An in-depth investigatory report published on Sunday by BBC and BuzzFeed News outlined allegations of systematic and pervasive matchfixing practices in professional tennis.
Shockingly, world tennis authorities, despite repeated warnings, appear to have failed to take meaningful action:
“Betfair and other bookmakers had been warning the ATP of the threat of gambling corruption in tennis for several years before the situation came to a head in Sopot. “This was something that we had been watching build,” recalled Betfair’s co-founder Mark Davies. […]
Bookmakers have told BuzzFeed News that, in many cases, when they tried to warn the Tennis Integrity Unit about suspicious matches they got no response.”
Mark Davies, who also spoke at last year’s Gaming in Holland Conference, reiterated in a separate piece that the real scandal may have been the inaction of tennis authorities:
“[W]hat should have been all across our news channels as a result of the BBC/Buzzfeed investigation […], is not that tennis is at risk from fixers: it is that the governing body of the sport may have been complicit in corruption by failing to act on repeated evidence of wrong-doing.”
