World #1 Novak Djokovic Admits He Was Once Offered $200k To Throw A Match

The current World #1 says the sum was indirectly offered to him in return for tanking in a St Petersburg tournament. It’s also a sum that Djokovic turned down, saying “it didn’t even get to me, the guy that was trying to talk to me, he didn’t even get to me directly. There was nothing out of it.”

On day one of the Australian Open, he came out against anybody implicated in the findings, saying “there is no room for any match fixing or corruption in our sport.”

Notably, 16 as-yet unnamed players are tied up in the findings, and all of them have been ranked within the ATP’s world top 50, but Djokovic maintains the corruption was unlikely to extend to the highest levels of the sport. 

“From my knowledge and information about, the match fixing or anything similar, there is nothing happening on the top level, as far as I know…

Challenger level, those tournaments, maybe, maybe not. But I’m not entitled to really talk about it. I can give my opinion.”

His comments continued to support the ATP, saying “there is an organisation, authorities, people who take care of that on a daily basis and make sure to track it down.” 

That assertion stands in contrast to the joint BuzzFeed News and BBC investigation painting the organisation as incompetent or willfully ignorant in regards to punishing players thought to be match fixing.

For the record, Djokovic kicked off his Oz Open campaign with a 6-3 6-2 6-4 win over Korea’s Hyeon Chung this morning. 

Source: News Corp.
Photo: Quinn Rooney / Getty.