Russian gambling operators are offering live betting on Ukrainian football matches – often thanks to data from Uefa’s long-term integrity partner, Sportradar.
By Sam Kunti, Jack Kerr, Andy Brown, Philippe Auclair and Steve Menary
Sportradar, the leading provider of live sports data that also styles itself as an integrity company, is at the heart of a questionable practice: its data floods the Russian betting market.
On the last Saturday in April, MFC Metalurh Zaporizhzhia hosted a league match in Ukraine’s second tier. The game took place in Zaporizhzhia’s Slavutych Arena, less than 50 kilometres from the frontline of the Russian invasion in Ukraine. A drone attack in the regional capital days later highlighted the dangers of life in Zaporizhzhia, leaving one child and more than two dozen adults dead.
According to The Kyiv Independent, one child and 28 adults were killed in a Russian drone strike on 2 May.
On the same day, Metalist 1925 Kharkiv hosted Agrobiznes Volochysk. The home team is also from the east of the country, though it is currently playing games such as this one in a temporary home in the national capital of Kyiv.
Despite Russia’s ongoing war in eastern Ukraine, games like these are regularly appearing on Russian sports gambling sites. An audit of Russian bookmakers, carried out by Josimar on that last weekend in April, found games from multiple levels of the Ukrainian football pyramid being offered for live betting by Russian betting sites like Leon.ru, Liga Stavok, Betcity and Russian-founded, regulation flouting 1xBet.
Among the Ukrainian offerings found on Leon.ru were two under 19 matches and a clash from the national third-tier competition. It also offered games from the country’s Premier League and First Division, and an analysis of the metadata of Leon.ru undertaken by Josimar showed that each of these games was classified as having its data sourced from Betradar, a subsidiary of Swiss-based sports data giant Sportradar. Each of these matches also had a “widget id” that matched live animation data used by Sportradar for these matches. (Animations are used on live betting sites as a proxy for live streaming.)
It was a similar story on Olimp.bet, a Kazakh platform operating in Russia, where all games offered for live betting from Ukraine’s upper leagues were associated in the site’s metadata with an ID code that matches Sportradar’s ID for the same match. The pattern repeated on Ligastavok.ru, though this time the third-tier match on offer also had a live data ID code that matched Sportradar’s.
Sportradar is a leading provider of in-play data to sports betting companies. It is also a leading provider of sports integrity services, including to Uefa, the governing body for football in Europe. As a result of its war against Ukraine, Uefa has banned Russia and its clubs from its competitions, which include the Euros, Nations League and Champions League.
Sportradar is an official partner of Uefa.
Data harvesting in Ukraine
The Ukrainian Association of Football (UAF) says it is powerless to stop this situation, and has previously accused Sportradar of collecting and selling data from the country without authorisation to do so.
“The Ukrainian Association of Football does not own any broadcasting or commercial rights to club competitions,” it said in response to questions from Josimar. “These rights are managed directly by the clubs, and therefore, the UAF has no authority over the distribution or sublicensing of match signals.”
“As for betting platforms, the ecosystem is extremely vast and complex — many international games are accessed through a web of intermediaries and data providers. Controlling where these signals ultimately end up, especially when it comes to Russian betting platforms, is unfortunately beyond our capacity.”
“UAF does not have any influence over how international betting or data companies manage or distribute their content once rights are transferred. We do not control, nor are we involved in, any further sublicensing or trading of data. Unfortunately, this ecosystem is too vast and complex for us to monitor or regulate where data may eventually appear.”
The UAF signed an exclusive contract for live data with FeedConstruct, an Armenia-based data company, to cover the Ukrainian Premier League (UPL). This deal runs until June 2026 and gives FeedConstruct exclusive rights to collect live data from matches in Ukraine.
Josimar has seen a draft of this contract and Item 5 stipulates that FeedConstruct can “re-sell any Data collected pursuant to the Collection Rights to an entity within the Category solely for the purposes of facilitating betting/gambling by End Users (together, the Data Distribution Rights).” The territories allowed for re-sale are worldwide – with the exception of Russia and Belarus.
“A hostile act”
Despite this clause, FeedConstruct appears to be selling on data collected from these games to other data companies that are, in turn, then selling this sub-licenced data onto Russian operators.
The UPF and UAF do not appear to be checking whether in-play betting is offered from matches in Ukraine, which is only possible using live data collected from games, on Russian websites.
As far back as 2020, UAF wrote to Sportradar accusing the data company of ‘unauthorised’ data distribution of Ukrainian league matches.
“Your company continues collecting and selling betting data from football matches played in Ukraine without any authorization from regional and national football associations,” its letter to Sportradar read.
“Taking account of the fact that your company does not reply to our emails on such matters and continues sending scouts to Ukrainian official and unofficial football matches, we consider such behaviour as a hostile act and inform you that reserve a right to institute proceedings against your company.”
While Sportradar failed to acknowledge UAF’s initial request, two other leading sports data providers, Genius Sport and Stats Perform, relented because UAF entered into the contract with FeedConstruct, the UAF says.
What is the source of 1xBet’s data?
In the same period analysed by Josimar, sites operated by 1xBet offered up to 10 games. The operator was declared bankrupt by the Dutch Supreme Court, but still continued to sponsor FC Barcelona, Paris Saint-Germain and the Confederation of African Football. Morocco and Brazil are among the countries to have banned 1XBet.
The source of 1xBet’s data is not revealed in its website’s metadata, though previous investigations have found that its in-play match data can at times match data from Stats Perform, as well as examples of its in-play animation data matching Sportradar’s.
In the second weekend of April, matches from Belgium’s Women’s Super League were available in-play on 1xBet as well as on Olimp.bet, Leon.ru, Ligastavok and Fonbet. At one match, Josimar encountered a data scout from Betradar who agreed to manipulate a live input when asked. Within nanoseconds, the altered data appeared on 1xBet’s in-play animation. It’s a strong indication that Sportradar supplies data— either directly or indirectly—to 1xBet. This leaves one alternative explanation: 1xBet and other Russian bookmakers may be extracting data from Sportradar.
This isn’t the first time that data gathered by a Sportradar subsidiary has surfaced on 1xBet. Two years ago, Josimar covered matches in Belgium’s women’s first division—an amateur level—where data scouts from Sportsdata were present. With no other scouts in attendance and no television broadcast, those matches were still available in-play on 1xBet. Josimar posed a question that remains relevant today: how can a match covered by a Sportradar subsidiary—part of a company that claims to safeguard the integrity of the game and serves as an integrity partner to Uefa – end up on 1xBet? In a Josimar survey conducted that same year, seven of the 27 amateur clubs whose matches were offered in-play on 1xBet said they had no idea their games were being offered. Not a single club was aware that data scouts had been present at their matches.
The Belgian Pro League and host club did not reply to questions.
A data scout in Belgium.
It’s not just Ukraine
Football leagues from across NATO and allied nations continue to dominate live sports betting sites from Russia, more than three years after the country was exiled from world sport and frozen out of the Western business community.
At betcity.ru, Spain, England, the USA, Poland, France and the Czech Republic were all in the top 10 locations from which games were taken during the period which Josimar audited. At ligastavok.ru, Portugal made that list as did Poland, whose third, fourth and fifth-tier competitions provided rich pickings for a number of Russian gambling sites, despite the threat of violence against the country by the Kremlin. Youth games from France are regularly offered on Russian sites, despite France having a zero-tolerance approach to odds offered on youth football. Meanwhile, at olimp.bet, the leading location for in-play football betting odds was a NATO or allied nation for 75 per cent of the audit period.
In England, the offerings went as deep as the seventh and eighth-tier Trident Leagues, with games such as Hendon v Bognor Regis Town and Wingate and Finchley v Canvey Island found on the Russian in-play betting market. On an earlier weekend, Josimar observed five matches from the Southern Premier League Division South – level seven of the English pyramid – on offer on Russian websites Fonbet.
“It is difficult to stop,” says David Martin, chair of the Southern Football League. “We and clubs don’t have the resources to try to tackle it.”
In a survey carried out for Josimar in 2023 by the Trident Leagues, which is responsible for level 7-8 in England between half and three-quarters of clubs to reply were not aware that data scouts were at their matches.
Mark Harris, joint chair of the Trident Leagues and chairman of the Northern Premier League, which is also on Russian betting markets, told Josimar: “I can only speak for the NPL when I say we are frustrated that this practice continues, but whilst we remind our member clubs to be vigilant, most lack the volunteers or CCTV to be able to monitor their crowds to spot anyone who might be collecting data and selling it on to third parties, irrelevant of who those parties might be.
“At the Trident Leagues, we will continue to encourage our clubs to be vigilant and to look for proportionate – relative to clubs’ resources – measures to mitigate these people’s activities.”
The Macolin Convention however calls for “the limitation of the supply of sports betting” on lower-level football competitions, but data providers like Sportradar have a penchant to cover amateur matches across the continent, with its data appearing on unregulated, illegal betting sites.
The offerings also included matches from Europe’s elite leagues, such as Germany’s Bundesliga. That’s despite German football’s strong show of solidarity with Ukraine after Russia’s 2022 invasion: the DFL, which operates the Bundesliga, donated 1 million euro for humanitarian aid in the wake of the invasion, while clubs and players staged visible acts of support, from peace signs and armbands to stadium displays and hosting Ukraine’s national team.
Supporting Ukraine’s soldiers and Russia’s bookmakers
But in terms of matches on offer per country, no country comes close to Australia and the number of domestic football matches offered by Russian gambling platforms.
Australia has committed nearly 1 billion euro in military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine, making it one of the largest non-NATO contributors to the war effort. During its most recent federal election, national security fears were stoked by claims that Russia was seeking to station long-range bombers near the country’s northern coast.
Yet even amid such hostilities, Russian bookmakers are cashing in on Australian grassroots football. Over a single weekend in April, Josimar found that Bet City offered matches from 60 separate Australian leagues. Leon.ru listed games from 50. Liga Stavok featured around 36. No other nation—neither Brazil nor the United States, both of which cover similarly massive landmasses with extensive state-based competitions (though with much bigger populations than Australia’s) —came remotely close.
It underscores how extensively the Russian betting industry is offering community-level sports from around the world with data from unregulated data companies.
Among the teams whose matches have been featured is Inglewood United, a club with roots deeply entwined with Ukraine. Founded in 1951 as Kiev Soccer Club by Ukrainian migrants in Western Australia, it remains a cultural touchstone, still playing in the yellow and blue of the Ukrainian flag.
Today, Inglewood competes in a third-tier, semi-professional, state-based league—a long way from the professional spotlight in a country with just 11 fully professional men’s teams. Yet even its reserve squad has not escaped the gaze of Russian bookies. On 19 April, Liga Stavok offered live betting on the Inglewood Reserves’ match against UWA Nedlands FC. Metadata from Liga Stavok shows that livedata for the match was from Sportradar, hosted by third-party cloud computing application service Akamai.
Sportradar lists Football Australia, the country’s governing body, as one of its partners.
Accessing the live data
While Josimar is aware of one Russian bookmaker taking live data directly from Sportradar, many accessed it through a third-party cloud service. Liga Stavok is one of those sites that accesses the data in this manner. While Sportradar does not release its client list, it is notable that Sportradar CEO Carsten Koerl held a 23% stake in a holding company related to the bookmaker until his post-invasion divestment in 2022, suggesting a legitimate connection between the businesses.
Josimar also noted that Olimp, another bookie to access data from the same cloud provider, had its name included in the URL of the data files it accessed (eg https://lt-fn-cdn001.akamaized.net/olimp/ru/Etc:UTC/gismo/match_timelinedelta/58971883), and that live data files accessed directly from Sportradar also work when “olimp” is included in the same manner.
Nevertheless, Sportradar is not the only source of in-play data in the Russian betting market (even if it might be the leading source and the easiest to spot). Live data for football matches involves a degree of subjectivity, making it possible to spot unique data streams. Josimar compared the live data animations of several different Russian bookmakers and regularly observed that ball movements were not in sync or following the same path and that key statistics had been recorded differently. Therefore, this meant that data from multiple providers was entering the Russian betting market. However, the metadata did not reveal the sources of this other data.
Josimar asked Sportradar’s key rivals, Genius Sports and Stats Perform, if they provide live data to Russian bookmakers. Genius Sports committed to “ceasing all commercial operations in Russia and Belarus” in early 2022, though a report by Inside World Football said the company had continued to provide live data to Russian bookmaker Marathon Bet.
(Website code from another Russian bookmaker, Baltbet, suggested it could accept data Sportradar and its competitors, though this may be an historical artifact of the site and does not mean that it continues to get data from those companies.)
Sportradar announced in May 2022 that it would suspend “all new investments in Russia, including signing new customers” and that it was “continuing to comply with sanctions”. It also created an emergency relief fund of 1 million US dollars to assist Ukraine.
“We stand in solidarity with all those who wish for peace and will continue to support those impacted by these tragic events,” it said at the time.
Sportradar replied to Josimar’s questions with the following statement:
“Sportradar does not provide 1xBet with any Ukrainian football content and neither do we accept unlicensed operators as recipients of our data. If misuse is detected it is dealt with as a contract violation. In this regard, Sportradar continuously audits sportsbooks for IP infringement and exercises consistent due diligence to scan the internet in order that breaches can be captured and thoroughly investigated. It is impossible to scan the entire internet rapidly, or daily, although, as soon as any contravention to the terms and conditions of our Services Agreement is detected, action is immediately taken.”
We sent questions to Genius and StatsPerform. We have not received any replies.
This article was developed with the support of Journalismfund Europe.
