Tennis corruption

The French Tennis Federation has launched a legal action in Liege, Belgium against online bookmakers Betfair, BWin and Ladbrokes to prevent them offering online in-running betting during the French Open Tennis tournament in May.

The Federation has also started similar action in France against two other operators, UniBet and Expekt, stating two reasons for the action.

Firstly, as sole owner of the event it believes it has sole rights to any profit derived from it. But it is really the second reason, the threat of corruption that will raise more eyebrows, after tennis recently being rocked by an increasing number and severity of scandals in recent months.

"The more bets there are, the greater the risk," said Jean-Francois Vilotte, managing director of the Federation. "Even if there’s no proof, the suspicion is already there and that damages the image of the event."

The sport governing bodies have become concerned after an increasing number of matches have been tainted by suspicions that some players have not given full effort, to ensure a specific result.

The Association of Tennis Professionals, the men’s governing body, currently has over 250 matches under scrutiny and much of the information has actually come from the betting companies like the exchange site Betfair.

The exchange companies argument is that their audit trails and mathematical models make cheating exceedingly hard to get away with, but current actions by the French Federation would remove Betfair from the tennis markets on their events.

The issue has been developing for a while now, and the recent Australian Open had private security personnel patrolling all player areas, and pursued a policy of education.

Steve Wood, CEO of Tennis Australia said: "There is a problem, and we have to tackle it, and of our major policies is a full education program for all involved at our event. that is coaches, physios, players, juniors seniors and the disabled players.’

The problem was compounded only last week when a fifth Italian player was punished, as the sport of tennis continues to try and put its house in order.