Tennis authorities need to make changes to protect sport’s integrity

Ahmed Rizvi looks at tennis's ongoing battle with match fixing following the release of a recent statistics.

Marco Cecchinato and two other Italian players were handed 18 month suspensions by the Italian tennis federation for match fixing. Peter Parks / AFP

The dark, ominous clouds of match-fixing hovering over tennis since the start of the year simply refuse to blow away.

In January, on the opening day of the Australian Open, we saw a BBC and BuzzFeed News investigation make shocking claims about 16 top-50 players who “have been repeatedly flagged to the Tennis Integrity Unit (TIU) over suspicions they have thrown matches” over the past decade.

Speaking to BBC and BuzzFeed News as part of their investigation into match-fixing in tennis, Roberto di Martino, an Italian prosecutor who has carried out a two-year investigation into alleged match-fixing in tennis, claimed “evidence” against some of the world’s top players had been sent to the authorities, but it has been ignored. Now, the latest quarterly “Integrity Report” of the European Sport Security Association (Essa) has added to the suspicions.

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In the second quarter of 2016, Essa and its members reported “41 cases of suspicious betting patterns to the relevant sporting and regulatory authorities for further investigation”, and 34 of these cases — or an overwhelming 83 per cent — were tennis, four in football and one each in handball, snooker and beach volleyball.

Of course, a suspicious betting pattern is not a smoking gun and, as Mark Harrison, the Tennis Integrity Unit’s head of communications, rightfully pointed out in the same report, there can be many valid reasons for these unusual patters, including “incorrect odds-setting, player fitness, fatigue and form, playing conditions and personal circumstances”.

It is true, as Harrison pointed out, that the 48 alerts reported to the TIU in the first quarter of the year, were a tiny “0.2 per cent for all matches” played during that period, but still, tennis’ continuous presence at the top of Essa’s integrity figures is a cause for concern and the powers that be should be doing more to address these concerns.

The authorities have already set up an independent review panel “to test the effectiveness of the sport’s existing anti-corruption practices and procedures”, according to Harrison, following the BBC and BuzzFeed News investigations earlier in the year.

But, as Mike O’Kane, the chairman of Essa said in the report, “changes are clearly needed” in tennis’ integrity procedures and the sooner the better for us all.

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