Just not long ago Ubitennis featured an article about the latest on match fixing in the professional tennis arena, now it has come to light that the tennis umpires themselves are in on the corruption as well! Numerous umpires from various countries have now been exposed to have been involved in match betting outcomes. Perhaps most interesting, the umpires involved were banned in secrecy.

The bans apply to umpires from Kazakhstan, Turkey and Ukraine. In some cases, the umpire has received a lifetime ban. One such ban is for Kirill Parfenov, who actually contacted a fellow colleague via Facebook to carry out the scam. On the other hand, Crotia’s Denis Pitner was found to be logging on to a betting account involving tennis matches. He’s only serving a suspension ending this August it seems.

So how does this exactly work? Since 2012 ITF partnered with Sportradar to provide live updated match scores as a tennis match unfolded. As it turns out, the umpires were intentionally waiting before entering in the live scores on their tablet provided for this purpose, thus allowing the gambling community to take advantage of this delay to make ‘informed’ bets. In the gambling world this is known as ‘courtsiding’. In some cases apparently, the umpire was even texting the scores to the gamblers directly!

What’s more troubling to this author however, is the fact that the ITF, and ATP at large have been carrying out these bans mostly in secrecy. It’s almost as if they had known about this for quite some time now, and are now no longer able to maintain the cover up as news have leaked out. Furthermore, this latest revelation shows that the ITF is not as transparent as it claims to be. On behalf of all tennis fans around the globe, I would like to echo Andy Murray’s statement that “as a player, you just want to be made aware of everything that’s going on. I think we deserve to know everything that’s out there”. The same applies to us watching at home or courtside, where we deserve fair play and honest outcomes.

Thank you to Sean Ingle at The Guardian newspaper for the source of this article.

Former Greek champion Alexandros Jakupovic (image via sdna.gr)

The Tennis Integrity Unit (TIU) has announced that former top 500 player Alexandros Jakupovic has been handed a lifetime suspension for corruption offences.

The little-known Greek player has never played in a Grand Slam event with his best ranking position being 464th in the singles (2009) and 267th in the doubles (2008). Since 2003 he has won 35 titles on the Futures circuit, 32 in doubles and three titles in singles. In the Davis Cup he has played 49 matches for Greece, winning 21 of them. His best result in the Davis Cup was a straight sets win over Ukraine’s Alexandr Dolgopolov in 2007.

The TIU have found Jakupovic guilty of five offences. The ban means that the 34-year-old is not allowed to participate or attend any tennis tournament organised by the sports governing body. The five charges against Jakupovic are listed as the following:-

Charge one:Section D.1.d: No Covered Person shall, directly or indirectly, contrive or attempt to contrive the outcome or any other aspect of any Event

Charge two: Section D.1.e: No Covered Person shall, directly or indirectly, solicit or facilitate any Player to not use his or her best efforts in any Event

Charge three: Section D.1.g: No Covered Person shall, directly or indirectly, offer or provide any money, benefit or Consideration to any other Covered Person with the intention of negatively influencing a Player’s best efforts in any Event

Charges four and five: breaches of Section D.2.a.i: In the event any Player is approached by any person who offers or provides any type of money, benefit or Consideration to a Player to (i) influence the outcome or any other aspect of any Event, or (ii) provide Inside Information, it shall be the Player’s obligation to report such incident to the TIU as soon as possible.

The case is still far from over. Shortly after the charges were announced in November, Jakupovic released a statement criticising the TIU, calling them ‘incompetent’ and protesting his innocence.

“Those who know me and know my love for tennis know well that I have been a model of fair play throughout my 20-year sporting career, during which I was never punished for anything” He said in a statement to tennisnet.gr last month.
“I do not allow anyone to undermine the honour and my reputation. I will appeal directly to the Supreme Sports Tribunal for the annulment of the incorrect decision and I will practice lawsuits for slander discredit to those implicated in this affair. “

This year Jakupovic has played in two Italian Challenger tournaments in Padova and Todi, losing in the first round at both of them.

During the last US Open Championships the saga of match-fixing in tennis has been enriched with two new protagonists, and they are again low-ranked players: the Polish Piotr Gadomski, ranked ATP 1064 and his fellow compatriot Arkadiusz Kocyla, number 764 ATP.

The charge against them is to have sold some doubles matches in exchange for money in an ITF tournament held in Bytom, Poland, six years ago. Gadmoski professes his innocence, stating that he did not accept the money and claiming that his only fault lies in not having informed the competent authorities, ITF (International Tennis Federation) and TIU (Tennis Integrity Unity), of the fixing proposal. TIU, however, has already promulgated the fine, and the two players were therefore considered guilty.

The news brings about two questions. First, whether it is appropriate to be able to bet on ITF matches, where the prize money is often poor, and therefore the thought of selling games becomes economically attractive to players that with their earnings can hardly manage to pay for training and travel. The second issue regards the importance of the phenomenon. How realistic is it that until now only low-ranked players have been found guilty and only in semi-professional tournaments?
The first question would have an easy solution: stopping the bets on tournaments with a low prize money. The latter leads to speculations that are probably not appropriate to make, at least not until it will be ascertained that the phenomenon is present also on important stages.