Sportradar on match-fixing and AI

During Andreas Krannich’s tenure working in the Bundesliga – Germany’s top soccer league – two decades ago, sports wagering was pretty much limited to pre-match betting. With apologies to Bob Dylan, the times they have a changed with the boom around in-play and microbetting.

What hasn’t changed is the potential for the manipulation of matches, and efforts by sports leagues and organizations to provide a product where integrity of competition is front and centre. Krannich is one of the good guys trying to protect that integrity in his role as the Executive Vice President, Integrity, Rights Protection and Regulatory Services for Sportradar.

Krannich joined us from his Munich office on the latest episode of the Gaming News Canada Show, just days after Sportradar’s integrity services department released its Betting Corruption and Match-Fixing in 2023 report. Highlights of the report include the detection of 1,329 suspicious matches in 11 different sports across 105 countries, with soccer leading the way (880 cases). Europe had the highest number of suspicious matches with 667, up from 630 in 2022. North America, despite an increase to 35 suspicious matches in 2023 from 24 the previous year, continued to trail Europe, Asia, South America and Africa.

On the podcast, Krannich points to the diligence of North American sports leagues when it comes to monitoring suspicious betting activity. The Sportradar EVP also delves into the helping hand artificial intelligence has lent in tracking some 850,000 sporting events last year while acknowledging the ongoing need for human brainpower to complement AI in trying to prevent and detect risks to integrity in sport.

Krannich addresses his company’s work with organizations around the world, including the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport, to educate athletes and other sport stakeholders on red flags around match fixing. And, he weighed in on the ongoing presence of organized crime in the world of sports.

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