Champions Hockey League, the premier European ice hockey competition that pits top teams from the first-tier leagues of the continent against each other every year, has today signed a long-term partnership with integrity service provider Sportradar to safeguard the competition from manipulation and betting fraud.
Sportradar is already partnered with the International Ice Hockey Federation as well as the German Deutsche Eishockey Liga and the North American NHL. It will now work closely with the CHL – delivering a combination of CAS-approved monitoring and detection services, its intelligence and investigation insights, as well as a series of education and prevention workshops. The 2018-9 season will find 32 teams from 13 countries try to unseat the current champions, Finland’s JYP Jyväskylä.
CHL CEO Martin Baumann said: “Our fans demand hard but fair competition and that cannot happen without integrity. As we set about finding the right partner to support us in this area, we were clear that we needed to work with most respected name in the field. The road led us to Sportradar and their Integrity Services. We are delighted to bring them into the CHL family and it gives us great comfort and confidence to know that they are on hand to help and advise.”
Sportradar’s managing director of integrity services Andreas Krannich said: “Creating the systems and tools to properly and credibly support any sport takes a lot of investment and expertise and we are humbled that the top rights owners in ice-hockey worldwide recognise and appreciate that. The CHL pitches the best in Europe against each other to crown the number one team on the continent; doing our bit to help protect this proud competition is a great honour and we thank CHL for their trust.”
