Highest sport rigging and sport betting fraud ever
Sports betting is a huge business – most especially for the bookmakers, but also for the customers. According to a recent report of the Deutschlandfunk there are several criminals. The latter do not “only“ try to trick the bookies but they also influence the game for their betting fraud purposes. During the past year the Swiss analysts from Sportradar registered 1150 rigged games. This is an all-time record!
Rigging and sports betting fraud are located more in states which anyhow have a high corruption rate and where the professional players, officials and other responsible papers have a comparatively low wage. In this regard we had reported about the extreme levels of fraud in betting in Brazil. Such manipulations are however also a widespread problem in our latitudes.
The Swiss data company Sportradar works with several law enforcement agencies in the whole world. In 2022 it had analysed more than 800,000 league games for irregularities and found that a total of 1150 games were rigged. The number of criminals who want to use the billion business of sports betting for their purposes is increasing – and it does not involve only the marginal sports or the lower leagues.
Betting rigging also an issue for FIFA and UEFA
Sportradar states in its report on Deutschlandfunk that criminals decide whether a league appeals to them or not depending on how heavily monitored it is. In fact organisations whose players are aware of the issue and may have even received training are less appealing for them.
According to Sportradar cheating also goes on in sports which is more off-mainstream, e.g. table tennis, darts, or snooker. Just recently seven Chinese snooker professionals were accused of rigging the games and they were banned for a long period.
However, football is the sport which is rigged most. The FIFA and UEFA have acted and they are monitoring the first and second division football worldwide quite heavily. According to Sportradar this had its effect as there were less cases in these divisions. However, the third and fourth division are now being targeted. Recently 15 persons were accused of rigging 19 games in the Austrian regional league.
Independent reporting office set up in Germany
An independent reporting office was set up in Germany in 2022. One can report game rigging here. This was mainly set up because things were constantly getting worse. Those responsible for this office stated that the aim is “to have a structure which is independent and structurally detached from any sport or third parties.”
Informants may report any possible rigging anonymously on the website meldestelle-sportmanipulation.de. If this suspected criminal office is confirmed, the responsible prosecution authority is informed. If it is established that the offence is not criminal, the sports organisation involved will still be informed.
Conclusion
Where money is circulating, the criminals will not be far away: those who are involved in this situation know this. The many illegal betting offers and the widespread advertising measures for these services confirm this.
Rigging games and making profit from bets on these games is of course another issue. Many (me included) are surprised to learn that this problem is affecting all kinds of sports and leagues.
In this connection it would be interesting to know how often reports come in at the reporting office for game manipulation. According to the report of the Deutschlandfunk those responsible could not comment about this “because of data protection reasons and because of other reasons”.
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