The Tennis Integrity Unit is believed to have flagged three games at this year’s Wimbledon tennis championships for unusual betting activity which caught the attention of the task force.
According to the Tennis Integrity Unit’s (TIU) quarterly report, a total of 53 match alerts were received during the period April 2017 to June 2017.
The Tennis Integrity Unit will investigate the games that were identified for potential match-fixing.
Three of the matches that were flagged took place at Wimbledon and include one match in the main draw and two during the qualifying rounds.
One game at the French Open was also reported together with four at the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) or Women’s Tennis Association tour events and 45 at low-level Challenger, Futures or International Tennis Federation (ITF) tournaments.
The three month period, between April and June 2017, saw more than 31,000 professional tennis matches taking place.
The international betting integrity body ESSA also identified 15 football matches, 5 basketball games, a handball as well as volleyball fixtures.
Khalid Ali, the Secretary General at ESSA, commented that betting integrity issues have continued to be a core feature of stakeholder discussions at national and international levels.
The Council of Europe (CoE) has requested ESSA to deliver a report on behalf of the private sports betting industry pointing out the challenges facing regulated operators to feed into the CoE’s continued efforts to ratify the match-fixing Convention and implement international standards.
ESSA will also be holding its own integrity conference in London on Thursday, 12th October 2017.
