On the latest Sporticast episode, hosts Scott Soshnick and Eben Novy-Williams speak with Andreas Krannich, managing director of integrity services at Sportradar. Krannich runs the company’s fraud detection and investigations unit, a 120-person team on the front line of sports gambling corruption across the globe.
Krannich talks about the trends he sees in match-fixing—where in the world it’s most prevalent, which sports, how it happens and at what level. He also details how Sportradar approaches the job. His team is constantly monitoring betting patterns and line movements for thousands of sporting events each week, looking for irregularities or suspicious results. The group also has its own investigators, who help determine which alerts are actually suspicious, and which can be explained by weather, injury reports or some other non-criminal motivation. The group’s work has led to more than 30 criminal convictions.
Those lessons are particularly notable for the nascent legal U.S. market, which is rapidly expanding. That’s especially true for wagering on college sports, where athletes are not paid a salary. Krannich says sports with limited pay are particularly vulnerable to corruption.
He also talks about where the integrity unit fits into the wider Sportradar (Nasdaq: SRAD) business. The group doesn’t directly generate profits for the sports data giant, but it does give the company credibility and a presence globally. In line with that thinking, Sportradar recently made its basic integrity monitoring services available for free to league and governing bodies around the world.
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