In 1920 eight members of the Chicago Black Sox were indicted by a grand jury for throwing the 1919 World Series at the behest of gamblers.
In 2007 NBA referee Tim Donaghy pled guilty to two felony charges of conspiracy, admitting to having bet on games that he officiated.
In 2009 “around 200 games across nine countries have been implicated in the biggest match-fixing scandal to hit European football,” according to The Guardian.
Historically, there was no uniform method used for policing betting markets. This need helped create the option for leagues and federations to enter into integrity partnerships.
These partnerships allow leagues and federations to leverage big data to keep an eye on international betting markets and uphold the integrity of their respective sports.
Although the specifics vary with each sport, the overarching concept is fairly simple. Leveraging mountains of data, Sportradar generates mathematical and statistical models that reflect the likelihood of match results or events within those matches. When those models are compared against what is actually happening in the pre match and live betting markets, anomalies can be identified and then analysed by a team of over 40 betting analysts in order to understand context.
And anomalies are usually just that – instances outside of the expected range of data points. But where those anomalies are unorthodox enough and where no legitimate context can be identified, well in those cases match fixing, point shaving and illegal betting may well be to blame.
Integrity partnerships became popular in Europe, particularly in European soccer leagues, over a decade ago. Just last week FIFA, the governing body for soccer leagues across the world, signed a deal with Sportradar for a suite of integrity monitoring, education and intelligence services. These types of deals are now becoming increasingly popular in North America.
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Andreas Krannich is Sportradar’s Managing Director for Integrity Services, leading a team that provides support to sport federations, league and law enforcement agencies around the world. He explained how the sheer magnitude of sports wagering led Sportradar to offer integrity partnerships.
“It became clear to us that it was necessary to be able to monitor and hold at bay any sort of attempt to manipulate the results of matches,” said Krannich.
According to the Nevada Gaming Control Board $4,235,477,418 were wagered on sporting events in the state of Nevada in 2015. That’s more than four billion dollars, in a single year, in a single state.
Meanwhile Sara Rayme, Senior VP of Public Affairs at the American Gaming Association (AGA), says an estimated $150 billion is wagered on sports every year in illegal markets.
As at today, Krannich stresses, Sportradar works across 13 sports and monitors over 300,000 sporting contest each year. The company has a track record of initiating or supporting over 170 successful sporting sanctions and more than 24 criminal penalties worldwide.
“We’ve been involved in some significant cases internationally where teams have been barred from playing in the UEFA Champions League, players have been arrested [and] national teams have been indicted,” said Krannich. “Indeed last year, the Court of Arbitration for Sport recognized our Reports as evidence sufficient to prove match-fixing, resulting in a team’s ban from playing in the UEFA Champions League being upheld.”
Given the numbers and impact, it’s not surprise that major U.S. sports leagues have taken advantage of all big data has to offer in this critical area.
For instance, this past summer the NHL announced it will incorporate Sportradar’s Fraud Detection System (FDS) into its already existing practices, and the NBA recently added Sportradar’s Integrity Services to its existing game integrity protection measures.
Dr. Laila Mintas, who is the Deputy President Sportradar US and has a history of driving anti-match fixing efforts with FIFA and CONCACAF added:
“We’re well positioned to be able to do this because we have visibility across essentially all of the bookmaker markets globally (over 550 operators from Asia to Europe, Central America to Australasia) and we can compare what’s happening in those markets to what our own internal algorithm says should be happening for a certain match,” said Mintas. “When there’s divergence we can then investigate and work with the authorities and the federations to be able to determine if there is anything untoward going on there. Match Fixing really knows no borders. We often see players or coaches from country A, playing in country B, manipulating results in country B’s league so that fixers in country C can make money by betting at bookies in country D. It is scary how sophisticated these operations are now becoming but the odds never lie.”
So match fixers and manipulators should be aware – big data is watching.