is a worldwide sport played in many countries, unlike football or baseball, it is more susceptible to match-fixing. According to the Sportradar report, one in every 201 matches has some kind of suspicious activity connected to them.
It isn’t so much the top-tier leagues raising eyebrows either, such as the Italian Serie A or the English Premier League. Rather, the study found lower-level soccer leagues were far more likely to have suspicious matches. More than 50% of the incidents in domestic leagues were in third-tier or lower leagues, including regional and youth soccer. Overall, there were 694 suspicious soccer matches last year, Sportradar found.
One of the biggest soccer scandals in recent history involved a second-level team, the Blackburn Rovers of the English Football League Championship. In 2013 six people, including standout forward D.J. Campbell, were arrested in connection with a match-fixing investigation. Campbell was not charged with any crime and was ultimately cleared of any wrongdoing.
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Basketball and tennis were the sports with the next highest number of suspicious matches, the report noted. Basketball had 62 questionable events, tennis had 53, and esports was fourth at 47.
Sports organizations aren't ignoring the match-fixing threat either. Sportradar said it helped support 65 sanctions last year in 11 countries, including lifetime bans levied against eight athletes.
“We can take what we observed in 2021 and ask ourselves as fans of sport, what lessons can we learn?” Krannich asked in the release. “At Sportradar, we believe in adopting a progressive approach to integrity protection, through bet monitoring and intelligence gathering. This has been proven to deliver sanctions against those involved in match-fixing. Preventative measures, such as educating athletes and stakeholders, are also crucially important in the long-term fight against match-fixing.”
