Match-fixing greater risk to tennis than doping
‘There’s rampant opportunity to do it,’ insists Ings
RICHARD INGS, the man who set up the anti-corruption unit within tennis, believes that match-fixing is a greater risk to the sport than doping.
His comments come on the back of an investigation by the BBC and Buzzfeed News which alleges that 16 tennis players are suspected to be involved in match-fixing, with some having been reported to tennis authorities over suspicions that they deliberately lost matches.
The players, who have not been named, include “grand slam champions” and some are playing in this week’s Australian Open. The investigation also alleges that tennis authorities failed to act on warnings that match-fixing was taking place.
Ings was the ATP’s vice-president of rules and competition between 2000 and 2005 before going on to become the CEO of the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority and he believes that the threat of match-fixing within tennis is huge, which is why he was not surprised by the recent revelations.
“This is nothing new – when I was involved, we were seeing matches with suspicious betting patterns on a regular basis,” he told Herald Sport. “There’s a high risk of matches being fixed in tennis and it’s very easy for a player to fix a match without anyone else knowing. With so many matches taking place at so many levels of competition, and with billions of dollars being gambled on tennis each year, there’s money to be made by betting on a match.”
It is likely that doping is also present within tennis but for Ings, match-fixing poses a far greater danger. “My own personal view, having worked in both anti-doping and anti-corruption, is that matchfixing is a greater risk to the integrity of tennis globally than performance-enhancing drugs are,” he says. “The reason I say that is because match-fixing can pervert entire matches and tournaments. It’s easy to do but difficult to detect and there’s rampant opportunity to do it in some far-flung corner of the globe. If you were going to invent a sport that was perfect for match fixing, it would be tennis.”
The Tennis Integrity Unit (TIU), which was set up in 2008 to police the sport, has been heavily criticised in the wake of the investigation following claims that the “core group” of 16 players who were implicated in suspicious activity were flagged up to the TIU yet no action was taken and the players were allowed to continue competing.
For Ings, the establishment of the TIU was a positive step, however its opacity is troublesome.
“At the moment, we know that there’s a tennis integrity unit, we know that there’s money being put into the programme and we know that there’s players who have been suspended and banned for breaches of the programme,” he says.
“But the TIU is incredibly secretive. We don’t know much about what it does, where it’s working or how many matches it looks into each year. We accept that, in investigating corruption, some things can’t be shared – you can’t just make frivolous allegations against individual players and importantly, these are often criminal matters too. So we accept that there are limits to what they can say but they can say much more than they are at the moment.”
Part of the problem, Ings believes, is that in the wake of the recent sporting scandals, the public’s trust in international governing bodies has been eroded almost to nothing. So tennis must convince observers that they can believe in what they are watching and greater transparency is the only way to achieve this.
“The public has lost its trust in sport; we trusted FIFA and we trusted the IAAF and we’ve been let down so when any international sporting federation says, ‘We’ve got zero tolerance’ – we’ve heard it all before,” he says.
“Transparency and clear explanation about the commitment and the capability to tackle these issues is now what the public needs. I don’t view these allegations as being damaging for tennis, I view this as being an opportunity.”
There is no easy answer to eradicate match-fixing within tennis but for Ings, there are a few key objectives which, if achieved, can reduce the risk. “Tennis needs to have clear relationships with the legitimate gambling industries so that they receive intelligence of when matches with suspicious betting patterns are taking place,” he explains. “Also, having the ability to demand telephone records and bank statements from players where you have a credible suspicion and having close working relationships with law enforcement agencies because, in most parts of the world, these activities are criminal offences.
And finally, tennis needs on-site capability in managing these issues so that where there’s a suspicious match about to go on court, it isn’t investigated weeks or months down the track, it’s investigated right there and then.” Glasgow but sometimes I will also enjoy watching a movie or playing a game of FIFA.
“I will never be angry with anyone but when I go to the pitch I will tackle and do things that you maybe wouldn’t think as you see me standing here. It’s not like I’m Ying and Yang or Jekyll and Hyde ... I can switch on and I can switch off.
“But if strikers think I am soft? That would be a mistake. I will kill them. They should see me play some games because they would be surprised.” Celtic have looked vulnerable