A peculiarity of betting in Brazil was the combination of yellow cards for several players simultaneously as a way to increase the amounts to be received.
Something that also drew the attention of Sportradar, a partner company of the CBF to track possible game manipulations. In an interview with ESPN, Tom Mace, senior vice president of Integrity Services and Global Operations, explained how monitoring and reporting to confederations works.
For Mace, Brazil has a "perfect storm" to receive high-volume bets and revealed that cases involving yellow or even red cards are not among the main methods used around the world, according to the company's own analysis.
Read the full interview below
Sportradar has been working with the CBF for years. Is the current number of betting cases involving gamblers a surprise?
We know that match-fixing networks exist and they are constantly targeting many leagues, including some of the top national football competitions, so it doesn't come as a surprise to us. In 2022 alone, we detected 1,212 suspicious matches worldwide, with 775 taking place in football.
The constant threat of match-fixing is in plain sight, and we at Sportradar are doing our part to help detect match-fixing, prevent it, investigate it and support our partners to help sanction and prosecute the individuals involved.
The CBF and our other partners in Brazil work closely with us to help achieve these goals, but the fight is ongoing with a constant evolution of both match-fixers adapting their methods and we in the ever-evolving anti-match-fixing space and improving our technology, tools and skills to combat the threat they pose.
The situation in Brazil is the perfect storm because it contains a large number of bets on relevant competitions and, in football, players can play for three or four clubs during a calendar year in different states. Furthermore, Brazilian players are often transferred to other countries with match-fixing problems present in their domestic leagues, and we have seen examples of them returning to Brazil later carrying the “match-fixing virus”.
In the 2022 report, the first football division does not appear as the main focus of bets. Is it something that catches the attention of Sportradar?
It has been a growing trend in recent years that the lower divisions of football are more affected by match-fixing than ever before. In world football in 2022, 52% of suspicious matches detected through the UFDS (Universal Fraud Detection System) came from the third division or below, including regional leagues and youth competitions.
However, the top divisions of domestic football around the world are still affected by match-fixing, with almost 18% of cases from top-level competitions. Indeed, some of the top global football competitions have witnessed suspicious betting activity in recent years, so we are not surprised when this occurs, particularly when it comes to point manipulation activities such as yellow/red cards and corners, which can be seen as more attractive forms of manipulation at higher levels of the game, as they require fewer participants to convince them to join a scheme (and can be orchestrated by just one player in the case of yellow card manipulations) and can also have generous stakes limited at higher game levels.
At some point in the partnership with the CBF, did you identify games suspected of manipulation with bets? If so, did you alert the confederation?
When a suspicious match is detected through the UFDS in a monitored competition, an analytical report is written by our expert analysts and sent to the respective partner in a matter of days.
For Serie A and B and Copa do Brasil, these competitions are monitored on behalf of our partners FIFA and CBF, with lower divisions and competitions monitored on behalf of the CBF. These reports describe and detail the suspicious betting patterns, the team suspected of orchestrating the outcome (if it can be determined) and lead to further investigation.
In fact, Sportradar Integrity Services, in addition to supporting the CBF, expanded our analysis and supported the TJD and/or the Public Ministry in several cases. At Sportradar, we are always on hand to support our partners and law enforcement with further investigations. This support is generally led by our Intelligence and Investigation Services; specialists in case building and gathering key evidence for match-fixing investigations, who have worked alongside sporting bodies and law enforcement on numerous occasions to help them obtain successful sporting sanctions and criminal convictions.
However, it is not our role or responsibility as a service provider to decide and conduct formal investigations. Relevant bodies and authorities need to have the appropriate mindset and investigative strategy and call on our services so that we can support them in the best possible way. This approach has been proven to deliver results time and time again, and we are always prepared to give our utmost support when called upon to help investigate and prosecute cases.
What's the best way to contain these bets involving players?
What must be reiterated is that the vast majority of match-fixing cases in football involve players, not just cases involving incidents such as yellow cards. There are far more common types of manipulation than a player getting a yellow card or being sent off, with the majority of match-fixing cases centering around the outcome of the match or related aspect of the outcome of the match, such as the result of the first half, or the number of goals scored in total; all of which rely on multi-player co-op in most cases.
However, there are differences in how different result-handling schemes are orchestrated. Normally, an attempt to manipulate the outcome of the match would require the services of at least three, and ideally more, players to maximize the chance of success.
Considering that a yellow card manipulation would only require the cooperation of the betting player to get the yellow card, it would be less complex to organize, even if the potential illicit returns were smaller. However, the ways to prevent and detect these types of match-fixing are basically the same. Effective targeted education aimed at all players, a proven betting monitoring service to keep track of matches and a coordinated approach by bookmakers to sharing information, ideally through a regulatory body, to ensure that red flags in the betting markets are raised to all relevant stakeholders in a timely manner so that actions can be taken sooner to disrupt and ultimately stop these activities.
Source: ESPN
