LONDON: Tennis is facing serious integrity problems at the lower tiers of the game, a two-year investigation into corruption within the sport has determiined.
Published Wednesday, the report by the Independent Review Panel (IRP) was commissioned in February 2016 after a BBC and BuzzFeed News investigation uncovered suspected illegal betting on the eve of that year’s Australian Open.
The investigation – led by sports law expert Adam Lewis – has interviewed more than 100 active players and surveyed over 3,200 professionals. Of those surveyed, 464 said they had first-hand knowledge of match-fixing.
But the IRP found no evidence of a cover-up of these issues by governing bodies or the Tennis Integrity Unit (TIU).
The report found a “very significant” corruption problem at “lower and middle levels of the sport” which Lewis described as a “fertile breeding ground for breaches of integrity”. However, the investigation found no evidence of top-level players being implicated.
The report also said that from 2009 to 2017, men’s matches were responsible for 83% of alerts to suspicious matches.
The report also shows “evidence of some issues” at higher levels, such as Grand Slams and Tour events, but the evidence does not reveal a “widespread problem” in elite professional tennis.
The findings state that the biggest problems lie in lower levels of the game on the Futures Tour, due to the low prize money providing an incentive for players to match-fix for financial reward.
“Only the top 250 to 350 players earn enough money to break even. Yet there are nominally 15,000 or so ‘professional’ players,” the report states.
“The imbalance between prize money and the cost of competing places players in an invidious position by tempting them to contrive matches for financial reward.
“Players may be particularly tempted in relation to matches that they intended to ‘tank’ for unrelated reasons — a factor that has been aptly described as the “seeds of corruption” — or in matches that they believe they can win even while contriving to lose games, sets, or points along the way.”
Key findings and recommendations include:
Report authors were told of a “match-fixing ‘season'” from October until the end of the year with “traces of up to two or three fixed matches per day” in International Tennis Federation (ITF) tournaments
investigations at Grand Slams were “insufficient”, while the ATP, the organisational body of men’s professional tennis, was guilty of “failing to exhaust potential leads before ending investigations”
the sale of official live scoring data, at least at ITF and Pro Circuit levels, should be discontinued because it has increased the problem
adopting a realistic approach to how many players can be considered professional.
and a reorganisation and reform of the TIU, the sport’s anti-corruption body.
The report also proposes an end to betting sponsorship in tennis, especially tournaments.In their collective response to the report, Tennis’ governing bodies have declared in principle agreement with the package of measures and recommendations proposed by the IRP.
“Each of these areas now needs detailed exploration and analysis. Our immediate priority is to provide the input requested by the IRP by carefully reviewing, considering and responding to the 12 recommendations put forward for consultation, ahead of publication of the Final Report,” the governing bodies of professional tennis (ATP, WTA, ITF and Grand Slam Board), jointly stated.
“At the same time we will continue to implement existing initiatives to enhance and expand tennis’s governance of the sport in relation to betting-related integrity,” the statement further reads.
Assurances were also given that “appropriate resources” would be made available to carry out that work.
