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Grand Slam betting scandal rocks tennis

The administrator who led cricket through betting scandals has warned of the vulnerability of tennis to match-fixing.

former International Cricket Council boss Malcolm Speed said sports like tennis must be able to ‘follow the money trail’ to protect the integrity of their matches.
former International Cricket Council boss Malcolm Speed said sports like tennis must be able to ‘follow the money trail’ to protect the integrity of their matches.

The sports administrator who led Australian and international cricket through damaging betting scandals has warned of the vulnerability of tennis to match-fixing and urged the Turnbull government to legalise and regulate a contentious form of online gambling to better protect against ­corruption.

With day one of the Australian Open subsumed by reports that eight players suspected of regularly manipulating tour matches are in Melbourne to compete in the tournament, former International Cricket Council boss Malcolm Speed said sports like tennis must be able to “follow the money trail’’ to protect the integrity of their matches.

Mr Speed, executive director of an industry group representing tennis, the football codes, cricket and other professional sports, said although the Australian government had no influence over the large European-based betting and organised crime syndicates that target tennis, it could reduce the appeal of illegal, offshore bookmakers to Australian punters by legalising “in-play’’ betting.

“Part of the push from Australian sports is to have online, in-play betting legalised so as to minimise the attraction for Australian punters to bet with unregulated, offshore betting operators with whom the Australian sports do not have integrity agreements and the right of veto over bet types,’’ said Mr Speed, the executive director of the Coalition of Major Professional and Participation Sports.

In-play betting is at the centre of a government-commissioned review into gambling led by former NSW premier Barry O’Farrell. The players competing in Melbourne who are alleged to have manipulated matches have all been ranked in the top 50, according to articles produced by the BBC and website Buzzfeed.

One player is suspected of repeatedly fixing his first set, while players are being targeted in hotel rooms at major tournaments and offered $US50,000 ($72,620) or more a fix by corrupt gamblers, according to previously unreleased files.

Fairfax Media last night reported that Victoria Police detectives questioned local tennis figures last week about which matches could be fixed at the Open.

It said an Australian professional who has been ranked in the top 70 had told his coach he was approached weekly by crime figures asking him to throw matches.

Betting syndicates in Russia, northern Italy and Sicily are alleged to have made hundreds of thousands of dollars betting on games that investigators believe were fixed, including three at Wimbledon and at the French Open. Association of Tennis Professionals president Chris Kermode yesterday denied the most damaging claim that the sport’s own integrity unit had buried evidence of repeated match-fixing by a highly ranked players.

In its investigations, the Tennis Integrity Unit had to find evidence as opposed to “information, suspicion or hearsay,’’ he said.

The reports are largely based on information provided to the ATP’s Tennis Integrity Unit in 2008 as part of a probe into a particularly notorious match the previous year between Russian player Nikolay Davydenko and Argentinian Martin Vassallo Arguello. Davydenko and Arguello, who are both retired, were cleared of wrongdoing.

Mark Phillips, a betting analyst who worked on the investigation, accused tennis authorities of failing to act. “We gave them everything tied up with a nice pink bow on top and they took no ­action at all,’’ he told the BBC.

Richard Ings, who as a former senior ATP official set up the first anti-corruption program for men’s tennis in 2004, said although it was “dead easy’’ to fix a match, ­suspicious betting patterns were not enough to prove corruption.

“The bottom line is there are suspicious matches every week at tournaments all over the world,’’ he told The Australian from London.

Read related topics:Australian Open Tennis

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Original URL: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/sport/tennis/grand-slam-betting-scandal-rocks-tennis/news-story/f8d05b4b90eb5b0bc891e2cda6ad566f