Sportradar partners with World Baseball Softball Confederation to support sport integrity
Two-year deal aims to help identify competition manipulation
Sportradar Integrity Services has entered into a two-year partnership with the World Baseball Softball Confederation (WBSC) to help identify competition manipulation and abnormal betting patterns.
Sportradar, which currently partners with over a hundred sports federations and leagues, will provide the world governing body for baseball-softball with its Universal Fraud Detection System (UFDS) for each WBSC international competition for the duration of the agreement.
The UFDS is an advanced bet monitoring system that has been independently assessed and verified by experts in the field of sports betting and integrity. A global team of integrity experts analyse betting patterns for abnormalities and any suspicious activity is reported to the relevant authorities ensuring critical visibility into worldwide match-fixing.
Sportradar Integrity Services have identified almost 7,000 suspicious games across different sports during its 17-year history, with 900 of these taking place in 2021 alone.
Speaking about the new relationship, WBSC president Riccardo Fraccari said: “We’re looking forward to benefiting from Sportradar’s expertise in providing bet monitoring and intelligence solutions for appropriate detection and investigation of threats to sport integrity, maintaining baseball and softball’s game unpredictability and safeguarding the international game from manipulation.”
“Following the IOC’s and specifically the OM Unit PMC’s (Olympic Movement Unit on the Prevention of the Manipulation of Competition) leadership in the prevention of competition manipulation, we are working towards enhancing the protection of clean baseball and softball athletes with this new agreement.”
The WBSC integrity unit has recently organised and delivered a two-part series of webinars about competition manipulation as part of its ongoing programme to keep athletes, officials and staff abreast of the latest trends and topics surrounding international sport.
Earlier this month, Sportradar announced the appointment of former Bloomberg global head of business operations and analytics Andrew Bimson as North America COO. Bimson will oversee and be responsible for the company’s three core business areas of betting and gaming, sports entertainment and marketing services