PARIS — The Tennis Integrity Unit found “no evidence of corrupt activity” in its investigation into a mixed doubles match at the Australian Open in January that raised suspicions of possible match-fixing – a conclusion that exonerates the players involved but raises new doubts about the effectiveness. anti-corruption efforts in sport.
“No further action will be taken against the players involved,” said Mark Harrison, a spokesman for the unit, who released no further details, including when the investigation was dropped.
The match, a first-round encounter pitting David Marrero and Lara Arruabarrena against Lukasz Kubot and Andrea Hlavackova, had been flagged by bookmakers hours before its start due to suspicious betting patterns, with Pinnacle Sports suspending betting on the match after a unusually large and unbalanced betting activity. on Kubot and Hlavackova. Aggregator site Oddsportal showed that at least 22 other betting companies – including Bovada, BoyleSports and Ladbrokes – also disabled betting on the match in the hours before it started.
When the match was played, Kubot and Hlavackova won quickly, 6-0, 6-3. In an interview immediately after the match, Marrero and Arruabarrena both denied the possibility of any improper influence on the match.
Match-fixing has been a recurring topic at this year’s Australian Open after a joint BBC and BuzzFeed report on the first day of the tournament highlighted the perceived ineffectiveness of the Australian Open’s Integrity Unit. tennis, the sport’s watchdog.
Despite the spotlight and warning signs surrounding the mixed doubles match in question, the Tennis Integrity Unit appeared to be slow to act. In February, Melbourne newspaper The Age reported that Marrero, who had a history of losses with suspicious betting habits, had been allowed to leave the country without being questioned in person, and that the integrity unit sent him an email a few days later asking him not to delete anything from your phone. In an article published on the website Tennis Topic, Arruabarrena said she learned that the match was a topic of interest apart from his post-match interview only after leaving Australia, when his phone was flooded with messages during a layover at Dubai airport.
Despite calls for greater transparency, the work of the Tennis Integrity Unit remains opaque. (He acknowledged there was an investigation into Marrero only after he told the Wall Street Journal last week that the matter had been resolved.) Before the Australian Open ended, a study independent had been commissioned to investigate the effectiveness of tennis’s anti-corruption efforts. In April, the unit released a brief summary of statistics for reported matches in the first quarter of the year.
The most recent consequence of an investigation by the unit concerns French player Constant Lestienne, whose wild card for Roland Garros was revoked after the discovery of a “minor violation” of the anti-corruption program: he had bet 2.90 euros on the last Roland-Garros final of the year between Novak Djokovic and Stan Wawrinka. Lestienne correctly placed the sum on Wawrinka and won 1.40 euros. When his registration for this year’s Roland Garros was revoked, Lestienne lost 30,000 euros.
In the most important cases, the sanctions seem limited. One of the most scrutinized cases of recent years centered on a match lost by Ukrainian Denys Molchanov in February 2015 at a challenger level tournament in Dallas. Bettors watching the match noticed that the money was quickly flowing into Molchanov’s opponent, Agustin Velotti, despite Molchanov’s lead and victory in the first set. As chatter on social media about a potential solution grew, hundreds tuned into a live stream to watch the spectacle and found Molchanov struggling on the court and ultimately losing.
Molchanov, who insisted he was hampered by an injury that limited his movements during the match, said in an interview that the tennis integrity unit never contacted him, despite all the attention that she had brought to him. Instead, he said, he eventually contacted the unit on his own. Molchanov and the unit corresponded by email, he said, but did not meet face to face until 11 months after the game, in Australia this year.
Several other players involved in matches that generated rumors about possible solutions said the unit never contacted them either. Others who dutifully reported invitations to fix the outcome of a match said their messages to the unit were never responded to or followed up on.
Molchanov admitted to frequently receiving requests to fix matches.
“A criminal is always dangerous, but no one will kill you if you walk away,” Molchanov said. “They can text you and you leave. What can they do? They’re not going to kill you for that.
