Leaders from tennis’ major governing bodies were scheduled to meet at the Australian Open over the weekend to discuss potentially bringing more transparency to the Tennis Integrity Unit, which oversees gambling in the sport.
Tennis was rocked by a report in BuzzFeed and the BBC last week that the TIU had red-flagged many top players for suspicious matches that may have been fixed but did not act on that information.
While sources within the sport confirmed that assertion, they said that’s not the whole story. Many variables exist when a player underperforms in a match.
The powers of the sport were expected to discuss requiring the TIU, run by Scotland Yard investigators, to issue public reports on some of their findings. The hope is that public reports will ease speculation that the sport has not acted on, or has even suppressed, concerns over match fixing.
The TIU began in 2008 after suspicious bets on a match in Poland. The problem the TIU encounters is in bringing an investigation beyond circumstantial evidence to hard evidence. Only 18 punishments have been handed down since the group’s inception.
Representatives scheduled to meet over the weekend were from the four Grand Slam events — Wimbledon and the French, Australian and U.S. Open tournaments — the ATP and WTA tours, and the International Tennis Federation, which oversees much of the sport’s minor league circuit.
It is that lower-level circuit that is most vulnerable to gamblers seeking to fix matches because it involves placing bets on players who themselves earn so little.
