FUTURES TOUR TO BE AXED IN MATCH-FIXING FALLOUT

THE scrapping or restructuring of the troublesome, bottom-tier Futures level of tennis is a likely result of the inquiry being carried out into the sport’s integrity. A big reduction in the number of officially world-ranked players is also likely as tennis tries to root out openings for corruption at the bottom of the professional game. These are among the expected outcomes from the independent review of matchfixing, which is due to produce an interim report — believed to have cost at least £5million — before the summer season gets under way. In the meantime, the Australian Open will be monitored by, among others, a full-time unit of five officials employed by Tennis Australia. Such expensive measures are now in situ one year on from last year’s BBC-Buzzfeed joint investigation that highlighted the threat of match-fixing to the sport. Although many of the allegations had appeared before, the timing and detail of material sparked panic, followed by a rare co-ordinated response. Irrespective of the review’s precise conclusions, highly-placed sources say there is a resolve among the game’s powerbrokers to change how the lowest levels of the tour operate. Corruption stretched up inside the world’s top 100 upon the explosion of internet betting in the mid-Noughties, but of the 292 ‘betting alerts’ flagged up last year (from a total of more than 114,000 matches) all but eight were below main tour level. The men’s Futures accounted for 152 of them. Among the solutions being discussed is the effective abolition of the present Futures system. One idea is to award ranking points only to the winners, or just the finalists, at tournaments whose total prize money can be as small as $10,000 (£8,200). This would have the effect of slashing the number of world-ranked players from more than 2,000 to around 500. It is hoped that would reduce the attraction of betting on the vast number of smaller tournaments, which have proved so difficult to police.