Gobsmacking: National basketball partner in league with illegal betting sites offshore – Sydney Morning Herald

However, The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald are aware of almost two dozen online bookmakers that are receiving a live feed of NBL data from Sportradar, enabling them to offer in-play betting on the leagues matches. Almost half of these sites allow Australians to sign up, despite the Interactive Gambling Act making it illegal for bookmakers without a local licence to accept Australian customers.

The sites include the Malta-registered zebet.com, where The Age and Herald signed up using an Australian address and then placed in-play bets on multiple NBL matches as a continuous stream of Sportradar data updated the sites stats and scores.

At other sites, bets were offered in Australian dollars and registration codes were sent to an Australian phone number.

Some sites were geo-blocked to Australians, though sportsbet.io can be reached using a VPN. Once there, a gambler can register on the site using Australian details.

At betmasterplay.com, Sportradar also appeared to be providing data on a recent mid-week pre-season cup match between two amateur soccer teams in the Tasmanian second division.

A spokesperson for Sportradar said it covers NBL matches providing play-by-play information but did this by monitoring broadcasts of the games. While rival company Stats Perform is the NBLs exclusive betting data partner, Sportradar said its collection of data in this manner is common practice and is perfectly legitimate.

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Asked about some of the bookmakers seen to be using its data, the company said it works with licensed operators around the world and applies rigorous compliance standards.

However, we are not a regulatory body and we do not have enforcement powers. Concerns regarding the conduct of such operators should therefore be directed to the relevant authorities.

A secretive Sportradar subsidiary, Real Time Sportscast, which has in the past employed data scouts, has been advertising for live statistics reporters in Melbourne this year.

Federal Sport Minister Richard Colbeck said that capturing of sports data was not illegal, but had the potential to have an impact of sport integrity if not managed appropriately by the sporting body.

Government regulator Sport Integrity Australia was aware of the threat gambling on Australian sporting events poses, particularly when sub-elite or community sport is involved, Mr Colbeck said.

LIve betting on basketball is accessible via Sportradar to Australians on illegal offshore sites. Credit:Getty Images

Swiss-headquartered Sportradar has both integrity and data divisions. Its integrity division uses sophisticated algorithmic tracking of global betting markets to look for suspicious shifts in the odds that may indicate a game is being fixed. It then uses investigators to see if these red flags are legitimate concerns.

This was how Sportradar uncovered a match-fixing ring in Victorian Premier League soccer in 2013 involving the Southern Stars football club, winning it praise from Australian law enforcement authorities.

But the companys main line of work is servicing bookmakers, which has led to it being criticised for creating fertile ground for this same fraudulent behaviour. An independent review into tenniss match-fixing scandal found a cause of the problem was a contract with Sportradar that allowed it to distribute live data from lower-level matches.

Sportradar rejected this criticism and argued that the measures proposed by the review would worsen the sports problems by opening up a black market on betting.

Former senator Nick Xenophon, who helped to reform the Interactive Gambling Act, said the NBL was either treating its fans as absolute mugs, or they are the biggest mugs of all to be entering into this deal.

This is gobsmacking. The sports minister needs to look at this from an integrity point of view. This just destroys the credibility of the game. It just shows you how poor the regulatory framework is ... I think there should be a revolt amongst the membership of the NBL because, on the face of it, they have compromised the integrity of the game.

Former Australian Sports Anti-Doping Agency boss Richard Ings also questioned the deal, saying of selling live betting data to bookmakers, theres so much at stake for the integrity of sport.

How do you have an operation that is on the one hand looking at sport integrity, but on the other hand is involved in the gambling industry? asked Mr Ings, who is also a former professional tennis umpire.

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The 2017 ABC investigation revealed that, while low-level basketball matches were in play, Sportradars undercover data scouts would commentate the action to a call centre, believed to be in the Philippines, and that data would be distributed to bookmakers across the globe. Odds would be updated within seconds of the real action taking place.

The notion of data scouts entering our venues and obtaining that, it actually compromises the integrity of the sport, Basketball Australias then-CEO Anthony Moore said at the time, and the organisation introduced a new policy specifically to stop the practice.

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Gobsmacking: National basketball partner in league with illegal betting sites offshore - Sydney Morning Herald