With this year’s sporting summer well underway, reminding us of the best ideals that sport has to offer, such as fair play and integrity, it’s worth giving some thought to a pressing issue in the sporting world – match-fixing and ask, more precisely, what can and is being done to combat it, writes Alona Kobozieva, Director of Communications and Marketing at Energame.
This year the Macolin Convention against match-fixing marks its 10th anniversary. But, while prosecutions for match-fixing have increased in a welcome development, the problem continues to persist. And indeed the number of suspicious games appears to be increasing; while sports that have previously been less affected, such as table tennis, are starting to become problematic.
The increase is undoubtedly linked to the proliferation of sports betting; especially real-time betting and the advent of new markets such as first- and second-half betting.
Information sharing between stakeholders, sport betting operators, national and international authorities and sports organisations is key to combatting the problem and this can only happen in a well-regulated transparent market.
Before we mine this issue further, it’s important to be clear that the vast majority of sporting events are fair and honest. The prevalence of match-fixing across all sports remains at under one percent, meaning that 99.5 percent of all sporting events are honest competitions. But match-fixing in just a small number of competitions has the ability to undermine trust across-the-board.
The Convention on Manipulation of Sports Competitions, or the Macolin Convention–named after the Swiss town where it was opened up for signatories in 2014–is the only rule of international law on the manipulation of sports. The treaty entered into force in 2019.
The convention rightly notes that match-fixing is a challenge to the rule of law because of its links to fraud, organised crime, corruption and the risks these pose to pluralist democracy and human rights. The treaty has been signed by 41 countries and ratified by 10 of these nations.
At its heart, the Macolin Convention focuses on international cooperation and information-sharing because of the transnational nature of match-fixing, while identifying categories of offences and applicable sanctions.
It’s also important to remember that the sports betting industry is one of the main victims of match-fixing through fraudulent activity, although overall losses are hard to quantify.
The latest data from Sportradar, a company that works with sports federations, bookmakers and law enforcement agencies to flag suspicious sports events, recorded the largest-ever number of suspicious matches in 2023.
A total of 1,329 such matches were flagged over 11 sports and 105 countries across five continents. Although the increase is partly the result of better detection techniques that use AI to pick up suspicious betting patterns, the numbers are still concerning.
Sports betting has increased hugely with the spread of Internet connectivity over the last decade.
It is no coincidence that the number of suspicious matches is increasing as the sports betting market has reached an all-time record size of about US$1.45 trillion (£1.13tn), (according to some estimates), as new and vast markets such as the U.S. and Latin America have started to open up.
Interestingly, Europe recorded the highest number of suspicious matches; with a total of 667, an increase of about five percent on the previous year and about half of the total.
Brazil was the single country with the highest number of suspicious matches, with 109 football matches flagged – although this was a decrease of 44 over the previous year.
Monitoring and international cooperation are key to tackling match-fixing.
Yet this can only be done effectively when bookmakers are operating in fully regulated and transparent markets. Where operators are working in grey markets with ambiguous regulations, they will be reluctant to share information – even when there are compelling reasons to believe a match may have been manipulated.
Bookmakers flagging suspicious activity through established reporting channels played a key role in alerting authorities to what would become one of the most high-profile cases of match-fixing last year when two Chinese players received lifetime bans for manipulating snooker matches.
We at Energame estimate that about 50-80 percent of the iGaming market remains unregulated. The trend is clearly in the direction of liberalisation and Regulation as markets as diverse as Central Asia, the United States and Latin America see the benefits of Regulation.
However, the trend is far from universal; as shown by the current crackdown on online gambling in Indonesia where there are significant black and grey markets.
Going back to a situation where gambling–especially iGaming–is seriously restricted is unlikely. Introducing robustly regulated and monitored markets where bookmakers cooperate with regulators and monitoring services and appropriate safeguards are in place offers the best route for reducing match-fixing.
A half-way house where the industry is kept in legal limbo only benefits sharp operators and bad actors.
We may not be able to get rid of match-fixing entirely but establishing robust systems that can identify and deal with issues as they arise signals that this activity will not be tolerated – and that industry is part of the solution, not part of the problem.
