Winners of singles and doubles titles at Grand Slam tournaments are among the core group of 16 players who have repeatedly been reported for losing games when highly suspicious bets have been placed against them.
One top-50 player competing in the Australian Open is suspected of repeatedly fixing his first set.
Players are being targeted in hotel rooms at major tournaments and offered $50,000 or more per fix by corrupt gamblers.
Gambling syndicates in Russia and Italy have made hundreds of thousands of pounds placing highly suspicious bets on scores of matches – including at Wimbledon and the French Open.
The names of more than 70 players appear on nine leaked lists of suspected fixers who have been flagged up to the tennis authorities over the past decade without being sanctioned.
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On the eve of the Australian Open, BuzzFeed and the BBC have a released a troubling report for the tennis world. Several elite players, including singles and doubles Grand Slam winners, are suspected of participating in widespread match-fixing set up by gambling syndicates in Russia and Italy. The ATP has been on notice that match-fixing was an issue since at least 2008, when a match between Russian Nikolay Davydenko and Argentine Martin Vassallo Arguello prompted such disproportionate betting that a full-scale investigation was launched. Davydenko was the superior player, and his ranking reflected it, but all the betting went Arguello's way. Davydenko eventually, and rather suspiciously, retired due to injury and Arguello won the match.BuzzFeed and the BBC obtained leaked internal documents from the sport, and performed their own analysis of betting behavior on over 26,000 matches worldwide. Among the findings in the report:
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