Football: Watchdog says close to 1000 top-flight football matches fixed

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Almost 1000 top-flight football matches are suspected to have been rigged in the past five years, according to alarming figures from the world's leading match-fixing watch-dog.

Sportradar, which monitors around 40,000 games a year - including every Premier League, FA Cup and Champions League fixture - deemed 997 elite domestic global matches "highly suspicious" between May 2009 and November 2014.

An analysis of its data by Holland's Asser Institute, as part of the first study into the dangers posed by different types of betting to the integrity of sport, found that fixers were three times more likely to target top-flight matches than second-tier competitions.

Although Sportradar does not usually monitor divisions below those levels, the revelation casts doubt on the received wisdom that elite matches are under less threat than lower-league games.

Of a total of 1625 suspicious fixtures since 2009, around a third prompted bookmakers either to partially or completely remove the betting offer on the match in question.

The analysis by the Asser Institute was made possible after Sportradar allowed the centre for European and international law access to information it had compiled since the launch of its Fraud Detection System nearly six years ago.

The FDS has been responsible for more than 90 arrests and 19 convictions, most notably 2013's infamous Southern Stars scandal in Australia.

The Asser Institute study, authored by senior researcher Ben Van Rompuy, also found that of 1468 matches for which suspicious market data was available, only six involved betting in side markets.

A total of 91 per cent of suspicious matches involved bets in the Asian Handicap market, a form of gambling popular in that continent.

The study said: "The prevalence of suspicious betting in the handicap markets, and in particular Asian Handicap markets, clearly reflects the fact that the Asian betting markets [where these types of bets are immensely popular] account for the majority of illicit funds being bet on football.

"Hence, it is clear as to why professional fixers predominantly choose the Asian bookmakers to directly place their bets with."