India’s Top Football League Renews Integrity Partnership With Sportradar

India’s premier football league, the Hero Indian Super League (Hero ISL), has decided to extend their partnership with Sportradar, the world’s leading provider of sports integrity solutions and sports data products.

The two parties had been collaborating since 2016, to prevent integrity problems within India’s most prominent football competition. The Hero Indian Super League is quite popular as well, it attracts over 400 million viewers on television each season. The seventh season of Hero ISL 2020-21 kicked off on 20th November 2020 in Goa.

Under the terms of this agreement, every match in the Hero ISL will be monitored by Sportradar Integrity Services, using their advanced Fraud Detection System (FDS). The system is designed to quickly identify betting-related manipulation in sport.

The FDS uses intricate algorithms to detect potential fraud, while relying on a constantly maintained database of data along with expert analysts which are trained to detect potential match-fixing.

Sportradar will also make their investigators available to the Hero ISL, their Intelligence & Investigation Services are designed to complement the efforts of the Fraud Detection System.

Speaking about the extended partnership with India’s top football league, Andreas Krannich, Integrity Services Managing Director at Sportradar, said: “Hero ISL renewing its partnership with us only shows how committed they are towards maintaining integrity in the game and proactive towards the growth of football in the subcontinent. As a global leader in sporting integrity, we want to continue to provide our expertise and help protect the tournament against all integrity-related issues.”

Sportradar is currently providing integrity services to several high-profile competitions all around the world, including worldwide events organized by FIFA and continental events put together by the Asian Football Confederation (AFC).

The company also has partnerships with all the major professional leagues in the United States: National Football League (NFL), National Basketball Association (NBA), National Hockey League (NHL) and Major League Baseball (MLB).

In India, Sportradar also works closely with the Board of Control for Cricket in India in order to safeguard the integrity of matches in the Indian Premier League. All matches played in the competition are monitored by Sportradar, which provides a risk assessment of potential integrity issues related to sports betting.

Betting on sports is quite popular in India, but so far the market lacks the regulatory framework that could ensure the development of this sector in the country.

Last month, the Indian Minister of Finance, Anurag Thakur, declared that his country should seriously consider legalizing and regulating gambling instead of restricting or banning the activity. Such a move will make preventing match-fixing a lot easier, and the government will also get significant revenues from licensing fees and taxes.

Source: “Hero ISL and Sportradar renews integrity partnership“. Sportradar. November 25, 2020.