Tennis dominated suspicious betting reports once again, according to a quarterly study by the European Sports Security Association (ESSA), the non-profit organization charged with the task to monitor betting activity and to report any suspicious betting patterns.
ESSA notified about 27 instances of suspicious betting activity during the three months ended March 31, 2017. Tennis represented 45% of those cases. There were 12 tennis alerts filed to the organization. Football, volleyball, basketball, snooker, ice hockey, boxing, and handball accounted for the other 55%. As pointed out by ESSA, this has been the ninth consecutive quarter when tennis has headed its three-month report on suspicious betting activity.
ESSA revealed that a number of initiatives related to the growing problem of match-fixing will be unveiled over the course of 2017 and the organization itself will participate in these. Most of the activities are led by the European Commission. The EC has commissioned a number of match-fixing studies and has made it known that it would craft a recommendation on match-fixing.
Although suspicious betting activity in tennis has long been a topic broadly discussed within the international sports and gambling communities, more attention was drawn last January, when the results from a joint investigation by the BBC and BuzzFeed News were made known to the public.
According to the information released at the time, there were 16 top tennis athletes to have been reported over match-fixing suspicions to the Tennis Integrity Unit within the course of the past decade. All of the players, some of whom winners of Grand Slam titles, were later on cleared of suspicion. However, the mere fact that such suspicions were thrown is indicative of the fact that the integrity of tennis may be marred.
The TIU compiled and published its first annual report in January 2017 as a response to the growing concerns. According to its results, the number of patterns that could be defined as suspicious betting activity has been growing rapidly.
The report also showed that nine players and other tennis-related individuals were sanctioned in one way or another last year, following TIU investigations into their activity.
The unit received 292 filings for suspicious betting activity in 2016, eight of which for Grand Slam, ATP, and WTA tournaments. The TIU had to look into 246 such notifications in 2015. Concerned about the upward trend, the anti-corruption tennis body promised to invest even more effort into monitoring and keeping the sport’s integrity.
The beginning of last year’s Australian Open was marred by the publication of the BBC/BuzzFeed News investigation. This year’s edition of the Grand Slam tournament was overshadowed by news that lower-tier Australian players had been charged with match-fixing.
