A significant annual increase of 16% was presented last year by suspected of fixing matches internationally for the purpose of gambling profits, according to her research Starlizard company.
Starlizard Integrity Services, a company that specializes in monitoring these betting-related matches, said in a recent report that from the analysis of a total of 65,411 football matches in the calendar year 2023, from 835 competitions in 128 countries, it was found that at least 167 matches , or 0.26%, showed traces of possible manipulation.
This represents a 16% increase from the 144 potentially manipulated matches identified in calendar year 2022, the company’s report, titled “Football Integrity Report 2023”.
A very large percentage of suspicious matches, 41.3% of those detected, took place in UEFA’s jurisdiction, i.e. in Europe – where, however, most of the matches analyzed took place (37,951).
A clearly higher percentage of possibly fixed matches for betting than the global average is shown by national team matches. There the percentage is double the average, at 0.52% of the games analyzed, with at least 28 international games deemed possibly rigged. The percentage recorded in Asia is also high (0.47%).
Starlizard draws particular attention to the lower divisions, noting that while a quarter of suspected matches were in the top national divisions, the lower divisions of the domestic leagues saw 49.7% of suspected match-fixing.
Other qualitative elements of the research are also of interest, such as that out of the 167 suspicious games, 13 have a high degree of suspicion, 86 have a moderate degree and 68 have a low degree, but also that there are serious suspicions of match manipulation especially in the first half: “Out of the 167 of matches judged to be possibly fixed, 27%, i.e. 45 games, involved betting manipulation only in the first half, which demonstrates that match fixers are often interested in manipulating only the first half and not the entire match,” he points out the investigation, while in 2022 this concerned only 4.2% of suspicious matches.
Source: Daily
Source: Sport Fm
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