The Santo Domingo Open this week "will have an outsize importance at betting houses that fuel a global tennis gambling market" at $5B and growing, according to Scott Soshnick of BLOOMBERG. For bettors, the "sheer breadth" of the Int'l Tennis Federation -- 1,500 tournaments last year comprised 93,000 matches -- means there is "almost always a game, set or match on which to wager." The tournament structure "lends itself to short odds." Like playing the slots, betting on tennis resolves quickly, and it is "on to the next." For betting houses, "this is all very lucrative." Global Betting & Gaming Consultants CEO Warwick Bartlett said that while tennis accounts for less than 10% of total sports bets, it generates 18% of overall online sports gaming revenue, "excluding horse racing." Six years ago, betting on tennis accounted for 2% of revenue. To make this money, "the betting houses need live, in-game data feeds of point-by-point results." Monday the ITF announced that it "renewed its data partnership with Sportradar." The Switzerland-based sport data company agreed to pay $70M over five years. At $14M a year, that is a 500% "increase over Sportradar’s original deal with the ITF." Florida State University assistant professor Ryan Rodenberg, who has published several articles and papers on betting in tennis, said, "Given the year-round schedule and global status of the sport, tennis is one of the top sports worldwide in terms of betting interest and volume. The speed and accuracy of data are where the value is." As betting on tennis has grown, "so too has the concern of match fixing." In '08, "tennis became one of the first sports to set up its own anti-corruption program," the Tennis Integrity Unit. That said, according to a report from the European Sports Security Administration, "tennis in the third quarter of 2015 raised 73 betting alerts, the most of all sports tracked" (BLOOMBERG, 12/7).
