BuzzFeed UK and the BBC have teamed up on an investigation that details major match-fixing evidence in tennis, including by “winners of singles and doubles titles at Grand Slam tournaments”.
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The report by the BBC claims 16 players ranked in the world top 50 have, over the last decade, been referred on numerous occassions to the tennis integrity unit.
A core group of 16 players is said to be at the heart of the betting scandal, with eight due to feature at the Australian Open, which starts on Monday.
According to the BBC, three of the matches occurred at one of tennis’ premiere events, Wimbledon.
The BBC and BuzzFeed News said they had not named the players because without access to their phone, bank and computer records it was not possible to determine whether they took part in match-fixing. “Many of them were flagged back in 2008 by the investigators hired by the association of tennis professionals and yet they’re all still playing”.
“Four players showed particularly unusual patterns, losing nearly all of these red-flag matches”. Given the original odds on those matches, the chance the players would play so poorly was less than one in 1,000.
“I can assure you that tennis is not treating this lightly”, ATP chief Chris Kermode told Buzzfeed.
The BBC and Buzzfeed News did not name the players they claimed were the subject of the investigations. Some of the suspicious bets were made on matches at Wimbledon and the French Open. The documents they have obtained reveal evidence of a widespread European gambling ring, suggesting that corruption in the sport may be a bigger problem than estimated. “As a result, no new investigations into any of the players who were mentioned in the 2008 report were opened”, Willerton said.
Though Davydenko and Arguello were cleared of wrongdoing, the investigation led to a deeper look at the potential ties of players to gamblers.
The Italian and Russian gambling syndicates and a third in Sicily were found to have placed bets on 72 matches involving 28 players, which were flagged to authorities.
“What happens is that information and intelligence are given to the Tennis Integrity Unit and they then have to turn that into evidence”.
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The mercury is set to hit a top temperature of 36C in Melbourne with the first matches beginning from 11am.
