A.I. ‘Revolution’ Helps Sportradar Identify Match-Fixing Around the World

Kyle Odegard, Compare.bet

One of the biggest betting scandals in American sports history took place from 2005-2007, when NBA referee Tim Donaghy gambled on his own games and made calls that affected the point spread.

The discovery was made in a round-about way, as the FBI was actually investigating broader organized crime activity.

Nearly two decades later, Andreas Krannich, the managing director of Sportradar Integrity Services, is absolute in his belief Donaghy would have been found out in real-time if it happened in the present-day.

How? By the artificial intelligence his company uses to track more than 850,000 matches in 70 sports around the globe.

“A.I. is bringing a completely new layer of pattern analysis,” Krannich said. “It’s a game-changer. It’s a revolution, to be honest.”

Sportradar released its second annual “Betting Corruption and Match-Fixing” report on March 22, which revealed 1,212 suspicious matches in 2022, spanning 12 sports and 92 countries.

It was an increase of 34% from 2021, although the number of suspicion-free games still sat at 99.5%.

“We saw this massive increase of manipulated matches – almost 300 more than last year– but in total it was only a small percentage increase,” Krannich said. “It depends on which perspective you take, like, ‘Oh, more than 99.5% of all matches we monitor are legitimate. There’s nothing suspicious.’ Or you would say, ‘Oh, f—, over 1,200 manipulated matches.’”

While match-fixing at the highest level will get huge headlines, most of the work is done in lower leagues. More than half of the suspicious soccer matches in 2022 came from the third-tier or lower, per Sportradar, including regional leagues and youth competitions.

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