Integrity intelligence and finding the fixers

A spectator removing their hat or taking off their jacket at a sporting event sounds innocuous but it can be a sign the match in question is fixed, Sportradar's director of intelligence and investigations explains.

Such apparently insignificant gestures could, for example, be signals to players in a football match to allow their team to concede goals, Tom Harding said in an interview at the company's London base. Harding, who spent 11 years in the Royal Navy in intelligence roles and three years in law enforcement in Britain, rumbles into action with his team of intelligence specialists and investigators once initial analysis has been done and a potentially suspicious match has been identified. They get involved if the client, or sports federation, want evidence to help them deal with the issue. They act on information supplied by the monitoring and detection team of Sportradar Integrity Services, which works with over 150 sports federations and leagues with clients ranging from world football's governing body FIFA to NASCAR. Integrity Services analysts working 24/7 and operating from their main base in London to hubs in Montevideo, Melbourne, Singapore, Las Vegas and Minneapolis pore over screens of live sporting fixtures and betting odds. In 2022, they identified 1,212 suspicious matches within 12 sports across 92 countries. While reflecting an increase of 34% from 2021, the data implies 99.5% of sporting events are free from match-fixing, with no single sport having a suspicious match ratio greater than 1%. Harding has at his disposal "a significant network of reconnaissance photographers" who are sent to stadiums. Other members of the intelligence unit can also be deployed on site. "(The matchfixers) have to be in the