Tennis match-fixing scandal: Players quizzed after betting firm notifies police of suspicious patterns at Australian Open

Winning pair: Lukasz Kubot and Andrea Hlavackova during yesterday’s match
John French/Reuters
Paul Newman25 January 2016

Players involved in an Australian Open mixed doubles match that allegedly attracted suspicious betting patterns have been interviewed by the Tennis Integrity Unit.

The New York Times reported that Pinnacle Sports halted betting on yesterday’s first-round match between Spain’s Lara Arruabarrena and David Marrero and the Czech Republic’s Andrea Hlavackova and Poland’s Lukasz Kubot 13 hours before it was due to start.

Almost all the money, said to be an unusually large amount for this sort of contest, went on Hlavackova and Kubot, who won 6-0, 6-3.

Today, Kubot and Hlavackova confirmed the Tennis Integrity Unit had quizzed them about the match. Kubot told reporters he did not notice anything unusual, saying “we give 100 per cent of that match” and he believed his opponents “were trying 100 per cent.” He said no players should have been identified without proof of wrongdoing.

Marrero and Arruabarrena rejected the allegations in an interview with the newspaper with Marrero saying his knee injury had been a factor in the defeat.

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Pinnacle Sports notified the police in Victoria, the state where the tournament takes place, of possible irregularities. Marco Blume, one of the company’s executives, told The New York Times: “We saw a small number of people placing a large amount of money. In context, these matches are rather small. That means any aggressive betting behaviour is very easy to detect on our side.”

The Tennis Integrity Unit, set up by the sport’s governing bodies to combat match-fixing, said it would never comment on an individual case but confirmed its policy was to investigate every allegation of corruption.

Tennis Australia, which runs the Australian Open, said it would “continue to work closely with the relevant police authorities and the Tennis Integrity Unit in regard to integrity matters”.

In the wake of an investigation by BuzzFeed and the BBC alleging “widespread” corruption at the top of the game, senior tennis officials have stressed that irregular betting patterns were not necessarily evidence of match-fixing.

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