WIDESPREAD MATCH FIXING IN PAST 10 YEARS INCLUDING GRAND SLAM WINNERS!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/tennis/35319202

Thoughts?

People cheat.

Ha, Summer 'brevity' blues.

Could include women, or doubles.

There haven't been many Grand Slam make winners in the last 13 years and if they're guilty of anything it won't be throwing matches.

No mention of WTA though.

Yeah, not a chance any of the male slam winners in the last 10 years have been involved in match fixing. Suspect it will be doubles slam champs.

Since 2005 nobody?

2005 I might be more suspicious of :-). Have to say I was temporarily forgetting about one recent slam winner as well. I'll amend my answer to there not being a chance any of the big 4 would do so.

Also... does it mean you have had to have won a slam in the last 10 years or that you had won a slam and had competed in the last 10 years?
Quite a few players who won slams before 05 and played on past then...

The findings of the investigation by both news organisations released included:

A US Open champion and doubles winners at Wimbledon were among a core group of 16 players who had repeatedly been reported for losing games when highly suspicious bets have been placed against them;
One top-50 ranked player competing in the Australian Open is suspected of repeatedly fixing his first set;
Players were being targeted in hotel rooms at major tournaments and offered $US50,000 ($73,100) or more per fix by corrupt gamblers;
Gambling syndicates in Russia and Italy have made hundreds of thousands of pounds sterling placing highly suspicious bets on scores of matches — including at Wimbledon and the French Open;
The names of more than 70 players appear on nine leaked lists of suspected fixers who have been flagged to world tennis authorities over the past decade without being sanctioned.
The evidence uncovered by the investigation included a bundle of leaked internal documents — the so-called 'Fixing Files' — and analysis of betting on 26,000 tennis matches.

Interesting. The fact they say US Open winner would suggest either Roddick or DP (as the only players who have only won the US in recent times) - assuming they are referring to ATP. Have to say, I would be very surprised if either of them were involved.

I knew there was a reason why Nole wins every match

Born Slippy wrote:Interesting. The fact they say US Open winner would suggest either Roddick or DP (as the only players who have only won the US in recent times) - assuming they are referring to ATP. Have to say, I would be very surprised if either of them were involved.

My initial thought went to Cilic tbh. They are partial to a good match fixing out there admittedly in other sports though.

Everyone including the ATP, WTA, ITF and TUI knows this is a big problem in the sport, especially at lower levels. So the "news" in this article is that (1) names near the top of the sport are involved (though none are named) and (2) TUI hasn't been successful at sanctioning those suspected.
But presumably (2) is not all down to TUI wanting to sweep this under the carpet, but is also down to reason why no players are named in the report - because it would require proof, but it is difficult to prove that the player is complicit in the suspicious betting patterns
As an aside, I don't bet at all and I often find it very strange exactly what there is legitimate betting market for, including set results in challenger and lower grade tournaments and even "matches" like the IPTL.

It certainly seemed to point the finger at Cilic if you do rule out other US singles champions in the last 10 years (men & women) who would have more than enough money and an enormous reputation risk to be likely to consider match-fixing. But I don't particularly like journalism that would leave that suspicion without actually naming who they're accusing.

Born Slippy wrote:Interesting. The fact they say US Open winner would suggest either Roddick or DP (as the only players who have only won the US in recent times) - assuming they are referring to ATP. Have to say, I would be very surprised if either of them were involved.

Or more likely a much more recent one.

Lol - have to confess I'd totally forgotten him. Still think it's more likely to be WTA though.

I know this is going on in tennis. Partly it is the structure of the sport where a few top singles players make a huge amount of money then everyone else ranges from doing ok to middling to actually losing money. You have with the internet easy access gaming on everything and anything. Then you have a sport where a few pros are among the richest in sport while 98 percent of pros don't have a pot to pee in. Plus as either an individual or two person sport it is much easier to fix and keep quiet than in a team sport with huge organizations and where often one person can't as easily fix the result. If you look at sports that have had match fixing problems tennis has all the factors that would make it ripe. We know that even djokovic says that he was approached to throw matches when he was really young and still not set financially. It is interesting that in both societies with large income disparities and unfairness and in sports with large wealth inequality and or unfairness you see a huge increase in criminality and corruption. In the states, college basketball in particular has a huge tendency to graft and fraud. Why because big money is involved, one official or key player can turn a result, and neither the officials or players make anything in a sport where everyone else is making huge money. In college the athletes are amateurs but the colleges, gaming industry, broadcasters, coaches, and merchandisers all are making killings while the player is getting almost nothing. It is so prevalent a term of art has evolved called point shaving. To me this not surprising. It probably doesn't involve the elite but somewhat disgruntled middle class economically of the sport. But in tennis most pros are not the elite and are not rolling in it relative to other pro athletes.

Djokovic reveals he was offered £140,000 to throw match in 07!
http://www.itv.com/news/story/2016-01-18/tennis-hit-with-claims-of-widespread-match-fixing/

It annoys me when these sorts of reports come out, referring to an anonymous grand slam winner. It just means that people start gossiping and pointing fingers at various individuals, who may be completely innocent.

At the beginning of a major tournament.. all players are looking at each other with suspicion .. smacks of something nasty !!!

I doubt the players have learned anything from this.

Obviously it happens, same as in cricket and probably everything else too. If they don't want this (or doping) to happen they should just look as hard as they can and kick anyone who does it out of the sport for life. If they do want it to happen, then cover up, give second chances, that sort of thing. There'd still be some going on but it'd be less and a player after being caught wouldn't do it again.

Also, a system should be set up where a player could confidentially tip them off that a player looked like he was tanking, and they can go to betting patterns from that. The opponent will know better than anyone.

It's really not difficult.

I don't see why really top players should absolutely be ruled out. Less likely, but not certain.

1. They might have done it earlier in their career before they were wealthy.

2. They might have been under threats of physical violence or threats to their families. (E.g. Alex Ferguson and the Man United head of the board sold Kanchelskis to Everton because a Russian mob threatened them if they didn't.)

3. You're assuming a moderate amount of intelligence when you make the logical assumption that no-one would say risk their reputation for £200,000 if they already had £10,000,000. Evidence suggests that the world is full of dumb people that do dumb things that don't make sense all of the time. Sports is no different. Why did Lance Armstrong and other drug cheats continue doping and taking chances with their reputation after their legend and millionaire status was already achieved? Why did John Higgins agree to take €300,000 to lose a few frames of snooker when he was already a multiple world champion and had millions?

Yes, it's going to be harder to convince a top player to play along for a given sum of money but this has to be balanced against the amount of money that can be bet without attracting suspicion. When several 6-figure bets go down on a Challenger, the bookies notice and are immediately suspicious. But if you did it on a slam final it would look less suspicious because more people are betting on that, and the total amounts bet are higher.

This is amusing.

TIU has zero tolerance and yet the staff to enforce that?

I don't know if it will happen in my lifetime, but maybe tennis might catch up!

This is difficult to eliminate from the sport, but some substantial efforts could be made to reduce it. Are players reporting these efforts to their authorities? I don't think they are.

I would (in principle, not sure about legal practicalities) propose a system whereby the ATP, or tennis integrity unit or whoever announces that it is an offence to not report being contacted for match fixing. Then publically announce and tell the players that the ATP themselves are going to employ people to contact the players directly pretending to be match fixers, and publish a list of approached players who didn't report this to the authorities. There are various arguments that you can put against this if you like but the question is at the end of the day whether you are serious about rooting out corruption or not.

Article is long and worth a read.  The basic essence is that the TIU is not doing enough in the face of strong evidence of wrong-doing, and I found that convincing - the Davydenko v. Vassallo Arguello match looks v. bad I'm afraid.

One major problem with trying to put a stop to this is threats of violence, which can be aimed in all sorts of directions - one of Betfair's Russian managers was threatened and that stalled aspects of the investigation into the Davydenko match.  Betfair's response seems to have been to be angry with the investigators - I did not get the sense that accounts involved in suspicious betting are closed down.

Another problem is that in order to nail someone properly you need not just weird betting patterns, but information from their mobiles showing who they are in touch with - and no doubt any sensible crook is alive to the need to cover their tracks if they are in touch with the gamblers - full co-operation was not available from either player in the match under investigation.

It does not seem to me that there is a simple answer - the very fact that the report has had to mention numbers and not names speaks eloquently of the difficulties and may mean that some endure unfair suspicion.  However, part of that has to lie at the TIU's door. The suggestion that the same names are cropping up regularly means that whatever the TIU is doing does not inspire confidence, and that's got to change.

Wimbledon 2013 Final comes to mind, since Djoko is talking....

Its hard to see a top player tanking a game intentionally to be honest. I mean if you ask Djokovic to tank a slam semi final you're asking him to drop lose what? £500k? If you're asking him to tank a final then its a million. This is a LOT more than athletes generally get paid for tanking, and you'd have to obviously go above odds as well. Cant see it.

I can understand people are as a rule unpredictable and stupid but there's a diffedence between Armstrong doping himself into miracle babies and fixing. The former is to become better. The latter is not

http://www.svd.se/41-tennisnamn-pa-svarta-listan_6563265

Look at that list guys and read the article. Some big names in there.

If these allegations were wrong why didn't the players listed sue the Swedish newspaper?

Disclaimer: Just posting a link to a Swedish newspaper.

Sad to see some of those names.. On the men side, most about the level I would expect though where the type of payouts we are hearing about WOULD be meaningful to their wallets.

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41 tennis names on blacklist
Two tennis player has been suspended for life for add matches or more in the pipeline. Altogether there are 41 players on the tennis blacklist - 3 are included in the Stockholm Open.
October 19, 2011 Save Article Share 1 pitch

English translation from link provided above.


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SvD can today publish the secret list of players suspected of add games and Tennis Integrity Unit (TIU), the gaming company Betfair and tour driving ATP keeps an extra eye on.

The list is divided into two categories:

• 20 players (14 men and six women), several of which have been involved in games where suspicions of fraud have been so strong that it led to an investigation. Other players have ended up on the list because, on numerous occasions been involved in matches where the bookmakers illogical odds history.

• 21 players (15 men and 6 women) are on the warning list, which means a lower failure rate thinking.

One of them lost in the Stockholm Open's first round against a much inferior ranked opponents.

-Of What I can see in odds history so it was not strange that game, says Johannes Nilsson, day trader, Betfair and expert on betting in tennis.

The intense competition in tennis means that upsets are common and it is not sensations in themselves receiving alarm bells - they do in fact already before or during the match.

How?

-Inför A match, you notice it because the odds on the first player to lose rises abnormally while turnover is abnormally high, says Johannes Nilsson.

And during a match?

-Pengarna That people want to bet goes against the normal odds without any explanation.

Sometimes cheating obvious. As in the second round in a small ATP tournament where the top players had been 1-0 in sets against a low ranked player. Yet were placed huge sums on the low ranked player who also won. The total turnover of the game seven million, which is ten times more than normal than one match of the character.

Betfair quickly realized that everything was not right, put bets on the event, refused to pay out winnings and initiated together with the TIU a survey that was closed down.

Many cheaters go free because the evidence did not agree but Johannes Nilsson believes that there is another explanation for why more convicted.

-Tennisen And I mean players, ITF, ATP and WTA has in my opinion the attitude that Poopie all swept under the carpet. Doping, add games and other things does not reach the light of day.

It is undoubtedly a deliberate strategy to conceal violations. The purpose is enough that the sport should look clean and nice. There is probably also a fear of losing television contracts and sponsors.

How common is it to add games?

-Less Common than some years ago. Of the approximately 4,000 matches played in a year is perhaps a 50-fixing in the sense that a player deliberately loses while his companions are investing money in it to happen.

When is add matches the most common?

-It's Almost always in small ATP tournaments, then please in the first round.

The two players who switched off the life of deliberately lost the Austrian Daniel Köllerer, 27, and Serbian David Savic, 26. They also 625000 and 680000 crowns in fines.

Black list

Philipp Kohlschreiber
Potito Starace
Andreas
Seppi, Fabio Fognini
Janko Tipsarevic
Michael Llodra
Nikolay Davydenko
Teymuraz Gabashvili
Victor Crivoi
Christophe Rochus
Oscar Hernandez
Yevgeny Korolev
Filippo Volandri
Wayne Odesnik
Victoria Azarenka
Agnieszka Radwanska
Francesca Schiavone
Sara Errani
Maria Kirilenko
Kateryna Bondarenko

... And 21 on the warning list: Brian Dabul, Eduardo Scwhank, Jeremy Chardy, Simone Bolelli, Lukasz Kubot, Carlos Berlocq, Igor Kunitsyn, Andrey Golubev, Alex Bogomolov, Somdev Devvar-husband, Steve Darcis, Marin Cilic, Flavio Cipolla, Ivo Karlovic, Viktor Troicki, Flavia Pennetta, Roberta Vinci, Virginie Razzano, Romina Oprandi, Dominika Cibulkova, Eleni Daniilidou. Involved in this year's Stockholm Open.


Some big names on the women's side. Wow

Wozzy and Stephens got knocked out today by unknown. No I have to question what I am watching. Tennis is easy to fix you only have one player to bribe. Unlike team sports.

Wozniacki battled for over 3 hours in punishing heat so if she was paid to lose then I'm sure she'd sooner done so in straight sets in half the time in really brutal conditions.

djkbrown2001 wrote:Wozzy and Stephens got knocked out today by unknown. No I have to question what I am watching. Tennis is easy to fix you only have one player to bribe. Unlike team  sports.

I take it you never watched Serie A!

Wozniacki's just crap, no reason to suspect anything there.

"Only one of those players has ever reached the top 200, and there are clearly temptations for lower-ranked professionals. Players outside the top 200 are unlikely to earn much more than £40,000 in prize money each year, and that is before coaching, travel and hotel expenses are taken into account.

The list from the Swedish newspaper has a player who has reached a career high in the Top 20, and is currently in Top 50. The Swedish list contradicts the highlighted statement from the BBC link. Is the media doing a disservice to the sport with sensationalism?

Where is the purported slam winner - ATP or WTA? Pure speculation?

We contacted Mark Phillips, one of the betting investigators in the 2007 enquiry, who told the BBC that they discovered repeated suspicious betting activity about a clear group.

"There was a core of about 10 players who we believed were the most common perpetrators that were at the root of the problem," he said.

It is interesting that the Swedish list has quite a few Italians.

Laverfan, the comment re "only one player...top 200" refers to players that have actually been banned.

The Swedish list is players that haven't been banned, but have some suspicion against them.

The highlighted section refers to players who have been caught and punished.

The remainder of the BBC article (and the Swedish list) refers to players who have not been punished but about whom there are irregularities in betting patterns. No contradiction.

The Sweidish list contains 4 slam singles champs (one ATP).

Born Slippy wrote:The Sweidish list contains 4 slam singles champs (one ATP).

Thanks, BS and BillH, for clarifying.

The same ATP player also had a ban for a non-TUE substance, IIRC. But (and OT) - http://www.smh.com.au/sport/tennis/marin-cilic-blames-doping-ban-on-bad-science-20131028-2wcjm.html - seems to indicate an error.

Cilic said he only learned in September that he had not actually tested positive for the banned stimulant nikethamide, but for its marker (metabolite) N-ethylnicotinamide.

Perhaps, betting will always attract rogue and criminal elements, and should be banned. I agree with Tsonga in the linked article.

I hope there is better public information available on this subject, in days/weeks/months to come. A very tough day for Tennis, whether this is ultimately debated for it's veracity or not.

laverfan wrote:Perhaps, betting will always attract rogue and criminal elements, and should be banned. I agree with Tsonga in the linked article.

That's a society question though, isn't it? One of the big problems in stamping out the corruption in the sport is that there is no control over the betting side at all. But to me, allowing bets on things like individual games and sets in tennis, individual frames in snooker and individual cautions/offences in football as well as levels of sports where there is virtually no money for the protagonists is creating a big risk of corruption. But only the bookies can stop that and presumably they don't because it is generally legit and makes money!

Henman Bill wrote:This is difficult to eliminate from the sport, but some substantial efforts could be made to reduce it. Are players reporting these efforts to their authorities? I don't think they are.

I would (in principle, not sure about legal practicalities) propose a system whereby the ATP, or tennis integrity unit or whoever announces that it is an offence to not report being contacted for match fixing. Then publically announce and tell the players that the ATP themselves are going to employ people to contact the players directly pretending to be match fixers, and publish a list of approached players who didn't report this to the authorities. There are various arguments that you can put against this if you like but the question is at the end of the day whether you are serious about rooting out corruption or not.

Apparently, players are required to report any approaches - but whether that means there are penalties for not reporting I don't know. In any case, I suspect that is not necessarily so much a random stranger making the approach, given how the Swedish list is so clustered by countries (particularly Italy and Russia where these betting syndicates are known to operate). Presumably there is some discrete approaches between players or contacts passed on - maybe if your Fed/Davis Cup team mate casually asks you if you want to make a bit of extra money, you are unlikely to report them even if you prefer to stay clean yourself.

Here's a couple of good (older) articles about some specific instances, mainly challengers. The sites in questions certainly seem confident enough to call out the specific activities:
http://lastwordonsports.com/2015/07/30/match-fixing-in-tennis-reality-or-fantasy/
http://www.sportdw.com/2015/07/fix-tennis-golubev-nedovyesov.html

Actually this doesn't bother me at all.

1. The matches people will throw won't matter. Big events / matches will be ok because no bribe would be worth it.

2. I don't care about the health of the betting industry, it's a stupid way for ordinary people to try to make money so if people get fleeced that's not my problem.

YvonneT wrote:

laverfan wrote:Perhaps, betting will always attract rogue and criminal elements, and should be banned. I agree with Tsonga in the linked article.

That's a society question though, isn't it? One of the big problems in stamping out the corruption in the sport is that there is no control over the betting side at all. But to me, allowing bets on things like individual games and sets in tennis, individual frames in snooker and individual cautions/offences in football as well as levels of sports where there is virtually no money for the protagonists is creating a big risk of corruption. But only the bookies can stop that and presumably they don't because it is generally legit and makes money!

I tend to agree that spot betting enables spot fixing, the majority of these fixing scandals don't involve deliberately losing matches but making sure a specific thing happens at a specific time; the recent Pakistan cricket team spot fixing springs to mind there.

When I first read the BBC article one name immediately sprang into my head when 'grand slam winner' was mentioned, the big four and Wawrinka are involved in far too many grueling matches for me to think it was ever them.

Yvonne. That's a very good link. Article shed some light on how it works. Wow!

They need to raise the prize money in lower level tournament. It's disgraceful.

King of retirement. That made me laugh.

Q. When you're not top 100 or 150, it's tough to stay alive on the circuit without finding other ways. That's probably the reason why, even if we wouldn't accept, it happens. Don't you think the problem should be to find some more money for those people who are not top 100? Challengers, minor tournaments, it's there where they try to fix.
ROGER FEDERER: I completely disagree with you. I think you don't understand. It doesn't matter how much money you pump into the system, there's always going to be people approaching players, or people, any sport. It's all a question of money, you know.

It doesn't maybe happen at the challengers. It's going to happen at the futures. It's going to go away if you offer $1 million for every player to play at every tournament? It's not going to change a thing.

Still might be approached. That's why I think you're wrong there, that more money there is going to solve the issue completely.

I agree we should have more money at futures, challengers, all these levels. But it's not going to solve the issue. The issue is elsewhere, in the player's mind.

@LuvSports - elsewhere he said he has no sympathy for people who cheat.  

He has high expectations does Fed - which is possibly part of the explanation for his own success.

Somebody should have asked him if he'd be happy for prize money at events such as Slams and Masters to be reduced to pay more for Challengers.

Throwing millions at challenger events is not the answer though as millions are flung into the main tour and the problem is still there. The problem needs addressing at the source. Get tough on those doing the approaching with the authorities questioning players who are under suspicion for names they were contacted by.

Wise words from Federer; this is about people, detection and punishment.

People are a complete pain in the ass, we'll never get the sport we're after while we have them involved.

Perhaps at the beginning of every tournament put up a notice on the player's locker room noticeboard, or in an ATP/WTA Members only zone on their website, which shows all the matches in the last quarter or so which have generated odd betting movements.  Let the players look at the stats and look each other in the eye.  Not a press hounding, but a bit of peer examination and pressure.  They wouldn't want their matches to appear regularly on that board I'd think.