iGaming Business magazine In-Play Focus 2018 | Page 9

Finance
In-Play Focus 2018
EXORCISING
‘GHOST GAMES’
A relentless pursuit of quality assurance is the only way to safeguard sports-betting data
from the effects of made-up matches and betting-market manipulation, say Sportradar’s
Berkant Elieyioglu and Andrea Perra
There is a lot of pressure on operators to offer as
many in-play betting opportunities as possible.
Technology has enabled this, and it is now expected
that there will be coverage of multiple sporting
events around the clock and across the globe.
This is why Sportradar employs more than
7,000 data scouts worldwide, who cover 20,000
live events each month.
The risk of ever-increasing demand, however,
is that, at a certain level, data becomes harder
to collect, harder to validate, harder to quality
assure and harder to deliver in real time. This
has led to issues such as ‘ghost games’ which,
as Sportradar managing director of Live Data
Berkant Elieyioglu explains, are either completely
made-up matches, or where fixture times are
shifted, providing cheats with the opportunity to
manipulate the betting market.
Prevention is difficult, but it is clear that the
prioritisation of quality over quantity will help
deliver a data service that is truly secure.
“It’s really an end-to-end process with quality
control at every stage – everything from ensuring
that fixture information is checked and rechecked
with credible sources, such as official club websites,
to following up with boots on the ground to check
the fixture details are true, for example, with the
home or host team,” says Berkant.
iGamingBusiness | Issue 109 | March/April 2018 | 37