Match Throwers

Many of you already saw, linked to, and probably commented on this latest episode in the ongoing, increasingly sordid match-fixing scandal haunting the ATP Tour. It seems that there's a new report of this kind popping onto the radar every second or third day, dating back to the summer, when the unusual betting patterns surrounding a match in Sopot featuring Nikolay Davydenko caused Betfair to close shop on the action and alert the ATP.

This is not the first time TennisWorld has addressed this issue; in fact, I mentioned it in this antediluvian post. I remember doing at least one other post that addressed the match-fixing issue, but I haven't been able to find it in our admittedly hit-and-miss archival system (Again, My Kingdom for a Search Engine!). But I do remember this about that post: I called out the ATP for allowing a booking agency (it might even have been Betfair) to sponsor a small-ish European tournament. At the time, former ATP vice-president of communications, David Higdon, pooh-poohed my concerns and cavalierly dismissed the idea that tennis might have a "betting problem", or by allowing a booking agent to sponsor an event, create the illusion that the ATP is cozy with the gambling establishment.

I can't tell you how many gambling and match-fixing stories I've heard, shared, or speculated about since Sopot. In good conscience, it's  impossible to relate them here because they automatically cast suspicion on the players involved, and as far I know, nobody who has stepped forward and gone on record to say that this or that player has thrown a match. But I can talk about the overall situation in broad terms.

One man who looked quite deeply into the subject is my long-standing friend and premier Italian blogmeister, Ubaldo Scanagatta (Man, do wish his blog were in English; I speak some Italian, but not enough to get more than the gist of his writing). Ubaldo was atop all the rumors, many of which involve Italian players. He knew enough about some of the individual cases to outline for me a number of potential betting scenarios that seemed impossible to either control or prove, short of a directly involved party actually stepping forward with a confession - the truth of which might also be impossible to verify because, in so many cases, it would come down to the word of one man against that of another.

When the Sopot story broke, I was somewhat skeptical that throwing matches could be a chronic and pervasive problem on the tour, although I had not doubt that isolated incidents had occurred. Since then, I've just heard - and, like you, read - so many admissions that I've changed my mind. Most of these confessions have come from players who claim to have been approached about throwing matches, which also means that the stories are only being shared by those players who refused to throw matches.  I believe tennis has a problem. The real question is, how big of a problem is it?

To wit, I know of only one rumor that implicates top players at major events. I'm not going to leave you hanging (entirely), so just take a look at Grand Slam finals over the past ten years, and see what result - if any - leaps out at you.

One of the most insidious aspects of the alleged match-fixing is the common practice of bet-matching, whereby an intermediary like Betfair acts solely as an agent to bring together two or more parties who want to bet against each other in real time. There are scenarios in which Player A can appear to be losing or winning, thereby influencing the liquid odds, and then either lose or win in a way that enables a co-conspirator to cash in.

The result is that even if player A didn't actually throw a match, he helped lure a bunch of suckers into making bets they were destined to lose because of the collusion between the winning bettors and Player A. Of course, Player B can also be brought into the loop, and promised a sizable chunk of cash to play along with the scam. With bet-matching and changing odds, a player so inclined can play the bettors (or at least the targeted suckers) like a fiddle. The only solution for this is for the facilitators, like Betfair, is to abandon the role of intermediary between willing bettors. Perhaps the solution is for the booking agencies to shut down betting the moment a match begins. That would fix part of the problem, although it can't keep players from throwing matches outright.

Right now, the ATP has a curious problem on its hands. Usually, an investigation is like a microscope, dialed in little-by-little to bring a specific object of study into focus. It seems to me that this cornucopia of stories about players being approached to throw matches reverses that process. This is like a murder investigation that keeps turning up corpses and clues at such a rate that the investigators don't know which dead body or lead to follow next.

It isn't unusual for investigations to widen rather than narrow in scope, but it seems like this exploration keeps opening up newer and nastier fronts all the time. It cannot any longer be about a specific incident involving two players. It must be about a pervasive culture that involves not only corrupt individuals ready to throw matches, but a host of agents who actively seek to recruit match-throwers at every level of the game.

That every level bit raises an important point. We all know that many people gamble, and any sport or competitive endeavor has so many interested parties that fixing results is an inevitable occurrence. Up to now, the ATP could take (cold) comfort in the fact that most of the fixing stories involved the equivalent of minor-league players at obscure events - sort of like those boxing scandals involving tomato can fighters in small towns. Or, as El Jon maintains, it's been like finding out that some Double A ballplayer with no major league prospects has tested positive for steroids. Is that stop the presses news?

But all that that changed with the Davydenko investigation, and allegations like the ones linked to at the top of this piece now bring the scandal to significant events and world-class players.

Still - and this is El Jon again (we just talked about this over lunch) - one of the distressing elements in all this is that tennis appears to have an enormous public relations problem on its hands. It has become the go-to sport for scandal. Roger Federer could be pounding Rafael Nadal on clay but the sports ticker of many networks won't touch it;  but if a player is found guilty of an admittedly minor, inadvertent doping offense, it's right there, crawling across the bottom of the screen in your living room.

The big problem here is that when it comes to most major sports, nobody pays much attention to what happens out in the bushes, where the minor characters grimly ply their trade. But all of tennis seems to be fair game, as if there were no appreciable difference between regular tour players and the characters who drift on and off the tournament radar. This is a problem that the Lords of Tennis ought to address, although in so doing, even with the best of intentions, some people will insist that the Lords merely want to keep the lid on the controversy.

I'm not making excuses or trying to rationalize away an obvious, right-here, right-now problem. I just don't see how the game of tennis can solve it, given the flourishing and diverse gambling industry, and the nature of the sport.