Sports Integrity Strengthens As Global Match-Fixing Declines In 2025

ST. GALLEN, Switzerland — The international campaign against match-fixing recorded another incremental victory in 2025, with global monitoring efforts detecting 1,116 suspicious matches across more than one million events, a one-percent dip from the previous year, according to Sportradar’s annual Integrity in Action report released Monday.

The findings, drawn from coverage of 70 sports worldwide, mean that 99.5 percent of fixtures in 2025 were contested without raising red flags, reinforcing the view that coordinated integrity programs are tightening the net on would-be manipulators.

Europe remained the epicenter of suspicious activity, yet the continent still shaved 66 cases off its 2024 total, extending a downward trend that investigators attribute to sharper intelligence sharing and swifter disciplinary action. South America mirrored the progress, registering 64 fewer dubious matches year-on-year, while Asia, Africa, and the combined North and Central America region posted marginal increases.

Socball continued to attract the bulk of corrupt approaches, accounting for 618 questionable games, but basketball, tennis, table tennis, and cricket all contributed to an increasingly diffuse threat matrix. Basketball supplied 233 suspicious matches, tennis 78, table tennis 65, and cricket 59, illustrating how fixers are branching out beyond football’s traditional stronghold.

A pivotal factor in the 2025 landscape was Sportradar’s Universal Fraud Detection System powered by artificial intelligence. UFDS AI processed vast betting data streams in real time, flagging irregular market moves that older models overlooked. Matches first identified through machine-learning analytics jumped 56 percent compared with 2024, evidence that algorithms are catching novel manipulation patterns before they mature.

Enforcement followed detection. During the year, Sportradar evidence underpinned 125 sporting sanctions spanning seven sports on every inhabited continent, lifting the cumulative tally of lifetime bans, fines, and point deductions facilitated by the company past the 1,000 mark.

Education complemented technology and prosecution. Integrity workshops reached 34,000 athletes, officials, and administrators in 2025, up 25 percent from the previous cycle, broadening awareness of bribery risks and reporting channels.

Andreas Krannich, Executive Vice President of Integrity Services at Sportradar, cautioned that stabilization should not breed complacency. “Match-fixing remains an evolving threat,” Krannich said. “Sustained investment in technology, intelligence, education, and collaboration is essential to staying ahead of those seeking to corrupt sport.”

Sportradar’s integrity division provided oversight for marquee events such as the expanded FIFA Club World Cup and the UEFA Women’s EURO last year and is already preparing for a heavy 2026 calendar that includes the AFC Women’s Asian Cup in Australia, the FIFA World Cup across North America, and the Olympic Winter Games in Italy.

With more than a million fixtures now reviewed annually, the company’s dual mandate—growing fan engagement while protecting the level playing field—has never been more intertwined, or more visible.