The Australian Open kicks off today across the sprawling National Tennis Centre – or, as it’s known in Melbourne, “the hottest goddamned two weeks of the year.”
And whilst the ATP might have been hoping for a nice, calm, gentle start to the first Grand Slam of the calendar year, things could not be further from the truth.
The sport has been hit with a gigantic match fixing scandal, following an exhaustive and extremely thorough joint investigation by BuzzFeed News and the BBC. The report, published today with the handy title “The Tennis Racket” – details evidence of widespread, systemic match fixing from a core group of 16 players, all of whom have ranked inside the ATP world top 50.
The investigation studied data from players matches, aggregated against available betting data, in order to level the accusations. What it found was what tennis insiders have long suspected: that betting syndicates based out of Russia and Italy have been conspiring with players to throw matches or fix spots within matches in order to turn mass profits on the betting markets.
What’s more, repeated reports made to the ATP and to World Tennis have simply been either dismissed outright, or ignored completely. The report paints the ATP and the Tennis Integrity Unit as organisations only willing to create villains when a scapegoat is needed. The unit handed out its first life ban in 2011 to Austrian player Daniel Köllerer for taking money to fix games – a charge that Köllerer has steadfastly denied. Köllerer was a reportedly a deeply unpopular player on the tour already, and the ban was a silenced shot as a result.
This followed on the heels of a massively controversial 2007 incident in which then-world number four Nikolay Davydenko withdrew from a match against 87 ranked Martín Argüello, which had seen almost 10-times the usual amount of betting made on the match – the majority of which placed on the underdog Argüello to win. The amount was so unusual that BetFair UK alerted the ATP, and took the unprecedented step of declaring all wagers made on the match null and void.
The new report today makes a handful of explosive, core claims:
- That among the 16 core players in question are a US Open singles champion, and doubles winners at Wimbeldon.
- That at least one of the players is still ranked inside the top 50, is competing in this year’s Australian Open, and has a known history of throwing their first sets.
- That players were being targeted in hotel rooms at major tournaments by corrupt gamblers, who have been offering at least US$50,000 per fix.
- That gambling syndicates in Russia and Italy have made stacks of cash from suspect bets on games in major tournaments, including both Wimbeldon and the French Open.
- And that at least 70 players have been reported to tennis officials on suspicion of match fixing over the past decade, all of whom have completely escaped sanction.
The full investigation paints the ATP as an organisation that outwardly claims to want to stamp out match-fixing, but is not willing to do the necessary work in order to achieve that; that corruption could easily be eradicated from the sport if only organisational management treated the problem as serious.
Or, as Paul Beeby – former organised crime detective and current gambling corruption watchdog for the gold-standard British Horseracing integrity unit – damningly put it:
“Tennis hasn’t got a problem because they don’t want to have a problem.”
The entire investigative report is a thunderously interesting long-read, and can be found here. For those of you with braver brains than us, BuzzFeed also released their statistical metrics and data that they used in order to draw their conclusions and level their accusations.
For what it’s worth, tennis officials have been staunchly united in absolutely rejecting the accusations made through the investigation, particularly that prior instances of match-fixing have been covered up.
#BREAKING The ATP says the TIU & authorities absolutely reject any suggestion evidence of #matchfixing has been suppressed.
#TennisRacket
— ABC News 24 (@ABCNews24) January 18, 2016
Eight of tennis’ head honchos unveiling “united response” to allegations. Absolutely reject allegations of evidence supression #TennisRacket
— Ben McKay (@benmackey) January 18, 2016
The Australian Open rolls on from today.
Photo: Cameron Spencer/Getty Images.
Source: BuzzFeed News.
