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 Integrity Services’ director of intelligence and investigations said.
Such apparently insignificant gestures could, for example, be signals to players in a soccer match to allow their team to concede goals, Tom Harding said at the company’s London headquarters.
Harding, who spent 11 years in the Royal Navy in intelligence and three years in law enforcement in the UK, 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.
Photo: AFP
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, which works with more than 150 sports federations and leagues with clients ranging from FIFA to NASCAR.
Its analysts, operating from London to hubs in Montevideo, Melbourne, Singapore, Las Vegas and Minneapolis, pore over screens of live sporting fixtures and betting odds.
Last year, they identified 1,212 suspicious matches within 12 sports across 92 countries.
While reflecting an increase of 34 percent from 2021, the data confirm that 99.5 percent of sporting events are free from match-fixing, with no single sport having a suspicious match ratio greater than 1 percent.
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 match-fixers “have to be in the stadium to communicate with players, and at times intimidate the players to go ahead with it,” Harding said.
“We are looking for those type of individuals who could be signaling to players — they are subtler these days and do not wave anymore,” he said. “Hat on, hat off — we have seen these exchanges.”
“If the person has a hat on you are to do ‘X,’ such as concede goals. If they take it off then it means you are to do this,” he said. “Or they put a jacket on or take it off, sometimes they change their shirt, if you see green do this, red do that.”
Harding said that the spotters’ responsibility is not restricted to observing the field of play.
“Sometimes we go beyond reconnaissance,” the 35-year-old said.
“There is surveillance. We are looking before, during and after who the players are communicating with, if there is an exchange of packages and finances,” he said. “After all, that is your crime scene ultimately.”
Harding said his team also relies on the fixers on the ground overreaching themselves and believing they are invisible.
“They can be overconfident,” he said. “There is a perception no one is taking an interest, no one is watching.”
“If they saw more risk of criminal pursuit, they would take more measures rather than sitting in the stadium changing their shirt or hat,” he said. “You do rely on them not covering their tracks.”
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