‘Sport can’t fix this problem’: Government taken to task over tennis corruption
Related Story: Tennis integrity report warns of 'tsunami' of corruption
A plan to ban the supply of live scores from minor tennis tournaments will not fix the issue of corruption and potential match-fixing, an independent sport integrity expert has warned.
The issue, which was raised two years ago by media reports suggesting possible match-fixing at the elite level, was answered by an interim integrity report released on Monday, with one investigator warning of a potential "tsunami" of corruption problems at lower levels in the sport.
However, Chris Eaton, who has worked with INTERPOL and was head of security for world football governing body FIFA, reacted to the report, saying it did not address the core problem of criminality.
"Sport can't fix this problem," he said.
"The core problem, the causation of this problem comes from poorly regulated sports betting around the world — illegal sports betting much of it, under-regulated [sports betting] much more so.
"And governments aren't doing enough.
"This is a government issue and governments are sitting on their hands hoping sport will fix the problem."
The interim report of the Independent Review of Integrity said its two-year investigation had not revealed widespread corruption at the highest levels of the professional game globally, although "there is nonetheless evidence of some issues at these levels"
The review was commissioned by tennis' major governing bodies (the ATP, WTA, ITF and Grand Slam Board) in 2016 following a report by the BBC and BuzzFeed News that claimed 16 players ranked in the world's top 50 had been flagged to the Tennis Integrity Unit (TIU) over suspicions that matches had been thrown.
The panel said the advent of online betting and the sale of official live scoring data had greatly exacerbated the problem and recommended that the ITF ends its data sale agreement at $15,000 Futures events, and probably at other ones as well.
But Eaton said there was little way to stop the flow of information from an industry point of view.
"Sport wants to sell its data — and it has done it in this case and now they regret it," he said.
"The fact is the sports data companies around the world have always a masqueraded as being integrity protectors, that they use the data primarily to protect the sport.
"Well they don't. They use the data primarily to sell it to sport betting organisations and to gamblers.
"So the decision to exclude it is wise … but in practice, they [betting organisations] will still have that data live, by all sorts of means.
"Whether in fact there are betting organisations [sending] their own scouts, or whether they use things such as drones to obtain live data, that live data will not be able to be excluded, particularly in the low-level matches they consider to be the most vulnerable."
However, Richard Ings, a former tennis umpire and head of the Australian Sport Anti-doping Authority (ASADA), who wrote a similar report into the potential for corruption in tennis 13 years ago, said the data ban was a move worth making.
"At the moment, we have an absolute deluge [of] live data coming from the smallest lowest level tournaments around the world," he said.
"By turning off the tap there may be a trickle of data getting in, but it'll be nothing like the problem we have today."
[contf]
[contfnew]
ABC .net
[contfnewc]
[contfnewc]
