Soccer Match-Fixing on the Slide Globally, New Analysis Suggests

The keep down of association football matches under suspicion of match-fixing fell inwards 2020, despite concerns that the financial pressures of COVID-19 power aggravate the problem.

According to new betting marketplace analytic thinking from sports integrity firms Stats Perform and Starlizard, 217 (0.35 percent) of 61,296 games crossways the humanity were flagged as suspicious last-place year. While fewer games were played because of the pandemic, the figures represent a simplification inward both existent and pct terms from the 456 (0.56 percent) matches inwards lowest year’s report.

The two companies’ figures crosswise the past times triplet years suggest that association football match-fixing has been on the wane for a while. Suspicious games make dropped to a greater extent than 50 percent since their firstly report from 2018.

There was speculation the pandemic would provide an chance for fixers. As it exerted its financial squeeze on sports, the theory was it would deliver players, referees, coaches, and team up presidents more susceptible to corruption.

Fixers inward a Fix

But the study appears to bear out a recent claim past Benoit Pasquier, superior general counsel and manager of sound affairs for the Asiatic Football Confederation (AFC). He told Reuters last-place year that while the illegal play market place inwards Asia was larger than ever, the lunar time period was turning against the fixers.

According to Pasquier, match-fixing used to live controlled by a little keep down of big crime syndicates, many of which hold been broken in upwards by natural law enforcement agencies.

With key figures existence imprisoned or disrupted, and really high-profile cases beingness discussed inwards the media, match-fixing o'er the last 5 years has become practically more fragmented,” said Pasquier. “There are now more ‘lone wolves’, with local gangs and syndicates more common.”

But Stats Perform and Starlizard suggest that, far from fueling match-fixing, the pandemic presented these lone wolves with hard unexampled challenges.

“We get seen inwards previous reports how the list of suspicious matches in a land tin can rapidly increment in one case those looking to control [soccer] matches for financial pull in constitute a foothold,” wrote the authors.

“However, in that location would get been increased challenges for a match-fixing organization to maintain itself in a state inwards 2020, granted the sudden and unexpected path inwards which COVID-19 shifted the betting focalize on to this little list of countries, as fountainhead as inwards short of the logistical problems caused by travel during the pandemic.”

Africa Overtakes Asia

Once fertile run aground for fixers, just 0.41 percent of all Asian matches analyzed inwards 2020 were identified as suspicious, a thirdly of the 2019 proportion. Europe was also down feather past to a greater extent than half from 2019.

Of all continents, Africa had the highest number of suspicious games, overtaking Asia for the world-class time. However, sextuplet of the continent’s vii suspicious games were played inward the same country, which the story declines to name. Even here, there was a important reducing from the 20 games identified inwards the same land inwards 2019.

The only when continent to receive an step-up was Second Earl of Guilford America, including Central America, although, at 0.26 percent, this was allay significantly beneath the world-wide average.

The account also said that match-fixing at the highest levels of the biz globally was practically non-existent.

“The long-term effects of COVID-19 on sports integrity are in time to follow seen, and whilst the minify inwards suspicious matches this twelvemonth is to the highest degree certainly welcome, it is too ahead of time to say whether this testament carry on to be an ongoing trend, or whether it has been caused by a really exceptional band of circumstances,” the write up concluded.