- Title: UNITED KINGDOM: Betting intelligence agency warns of match-fixing trends
- Date: 19th February 2013
- Summary: GRAPHIC WITH YELLOW AND RED LINES SPORTRADAR FRAUD DETECTION SYSTEM ON SCREEN SHOWING GOALS PREDICTION FROM THE 80TH MINUTE OF MATCH
- Embargoed: 6th March 2013 12:00
- Keywords:
- Location: United Kingdom
- City:
- Country: United Kingdom
- Topics: Crime,Sports
- Reuters ID: LVACXAJMEW5A4TDW39Z7TNDF5X3P
- Aspect Ratio:
- Story Text: Betting intelligence company Sportradar is at the frontline in the war against corruption in sport as they attempt to identify match-fixing in sports, especially soccer, by studying gambling trends.
Integrity manager Ben Paterson leads a team of experts, including 150 freelancers around the world, preparing detailed reports that have helped to identify that up to one per cent of matches in Europe could have been rigged.
"I mean, we monitor, as I said, just over 30,000 matches a year for UEFA and we highlight to them somewhere in the region of 250, 300 matches per season," he told in an interview to Reuters.
Sportradar also tracks tennis and handball, flagging up problematic patterns of betting or suspicious odds movements.
They have developed a program called the Fraud Detection system to track suspicious betting. With live online gambling, the odds react to how the match develops. If a large amount of money is placed on a particular bet, the bookmaker will respond by lowering the odds. If the odds become lower still because of further large bets, Sportradar's system triggers an alert on the screen.
"The yellow line shows where we expect the odds to be and the red line shows where the actual odds with the bookmakers were," said Paterson. "Now to begin with, they are jumping around a little bit but they are not too suspicious but after about 20 minutes we see that the odds nosedive really.
"This is a key indicator perhaps someone knows how many goals are going to be (scored) in this game.
"This is a perfect example of a suspicious betting pattern. The odds reach unrealistic low levels at a time they should actually be increasing."
European police and prosecutors said earlier in February that hundreds of soccer matches may have been fixed in a betting scam centred on Singapore.
The scale of the problem and the fact that World Cup qualifiers and Champions Leagues games could have been fixed, have shaken faith in a multi-billion dollar industry underpinned by sponsorships from big companies and pay TV deals.
Paterson said that the estimate by the International Centre for Sports Security (ICSS) that the global sports betting industry is a one trillion dollar a year business was reliable.
"When we are talking about this trillion (US) dollars per year, I think this figure is reasonably accurate primarily because of the sheer scope of bets that we see in the Asia markets," he said.
Paterson explained that a lack of regulation in Asia means that vital data, like who places the bets and for how much, is simply not available.
"Most of these Asian bookmakers, they don't disclose their accounts, they are not required to, so we don't actually see exactly how much money they are taking in bets. So, as far as how much of this money is suspicious money, maybe only a small percentage, but even a small percentage is in the billions, when you are talking about a trillion dollar turnover per year," he said.
Most of soccer betting happens during the match, when bookmakers increase their odds and offer a chance of a higher payout.
If a match is deemed suspicious, Paterson's team will gather round a whiteboard and thrash out the details.
"The reports we produce on fixed matches are remarkably in-depth and I think I am, certainly on our most severe warning level, that it leaves little room for doubt that a match has been manipulated," he said.
Paterson said his company can only spot the irregularities but are unable to identify who is behind the rigging.
"All this does though, is, it raises the flag that this match is fixed. It does not actually detail in any way the people who might be responsible," Paterson added.
Soccer has replaced horse racing as the staple of the bookmaking business, helped by technology allowing punters to bet live online on matches while watching the action on television or online.
Sportradar started monitoring pre-match betting for UEFA in 2009 but as the online industry exploded, their system had to adapt to the growth of live betting during a match.
"What mobile betting and internet betting has done is to massively increase the popularity of live betting - betting throughout the match. What we have seen, because of this, there is a notable trend in the way that matches are fixed and the way match-fixers are placing bets," Paterson explained.
According to the betting intelligence expert, the majority of the fixed games will see suspicious patterns in the live betting, usually with Asian bookmakers, rather than any pre-match betting.
"Ninety percent of fixed matches that we see actually see suspicious betting throughout the match which means is it not possible to identify before the game begins that that match was perhaps fixed or that anything suspicious is even likely to occur," he said.
Sportradar have been focusing on preventing match fixing as well as detecting it. They help the Italian Lega Pro and the International soccer players union FIFPro with programmes to educate players and officials about the ways it can happen and make them aware of the consequences.
FIFPro argues that players are victims, driven to risking their livelihood because of bullying or financial hardship.
FIFPro points out that fixers often prey on players whose clubs are failing to pay them or where there is more widespread corruption in the game.
For its Black Book report last year, FIFPro surveyed more than 3,000 professional footballers in Eastern Europe. FIFPro pointed to links between non-payment of wages to incidences of match-fixing approaches and physical violence.
Paterson said one reason detection efforts are struggling to keep up, is poor coordination between gambling companies and soccer's ruling bodies.
"I think where gambling exists, there is always going to be people, a criminal element who are looking to manipulate betting markets for their own personal gain.
"I think transparency is the key, bookmakers working close with sports bodies. Unfortunately, until the big kind of illegal as we view, of the illegal market in Asia, becomes heavily regulated and we can see the activities that are going on there, this is going to prove to be very difficult to do."
With the credibility of sport at stake following Lance Armstrong's doping confession and the damning report of widespread cheating in Australia, Paterson alerted that if match-fixing is not curbed, it could damage the image of the 'beautiful game'.
"I think if the right people in the right place don't take this problem seriously enough, this can have a long-term detrimental effect in the popularity of the sport," he said. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
- Copyright Notice: (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2013. Open For Restrictions - http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp
- Usage Terms/Restrictions: Video restrictions: parts of this video may require additional clearances. Please see ‘Business Notes’ for more information.