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A kid, who is said to be from a war-torn town in Iraq, was pictured wearing a plastic bag with “Messi” written on it.
Matthias Hangst / Getty Images
“The people that suffer the most are the fans,” his spokesperson said.
Attila Kisbenedek / AFP / Getty Images
The prime minister's spokesperson said the allegations were "deeply concerning" and sporting authorities must "get on" and investigate them as soon as possible.
She told journalists on Monday: "It's deeply concerning that another sport is facing such serious allegations. With the allegations that we've seen in other sports like athletics and football, the people that suffer the most are the fans, and the prime minister would want to see the issue investigated by the independent authorities.
"The most important thing is that action is taken now in response and that the independent authorities get on with that. They've got to build their credibility and the confidence of those who want to know the real truth behind such allegations."
BuzzFeed News and the BBC exposed secret files containing evidence of widespread match-fixing by players at the upper level of world tennis overnight.
A core group of 16 players – all of whom have ranked in the top 50 – have been repeatedly flagged to the world tennis authorities over suspicions that they have thrown matches at tournaments including Wimbledon, allowing corrupt gamblers to cash in by betting against them.
None of those players have ever faced sanctions. More than half of them are playing at the Australian Open, which started on Monday.
John Whittingdale
Dominic Lipinski / PA WIRE
Earlier, culture secretary John Whittingdale told BuzzFeed News it was "deeply concerning that yet another sport is facing serious allegations of match-fixing" and also called for an urgent inquiry.
He said: "Once again it has been British investigative journalism that has brought this to light, and has raised serious questions about how this was allowed to go on – and it would seem, deliberately covered up for so long.
"This reinforces the need for a global anti-corruption initiative and demonstrates why the PM is absolutely right to put this at the top of his agenda. He will be hosting a major anti-corruption summit later this year and tackling corruption in sport will play a big part in that.
"I hope that the ITF [International Tennis Federation] will launch an urgent and fully transparent investigation immediately."
As the Australian Open gets underway in Melbourne, authorities have denied they suppressed evidence of corruption at the game’s top levels.
Quinn Rooney / Getty Images
With big name players including world number one Serena Williams on court for day one of the open, ATP Executive Chairman Chris Kermode fronted a press conference at 12.20pm (AEDT) denying claims tennis's governing bodies had sat on evidence of match fixing.
"The Tennis Integrity Unit [TIU] and the tennis authorities absolutely reject any suggestion that evidence of match-fixing has been suppressed for any reason or hasn't been properly investigated," he said.
The BuzzFeed News / BBC investigation reveals former singles and doubles grand slam champions, and at least one top 50 player who is competing at this year's Australian Open, have repeatedly been reported for losing games when highly suspicious bets have been placed against them.
Kermode said there was insufficient evidence to pursue specific claims cited in the investigation, but denied this constituted suppressing evidence.
"All professional players, support staff and officials are subject to the anti-corruption program," he said. "It's about obtaining evidence. You can have lots of information, lots of anecdotal reports but they can't be used. Everything that is reported to the TIU is acted upon and investigated. It doesn't just filter out."
"[Since the TIU's inception in 2008] tennis anti-corruption investigations have resulted in eighteen convictions, of which six have had life bans."
"All of us here in tennis are absolutely committed to stamping out corruption. There is a zero-tolerance policy on this and we are not complacent."
ATP chairman Chris Kermode. Clive Brunskill / Getty Images
In response to questions about whether any players on tour are currently under investigation Nigel Willerton, the head of the TIU, said "It would be unprofessional for me to make comment as to whether any players are under investigation at present."
"We are confident that the Tennis Integrity Unit is doing what it can, and tackles this issue very, very seriously. So I think it will be seen that tennis is in a very, very good place and we are acting accordingly," Kermode said.
The ATP Chairman expressed his full confidence in the TIU's ability to root out corruption in the game.
"There is a zero tolerance policy on this [match fixing]. We are not complacent, we are very vigilant on this, and whilst we are aware that all sport, not just tennis, is at potential risk of corruption. That is why in 2008 the Tennis Integrity Unit was set up to actually tackle this head-on and we are constantly vigilant and not come play sent."
Willerton also stated that players and officials are subject to stringent guildlines under tennis's anti-corruption programs, and pledged that anyone found to be engaging in match-fixing would be punished to the fullest extent possible.
"We can demand their phones and laptops. Obviously they have to consent to give them, and if they don't then consent, that's called 'non-cooperation' and they can be reported and then sanctioned," he said.
"There was a case recently where a player was sanctioned and given a two year suspension. I am confident that everything that comes into TIU is actioned and assessed. But corruption is very difficult to detect and then obtain the evidence to prosecute those that go down that path."
Oh, Will Barton also landed a 360-degree layup in the same game.
Professional tennis has stabbed you in the heart. What can you love now?
Whatever happens in the coming weeks, Roger's forelock is still graceful and pure. This perfect, boyish swish of hair will never rip out our hearts, throw them in the dirty, spit on them, and stamp them into a mushy, muddy, bloody, reeking wreck.
Cameron Spencer / Getty Images
Let's face it, no one's gonna bother match-fixing croquet any time soon. Tennis was your wild and exciting lover – but you can trust croquet. You can settle down with croquet, raise a few kids, and have someone to talk to when you're old.
Dan Kitwood / Getty Images
JR P
Secret files exposing evidence of widespread match-fixing by players at the upper level of world tennis can today be revealed by BuzzFeed News and the BBC.
The sport's governing bodies have been warned repeatedly about a core group of 16 players – all of whom have ranked in the top 50 – but none have faced any sanctions and more than half of them will begin playing at the Australian Open on Monday.
It has been seven years since world tennis authorities were first handed compelling evidence about a network of players suspected of fixing matches at major tournaments including Wimbledon following a landmark investigation, but all of them have been allowed to continue playing.
The investigation into men’s tennis by BuzzFeed News and the BBC is based on a cache of leaked documents from inside the sport – the Fixing Files – as well as an original analysis of the betting activity on 26,000 matches and interviews across three continents with gambling and match-fixing experts, tennis officials, and players.
The files contain detailed evidence of suspected match-fixing orchestrated by gambling syndicates in Russia and Italy, which was uncovered in the landmark 2008 probe, and which authorities subsequently shelved. “They could have got rid of a network of players that would have almost completely cleared the sport up,” said Mark Phillips, one of the investigators. “We gave them everything tied up with a nice pink bow on top and they took no action at all.”
BuzzFeed News began its investigation after devising an algorithm to analyse gambling on professional tennis matches over the past seven years. It identified 15 players who regularly lost matches in which heavily lopsided betting appeared to substantially shift the odds – a red flag for possible match-fixing.
Four players showed particularly unusual patterns, losing almost all of these red-flag matches. Given the bookmakers’ initial odds, the chances that the players would perform that badly were less than 1 in 1,000. (Read more about the analysis here.)
Tennis is the latest sport to be caught up in allegations of corruption following the scandals that have engulfed world football and athletics.
It can today be revealed:
Winners of singles and doubles titles at Grand Slam tournaments are among the core group of 16 players who have repeatedly been reported for losing games when highly suspicious bets have been placed against them.
One top-50 player competing in the Australian Open is suspected of repeatedly fixing his first set.
Players are being targeted in hotel rooms at major tournaments and offered $50,000 or more per fix by corrupt gamblers.
Gambling syndicates in Russia and Italy have made hundreds of thousands of pounds placing highly suspicious bets on scores of matches – including at Wimbledon and the French Open.
The names of more than 70 players appear on nine leaked lists of suspected fixers who have been flagged up to the tennis authorities over the past decade without being sanctioned.
Nigel Willerton, who leads the Tennis Integrity Unit (TIU) set up to enforce fair play following the 2008 investigation, acknowledged that authorities had drawn a line under the evidence uncovered in the 2008 probe. The leaked files show that investigators implicated 28 players in suspected fixing and urged that they face a full disciplinary investigation. But Willerton said that tennis authorities took no action against them.
Martin Vassallo Arguello ,right, of Argentina returns the ball to Nikolay Davydenko of Russia during the Orange Prokom Open ATP tennis tournament in Sopot, northern Poland, , Thursday, Aug. 2, 2007. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski)
Czarek Sokolowski / ASSOCIATED PRESS
He said the evidence was shelved because lawyers had advised that a new integrity code introduced in the wake of the investigation could not be enforced retrospectively. “As a result,” he said, “no new investigations into any of the players who were mentioned in the 2008 report were opened.”
Match-fixing has been explicitly outlawed by every previous version of the rules enforced by the game’s governing bodies. Moreover, since the new code took effect, tennis authorities have been warned that at least nine of the players who escaped further investigation have continued to play in suspicious matches.
Willerton insisted that the sport takes “a zero-tolerance approach to all aspects of betting-related corruption” and that “all credible information received by the TIU is analysed, assessed, and investigated by highly experienced former law-enforcement investigators.” And he pointed out that the Tennis Integrity Unit has disciplined 13 male players (all low-ranking) for fixing and banned five for life even though, Willerton said, prosecuting corruption cases is “notoriously difficult”.
“I can assure you that tennis is not treating this lightly,” said Chris Kermode, the president of the Association of Tennis Professionals, which governs the men’s game, last night. “The idea that tennis is not acting appropriately is ludicrous.”
But, as the 2016 Grand Slam season begins on Monday with the Australian Open, former integrity chiefs from within world tennis are breaking ranks to accuse the sport of failing to stamp out match-fixing.
Among them is Ben Gunn, the former police chief who led the review that recommended the formation of the integrity unit after the 2008 probe. He said the authorities had missed a “perfect opportunity” to clean up the sport and instead created a feeble and understaffed integrity unit that ignored key betting evidence. “What they did is a plastic solution which was not effective then and it’s not effective now,” he said.
Richard Ings, the former executive vice president for rules and competition at the Association of Tennis Professionals, said that match-fixing was a “regular thing” in the sport. He said the integrity unit’s response to the problem has been “very disappointing” and it is “far too secretive”.
The 2008 probe was triggered by a notorious match between the world number four, Nikolay Davydenko, a Russian, and the Argentine player Martin Vassallo Arguello, which attracted millions of pounds’ worth of highly suspicious betting triggered by accounts in Moscow.
The tennis authorities announced at the end of the investigation that they had found no evidence of rule-breaking by Vassallo Arguello or Davydenko. But the files reveal that Vassallo Arguello had exchanged 82 text messages at a previous tournament with the suspected ringleader of an Italian gambling syndicate that made hundreds of thousands of pounds betting on his other matches. Inquiries into the Russian gamblers who placed suspicious bets on Davydenko stalled when one threatened violence. These Italian and Russian gambling syndicates and another in Sicily were found to have placed suspicious bets on 72 matches involving the 28 players that the investigators flagged to the authorities.
Weeks after tennis authorities were handed the evidence, Bill Babcock, the head of the International Tennis Federation’s Grand Slam committee, declared that tennis was “healthy” and there was no corruption inside the sport. But the Fixing Files show that allegations of widespread corruption have continued to pour into the integrity unit in the years since.
The whistleblowers from inside world tennis who handed over the Fixing Files have asked to remain anonymous. But Phillips and two other investigators who conducted the probe said the evidence they found was “as strong as any evidence we’ve had” and the authorities “did nothing”.
In all, more than 20 gambling industry officials, international police detectives, and sports integrity experts told BuzzFeed News that world tennis is failing to confront a serious problem with match-fixing. BuzzFeed News and the BBC have chosen not to name the players whose matches have repeatedly been flagged for attracting highly suspicious betting, because without access to phone, bank, or computer records it is not possible to prove a link between the players and the gamblers. The integrity unit has the power to demand all that evidence from any tennis professional, yet many of the individuals whose activity attracted the most serious concern are still playing at a high level. Meanwhile, tennis has grown to a multibillion-dollar global phenomenon.
Today the secret evidence of corruption at the heart of the "gentlemen's game" can be laid bare for the first time.
In pristine whites, Nikolay Davydenko looked in typically commanding form as he stepped out onto the clay court in Sopot, Poland, to defend his title as reigning champion of the Orange Prokom tournament. It ought to have been an easy victory: Davydenko was the world’s fourth-best tennis player, while his Argentine opponent, Martin Vassallo Arguello, languished far below him at number 87 in the rankings.
The wiry Russian played all his usual penetrating groundstrokes to win the first set and swiftly broke his opponent’s serve in the second. To the fans enjoying Polish kabanos sausages in the stands, play seemed to be progressing exactly as anyone would have expected.
But before the first ball had even been struck at the match on 2 August 2007, warning lights had begun flashing on the monitoring systems at the Betfair gambling exchange in London. Hundreds of thousands of pounds had begun flooding into the market that morning, backing Vassallo Arguello to win. By any objective measure Davydenko was the near-certain victor, but the amount of money stacking up against him was so significant that the odds had tipped to make his opponent the favourite to win.
Even after play began and Davydenko went a set and a break up, still greater sums of money continued crashing in against him. In total, £3.6 million was wagered on the game – more than 10 times the usual volume of cash for a tournament at that level – and much of the money being bet against the Russian was coming in from nine linked accounts registered to users in Moscow. Everything in the rankings and the way play was progressing on court pointed towards a resounding victory for Davydenko, and yet the Russian account holders seemed sure he would lose. What did they know that the bookmakers didn’t?
Matt Chase for BuzzFeed News
Alarmed, the head of Betfair’s anti-corruption team in London picked up the phone to Gayle Bradshaw, the executive vice president of the Association of Tennis Professionals, to tell him something deeply suspicious was happening in Sopot. From the ATP’s office in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, Bradshaw got straight on the phone to the tournament supervisor in Poland, who rushed down to the courtside to watch the rest of the match. No sooner had he arrived than the contest took a dramatic turn.
Davydenko suddenly began hobbling. He repeatedly requested medical time-outs, complaining of pain in his ankle and then his toe, and he lost the second set to Vassallo Arguello. Three games into the third set, he threw in the towel and announced he was forfeiting the game due to injury.
Immediately after he walked off court, Betfair suspended the market and later announced – for the first time in its history – that all bets placed on the game were void. The market, it said in a statement, “quite clearly wasn’t fair”. It promised to turn over all its betting records to the tennis authorities.
The move caused a global sensation, and Davydenko was engulfed by the first major match-fixing scandal to hit world tennis. From the outset, the Russian insisted he was innocent. “I don’t know how to throw a match,” he told reporters. “I know that if you are in pain and can’t play on, you withdraw.” But the game had been shaken to the core, and the ATP announced it would conduct a full investigation.
Czarek Sokolowski / ASSOCIATED PRESS
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.
Bosses at the betting exchange felt they had to protect honest bettors who could lose huge sums of money if corrupt gamblers were rigging the market. Crisis talks were convened in London.
Six or seven players, including Davydenko and Vassallo Arguello, had repeatedly attracted suspicious betting activity, Davies recalled, and the management committee decided to take a drastic step: They would suspend all bets on those players.
The ATP’s own Richard Ings, who served as the association’s executive vice president for rules and competition until 2005, had compiled a list of 20 players who had been implicated in suspicious matches flagged by bookmakers – including both Davydenko and Vassallo Arguello. “There were consistently matches across the depth and breadth of men’s pro tennis with extremely suspicious shifts in betting odds,” Ings told BuzzFeed News and the BBC. “What became very clear is that, whilst there were lots of matches with suspicious betting patterns, you tended to see the names of the same players cropping up again and again.”
Players were widely rumoured to be “tanking” – deliberately forfeiting matches by not giving their best efforts – when they were tired or carrying minor injuries and wanted to preserve their energy for more important tournaments. Sometimes, it was said, players would carve up the spoils of victory: One would deliberately lose but get to keep the prize money, while the other would win and bag the coveted ranking points. Now, however, the ballooning phenomenon of online gambling meant billions of pounds were being bet each year on tennis, and a tip about a player’s intention to tank a match could yield vast winnings. Prize money at lesser tournaments can be paltry, and a year on the tennis tour can set a player back more than £100,000, making it tempting to cash in on the occasional fix.
With GIFs.
(You can read that full story here.)
Jared Harrell / BuzzFeed News
A professor of sport management at Florida State teamed up with a professional tennis gambler, and they published a study estimating that professional tennis players likely "manipulated or outright fixed" 23 first-round matches in professional tournaments every year. That's about 1%. But the report did not look at individual players. And they only looked at matches between 2011 and 2013. So….
Jared Harrell / BuzzFeed News
