Match-fixers more organised during Covid-19 crisis by buying up teams or hiding behind sponsorships, Sportradar says
- Sports integrity firm says match-fixing is expected to rise during the economic crisis with corruption becoming more organised
- Instead of corrupting one or two players, match-fixers may buy whole teams and ‘this makes it easier to make a fix’
Covid-19 lockdowns, social distancing restrictions and lack of fans will not deter match-fixers from corrupting sports, says leading integrity firm Sportradar, but instead force them to think of more sophisticated means of influencing games.
In fact, they will become more organised and even hide in plain sight by controlling whole teams – and their players – through sponsorship deals, said Tan You Chen, Sportradar’s senior manager, Integrity Partnerships Asia in Singapore.
“Because of the negative economic impact, we are likely to see an increase in match-fixing,” said Tan. “Another trend we anticipate is the modus operandi of match-fixers. The one-to-one approach, meeting up with players, that was the practice in the past. Moving forward, match-fixers are changing the way they operate. They are more organised and this is something we’ve seen.
“They are taking over or sponsoring whole teams. Instead of corrupting one or two players, they buy over the whole team and put in the funds as sponsors and put in some prerequisite to bring their own group of players. So, at one time they may have four to five players and this makes it much easier to make a fix.”
Sportradar works with governing bodies such as the Asian Football Confederation and Hong Kong Football Association to combat corruption in sport. They also have ties with the NBA, NFL, NHL, MLB, Nascar, Fifa and Uefa, monitoring more than 400,000 events every year across 60 sports.
