With curves emerging on the rows of screens, the address, in the heart of the City, could correspond to the trading room of a London asset manager. But the odds that Sportradar employees monitor are those of sports competitions, all over the world and around the clock. With the explosion of sports betting, the need for surveillance of football fields, tennis courts and cricket stadiums has become a necessity and a real business.
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Listed on Nasdaq, the company Sportradar, launched in 2001 by the founder of the betting operator Bwin, is one of the essential partners in world sport. More than 180 clients: federations, leagues, event organizers and regulatory authorities have entrusted it with securing the results.
Permanently connected to the 600 main global bookmakers, the system developed by Sportradar, thanks to generative artificial intelligence, detects any suspicious movement on the odds of a match. This triggers an alert on the London screens or those of one of the group’s subsidiaries, in the United States or Australia. The evolution of this rating can generate unexpected, significant gains.
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Sportradar analysts then have a few minutes to remove the doubt: verify the origin of this massive change in betting orientation and where it came from. If there is no indication of a reversal in the current match, the chances of the match being fixed disappear. This is the case for 0.21% of the 10,000 matches monitored each year. “Most of the time, the movements are legitimate”says Faiz Kabir, director of Sportradar’s security activity.
300 game actions
A full report will be provided to customers within 72 hours. It can lead to a police investigation, and end up before the court of arbitration for sport, located in Lausanne, Switzerland. Sportradar’s best catch remains a qualifying match for the 2018 World Cup between Senegal and South Africa “arranged” by the referee of the match. “Football remains the sport most attacked by match-fixers, often on a large scale”, remarks Mr. Kabir. It is also the one which concentrates the most bets, all over the world.
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In the United Kingdom, land of 2,000 bookmakers, matches from the eight divisions of English football are offered to players. For certain games, almost 300 different game actions can be the subject of a bet: goals, penalties, headers, corner markers, cards, etc. It is not uncommon for a player’s fans to place bets only ‘around him and his performances. This is, of course, also the case for the two other sports most popular with bettors, basketball and tennis, and a very fashionable new discipline, e-sport.
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