UEFA welcomes CAS decision on Skënderbeu

UEFA welcomes the Court of Arbitration for Sport's decision to dismiss the appeal lodged by KF Skënderbeu against the UEFA Appeals Body decision of 1 June 2016.

Consequently CAS confirms the decision taken by the UEFA disciplinary bodies not to admit Skënderbeu to the 2016/17 UEFA Champions League due to its involvement in activities aimed at arranging the outcome of matches (Article 4.02 of the Regulations of the UEFA Champions League).

The case affirms the reliability of UEFA's betting fraud detection system (BFDS) in identifying abnormal betting patterns on matches played by the Albanian club at European and domestic levels.

After a thorough investigation undertaken by UEFA, in close cooperation with its partner Sportradar, the ethics and disciplinary inspectors identified certain betting patterns which were in total contradiction with those expected in a regular betting market. This case was first analysed by the UEFA Appeals Body and then by CAS.

With this decision CAS upholds the efforts taken to protect both domestic and UEFA competitions from match-fixing; it also shows the confidence CAS has in the UEFA BFDS – developed in conjunction with Sportradar – which is an instrumental tool in helping guarantee the integrity of competitions.

The BFDS was established in 2009 in response to the growing threat of match manipulation in both UEFA and European domestic league competitions. Its role is to highlight irregular betting movements, both pre-match and in-game (live), in the core betting markets by monitoring all major European and Asian bookmakers. The core betting markets are: the Asian handicap (AHC); Totals (number of goals in a match) and 1X2 (home win, draw, away win).

The monitoring of the betting markets covers all UEFA competition matches (approximately 2,000 per season) and games in the top two divisions and cup competition of UEFA's member associations (approximately 30,000 matches per season). The monitoring uses sophisticated algorithms and mathematical models to compare calculated odds with actual bookmakers' odds to determine whether the odds in a specific minute or time period are irregular.