In the wake of match fixing allegations that damaged the sport, tennis is setting up an independent body to review its anti-corruption program.
“Sport is under the microscope more and more,” said Philip Brook, a top tennis official who spoke at a quickly arranged press conference at the Australian Open on Wednesday.
“The integrity of sport in general is under the microscope,” he added, perhaps referring to a scandal that has engulfed FIFA, world soccer’s governing body.
“We have to reassure everybody in our sport, watching our sport, that integrity is at the top of our pile of things to do.”
A BuzzFeed News and BBC investigation published last week at the start of the year’s first major claimed that match fixing was rife in tennis and implicated a grand slam singles champion in a suspicious match. An online blog later named him as Lleyton Hewitt, with the Australian denying any wrongdoing.
Then the New York Times reported that a bookmaker suspended bets on a mixed-doubles match at the Open involving Spaniards David Marrero and Lara Arruabarrena and Poland’s Lukasz Kubot and Andrea Hlavackova. Almost all of the money was placed on the Spanish team to lose and they did 6-0 6-3.
Marrero and Arruabarrena said they did nothing wrong, with Marrero citing a knee injury to explain his performance. Kubot and Hlavackova confirmed that the Tennis Integrity Unit had spoken to them, without revealing more details.
Action taken
On Wednesday, leading officials from governing bodies the ATP, WTA, ITF and grand slam board announced the formation of the independent body to be led by prominent British lawyer Adam Lewis. He will be assisted by two others.
There’s no deadline to the review, results will be made public and the governing bodies “have committed to act on every recommendation,” said ATP chairman Chris Kermode, who was joined at the briefing by ITF president David Haggerty and Brook, the Tennis Integrity Board chairman and Wimbledon chairman. An interim report will be delivered, though no time-frame was given.
Tennis isn’t the only sport to create such a body to look at the way it runs things. FIFA launched an Ethics Committee in 2012.
Brook, though, said the independent body wouldn’t have been formed if the BuzzFeed and BBC investigation didn’t come out.
The expose, which later included a radio program on the BBC, didn’t reveal anything new, according to Brook.
“But I think the program was aired,” said Brook. “It was very widely written about. It has changed the environment.”
The tennis review will, more specifically, examine the TIU, which was created in 2008. Questions have been raised about whether the TIU has enough funds and investigators.
More than $14 million “has been invested in protecting the integrity” of tennis, said Brook, and Kermode told CNN last week the TIU had never requested more money.
Time for transparency
The secretive nature of investigations has also been a sticking point.
“I think there’s definitely been a communication issue, a problem, that we need to do a much better job in explaining the work of the Tennis Integrity Unit, how they go about their business, without revealing the names of cases,” said Kermode.
He added: “The landscape has changed. We’re in a different world. This is clearly the time to have a look.”
The tennis officials also called for match fixing to be made a “distinct criminal offense.”
Match fixing “is a criminal offense in certain parts of the world and not in others,” said Brook. “Having the help and the opportunity to work with the police in a country, we think, is a really important part of the powers that the anti-corruption program could do with.”
Tennis players at the Australian Open have said that corruption has no place in the sport but they also called for more proof that it exists, especially at higher levels where players aren’t short of cash.
Roger Federer, arguably the game’s best ever player, said he wanted names revealed in last week’s report.
But the TIU or media disclosing names without players being proven guilty is “sort of irresponsible,” said Kermode.
Claudio Pistolesi, the lone coach on the ATP player council, told CNN he wasn’t entitled to discuss Wednesday’s developments.
The New York Times story reported that Marrero, the doubles year-end champion in 2013, missed three returns in one game on the serve of the female player, Hlavackova. That didn’t, however, raise any suspicions with former doubles No. 1 Daniel Nestor, a 20-year plus veteran on the tour.
“That can happen in any match,” he told CNN.
“People that watch mixed doubles … it’s a different kind of serve, it’s slower, you usually have to get adjusted to it and as the match goes along you start to get better.”
The Canadian said he had never been approached to throw a match, yet added that in tennis it would be “easy” to do.
“I do agree that it would be something that would be easy to do if you have players willing to accept those terms,” he said.
“It’s easy to throw a match in tennis and not make it obvious but it’s not something I think about much.”
