My understanding is match bullets are made to fragment very easily into very small pieces. The idea being that it won't ricochet & essentially disintegrate so there won't be large bits that could harm somebody. Also, it'll do minimal harm to range equipment, some ranges I've been to allow only match bullets for steel targets.
This seems to be the opposite of what a hunting bullet does - you want it to penetrate, then expand or at least throw off relatively large chunks of metal that have enough energy to travel & cause damage.