Tennis is battling a “tsunami” of corruption, according to a £20m report released on Wednesday in London which revealed a teeming match-fixing scene at the lower levels of the sport.

The respected lawyer Adam Lewis QC told reporters that the game provides “a lamentably fertile breeding ground for breaches of integrity” – a problem so deep-rooted that, according to the European Sports Security Agency, tennis is responsible for three times as many suspicious betting alerts than every other sport put together.

The report quotes one betting operator who addressed the state of play at the lower levels of the game by saying “the situation in tennis is grimmer than grim”, and identified a “match-fixing ‘season’” that runs from October until the end of the year. During this period, the operator had detected “traces of up to two to three fixed matches a day in various ITF [International Tennis Federation] tournaments”.

Meanwhile, an experienced TIU investigator reported that “hundreds of matches at Futures level (both singles and doubles) are not being played fairly, with the numbers reducing as you move upwards through the ranks of the professional game”.

Lewis’s Independent Review Panel was convened in February 2016, in response to a joint investigation by BBC and the Buzzfeed website which had claimed to reveal “match-fixing evidence that tennis has kept secret for years”.

Tennis’s authorities insisted at the time that there was no deliberate cover-up, and the IRP report states that “The panel has not seen any evidence that the TIU [Tennis Integrity Unit] acted to cover up breaches of integrity.”

However, one area of doubt will remain, after Lewis revealed that his panel had reached an impasse over the retirement of an unnamed player from the Association of Tennis Professionals tour in 2003.

The IRP suspected that this player might have retired rather than undergo investigation by the TIU. Lewis said that they had seen a memorandum suggesting that such deals might have been available in the past. However, the IRP found no confirmed cases, and their enquiries into the 2003 retiree ran into an “assertion of confidentiality” – in Lewis’s words – which blocked their progress.

If such a case emerged – and involved a well-known player – it would stand as an exception to the rule that most match-fixers have been small-time scrappers on the fringes of the game. The IRP report states that “integrity issues have not reached a significant level at grand slam events, ATP or WTA tour events, WTA $125k events, or ITF women’s $60k and $100k events.”

Instead, suspicious betting patterns are usually restricted to the shadowy world of the Futures circuit, where the stakes are so tiny that you can win a $15,000 tournament without making a profit once living costs are factored in. 

These humble events account for three-quarters of tennis’s so-called professional game – in terms of matches played – and one of the IRP’s most urgent recommendations is that their scoring data should no longer be sold to online betting companies.

Others include that:

The ITF should cancel its data deal with Sportradar, the sports-data company that enables betting on low-level tournaments. The ITF should then be compensated for its resulting financial loss by other tennis bodies such as the ATP and the grand slams, who will benefit from a cleaner sport.
The TIU should increase its staffing – its director of integrity Nigel Willerton has told the IRP that he would like to have 12 investigators rather than six as at present – and move out of the building in Roehampton that it currently shares with the ITF.
The TIU should be more geographically diverse, with broader linguistic skills, rather than a largely Anglophone body based in London. It should also recruit more specialists in online betting to complement the present staff, many of whom share a background in the Metropolitan Police.
Players who regularly crop up in suspicious betting alerts should be subject to provisional suspensions.
All players who deliberately do not perform at their best should be more harshly treated, even if their sub-optimal performance is only because they are burned out or have personal reasons to want to leave a tournament.
The pathway for emerging players should be improved to prevent the development of a large body of demoralised individuals who might fall prey to fixers.
A new supervisory board should be constituted to oversee the TIU.
Betting companies should no longer sponsor tournaments.
Appearance fees, which subvert the competitive environment by giving players other reasons to turn up to an event apart from rankings points and prize-money, should be made public.
Tennis should cooperate more deeply with other sports in its efforts to eradicate corruption.
The IRP report enjoyed broad support from tennis’s stakeholders, including the All England Club. But there was criticism from Sportradar, the Swiss sports-data company which has bought the rights to low-level tournament scores from the ITF for around £10m per year.

In a statement, Sportradar’s director of communications Alexander Inglot described the IRP’s decision to call an end to the deal as “unrealistic [and] potentially unlawful”. As Inglot added “Prohibiting data partnerships will not stop betting, live or otherwise, on these matches [and] will almost certainly encourage black market activity.”

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