The number of suspicious matches reported across Asia jumped by 49.1% in 2022, giving it the second highest number of suspicious matches behind only Europe.
According to the Annual Report: Betting Corruption and Match-fixing in 2022 by Sportradar Integrity Services, there were 240 suspicious matches in Asia in 2022, up from 161 a year earlier and moving it ahead of the 225 instances detected in South America. Europe continues to see the highest number of suspicious matches with 630.
China had the most suspicious matches of any Asian nation with 41, followed by the Philippines with 37 and Thailand with 35.
According to the report, there were a total of 1,212 suspicious matches in total in 2022 from the 850,000 matches Sportradar now monitors, up 34% year-on-year and comprising 12 sports in 92 countries.
The number of criminal and sporting sanctions from those detected matches also increased from 72 to 169, up 135% from 2021.
However, Sportradar noted that match-fixing still occurs at a low percentage within global sport with the data showing that 99.5% of sporting events are free from match-fixing and that no single sport has a suspicious match ratio greater than 1%.
Nevertheless, soccer continued to have the highest number of suspicious matches with 775 while the number of suspicious basketball matches spiked by 225% year-on-year to 220. Of suspicious soccer matches, 52% came from the third tier or lower, including regional leagues and youth competitions.
“We’ve taken an even more pro-active approach to uncovering 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,” said Andreas Krannich, Managing Director of Sportradar Integrity Services.
“Our technology enables us to monitor more matches on a deeper level, providing more precise and accurate insights to help aid partners, clients and the wider sports industry in efforts to safeguard sporting events from corruption. We look forward to supporting even more sports federation and law enforcement partners in 2023.”
