Tennis Watchdogs Alerted
of Wimbledon Betting Spikes
 July
1 - While in the last couple of decades
'match fixing' has unfortunately become a part of
professional tennis
- as it has in most professional sports - this week fans were
saddened by the news that
the illegal practice may have attached its slimy tentacles to
2009 Wimbledon,
the world's premier tennis tournament.
According to reports, the
match that raised alarms was Tuesday's first round bout between
30th-ranked Jurgen Melzer of Austria and 109th-ranked Wayne
Odesnik of the U.S.
The alarm was raised by leading European online gambling site
Betfair,
which
alerted tennis authorities
of unusual betting patterns.
Betfair spokesperson Mark Davies told the media that
ahead of the match the online betting site recorded an unusually
high amount of wagers,
six times as much as usual. 'Betfair received about $980,000 in
wagers on the match,' he said.
'The average betting for a first-round match at Wimbledon is
less than $163,000.'
One sports fan allegedly placed a whopping 365,000 pound
short-odds bet at Betfair on Melzer to win the match in straight
sets. It was this outlandish bet that prompted Betfair to
contact the Tennis Integrity Unit
(TIU), a watchdog
authorization put in place by the Association of Tennis
Professionals (ATP).
The 'extreme' spike in betting on the relatively obscure match
intrigued the TIU,
as did the noticeable strengthening of the odds in favour of
Melzer before and during the match. As a result, two
other large online betting firms, Paddy Power and Ladbrokes,
stopped taking bets on the match
an hour before it started.
Davies admitted that although he didn't suspect any wrongdoing
on the part of Meltzer,
the serious money wagered at Betfair on Melzer to win in
straight sets was more than enough to raise warning flags
and prompt the ensuing investigation. The Austrian did end up
winning the match in
straight sets, 6-1, 6-4 and 6-2.
As a result of the three-set thumping, Odesnik was thrust firmly
into the spotlight.
Said the young American player after the match, 'It's only my
second time playing at Wimbledon. I'm young, I'm here to play
and I'm here with my coach and friends and
I would never do anything like that to jeopardise my future in
tennis.
'I know that at Wimbledon they have people in betting shops but
I have no control over it,'
Odesnik continued. 'I'm from the United States and if they have
been betting on a European online gambling website
I have no connection with that at all'.
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