Wimbledon results under scrutiny over match-fixing alerts

AUTHORITIES are investigating several matches from the 2017 Wimbledon Championships on suspicion of match-fixing and illicit betting activity.

The Tennis Integrity Unit (TIU) revealed on Wednesday evening that it had received alerts concerning three matches at the Grand Slam tournament, which concluded last Sunday.

The anti-corruption taskforce is also looking into one match from the 2017 French Open.

The intel comes from online bookmakers and gambling regulators that have detected suspicious wagering patterns on certain markets.

Although that alone is not conclusive evidence of match-fixing or illegal gambling, the TIU is obliged to scrutinise any and all signs of unusual activity.

Of the three Wimbledon matches under investigation, only one was part of the main draw.

The other two occurred during the qualifying tournament at Roehampton.

The men’s singles at Wimbledon 2017 set a record for mid-match retirements, but the TIU said none of those 10 clashes were under the spotlight.

Is tennis match-fixing out of control?

These are but the latest in a series of match-fixing allegations that have rocked the tennis world in recent years.

A number of high-profile tour professionals – including former world number one Novak Djokovic and Australian talent Thanasi Kokkinakis – have reported approaches from would-be fixers.

“It made me feel terrible because I don’t want to be anyhow linked to this,” Djokovic said in a 2016 interview regarding an incident 10 years earlier.

“Somebody may call it an opportunity. For me, that’s an act of unsportsmanship, a crime in sport, honestly.

“I don’t support it. I think there is no room for it in any sport, especially in tennis.”

The issue took centre stage in the lead-up to the 2016 Australian Open, when a BBC-Buzzfeed investigation into tennis match-fixing exposed decades of suspicious incidents that were either ignored or swept under the carpet.

A year later, with the 2017 tournament around the corner, several Aussie players – including former AO junior champion Oliver Anderson – were implicated in gambling corruption cases.

Nick Lindahl was banned for seven years for fixing a match in 2013, while Isaac Frost was hit with similar charges only last month.

The root of the problem

Four matches from this year’s majors have raised the red flag, but one brief glance at the numbers is enough to show where the real problem lies.

Of the 54 alerts the TIU has received so far in 2017, only 13 refer to matches played on the top-flight ATP and WTP tours.

An overwhelming majority of match-fixing scandals arise in the lower ranks of professional tennis.

Players on the Challenger Tour and the ITF Futures circuit are living from tourney to tourney, which makes them far more susceptible to approaches from unlicensed bookies and organised crime syndicates.

Throwing a match for cash is easy, attractive money for people who earn nowhere near as much as stars like Djokovic and Roger Federer and the Williams sisters do.

The tennis authorities know this already; the question is whether they have a solution.

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