Shady betting alerts on the rise in tennis

The Tennis Integrity Unit (TIU) has reported that it received 38 match alerts during the first quarter of 2018, ending on March 31, which represents a year-on-year increase in the number of suspicious betting.

TIU receives suspicious match alerts via Memorandum of Understandings with various gambling regulators and betting organisations.

This represents an increase on the 30 alerts received in the first quarter of last year, but a drop on the 48 recorded in the opening three months of 2016.

Of the alerts received this year, 23 were related to matches in the International Tennis Federation’s (ITF) Men’s Futures competition, with a further five for matches in the ITF Women’s event.

One alert each was for matches in the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) Tour and Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) Tour, with six related to the ATP Men’s Challenger event and two for Hopman, Davis and Fed Cup tournaments.

The TIU, the sport’s global anti-corruption body, said the reports in Q1 represent just 0.155% of the 24,489 matches that were played during the period.

In February, betting integrity organisation ESSA reported that tennis remained the main source of suspicious betting activity in 2017.

ESSA recorded a total of 160 cases across the sport during the last year, some way ahead of football in second with 45 reports.