Sports Integrity Strengthens as Global Match-Fixing Declines in 2025

Global match-fixing activity showed continued progress towards containment in 2025, with enhanced monitoring, enforcement and education initiatives driving a reduction in suspicious matches, according to Integrity in Action 2025: Global Analysis & Trends, an annual report published by Sportradar Group AG.

In 2025 Sportradar monitored more than 1,000,000 events across 70 sports worldwide, identifying 1116 suspicious matches, representing a 1% decrease from 2024. With more than 99.5% of sporting events worldwide monitored free from suspicion, the findings highlight the continued effectiveness of coordinated integrity measures across the international sports ecosystem.

Europe once again accounted for the highest number of suspicious matches in 2025, though the region maintained its downward trajectory with 66 fewer cases than in 2024. South America also reported a notable decline, with 64 fewer suspicious matches detected year-on-year. In contrast, Asia, Africa and North and Central America experienced modest increases.

Soccer continued to be the sport most impacted by match-fixing in 2025, with 618 suspicious matches detected. Basketball followed with 233 cases, while tennis (78), table tennis (65), and cricket (59) recorded notable increases. This distribution underscores how match-fixing activity is increasingly dispersed across multiple sports rather than concentrated within a single discipline.

A major development in 2025 was the continued advancement of Sportradar’s AI-powered Universal Fraud Detection System (UFDS AI). Building on the proven foundations of its monitoring framework and enhanced by machine learning, UFDS AI enabled the real-time analysis of extensive betting datasets, uncovering irregular patterns often undetectable through traditional methods. As a result, the number of suspicious matches flagged through AI analysis increased significantly year-on-year (+56%), reinforcing the system’s expanding role in identifying emerging and evolving manipulation techniques.

Alongside education, detection and investigation, enforcement continued to play a central role in protecting sporting integrity. In 2025, Sportradar supported 125 sporting sanctions across seven sports and all six major continents, bringing the all-time total to more than 1000. Prevention efforts also expanded further in 2025, with Sportradar’s Integrity Education initiatives reaching more than 34,000 participants, a 25% increase from 2024.

Andreas Krannich, Executive Vice President, Integrity Services at Sportradar, said: “The relative stabilisation of suspicious match numbers in 2025 is encouraging, yet it reinforces the importance of continued vigilance. Match-fixing remains an evolving threat, and sustained investment in technology, intelligence, education, and collaboration is essential to staying ahead of those seeking to corrupt sport.”

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