Match-fixing buster Sportradar keeps tabs on 300,000 games a year in battle against corruption in sport
- Nepal’s Asian Games players, referee Joseph Lamptey and Australia’s Southern Stars are among the big cases they have helped to unravel
- Close ties with Asian Football Confederation and authorities have made it easier to go after those guilty of match fixing
The defeats were no surprise, but the spikes in betting activity certainly raised eyebrows. Nepal lost 4-0 to Iraq, 5-0 against Kuwait and 4-0 to Japan in group D of the 2014 Asian Games in South Korea.
Thirteen months later, five Nepali players were arrested for match fixing.
In November, 2016, Ghanaian referee Joseph Lamptey awarded South Africa a penalty against Senegal in a Fifa World Cup qualifier, even though the ball clearly hit defender Kalidou Koulibaly’s knee. A mere four months later, he was banned for life for fixing that match.
In both cases, it was unusual betting movements – spotted by sports data collector Sportradar – that initially raised the alarm and led to the culprits being caught.
Oscar Brodkin, Sportradar’s director of intelligence & investigation services, said the company monitors around 600 bookmakers and betting operators and cover a staggering 300,000 matches a year – helping sporting bodies and law enforcement organisations all over the world crack down on match fixing.
“With our Fraud Detection System [FDS], we are looking for anomalies in betting patterns to identify if a game has been fixed,” said Brodkin. “It’s very similar to an insider trading unit where you are looking at people who are trying to buy shares or sell shares at an exorbitant rate or a rate that is anomalous to normal behaviour.