ITF prohibits live scores at 15k tournaments
The International Tennis Federation (ITF) and the Tennis Integrity Supervisory Board have responded to the recent betting scandal in international tennis. Live bets are to be prevented in future with a ban on live scores at ITF 15k tournaments.
by Robert M. Frank
last edit: Dec 17, 2019, 08:49 pm
Betting on tennis matches at 15k tournaments (tournaments with 15,000 euros in prize money) from the ITF World Tennis Tour (WTT) is now a thing of the past. At least, that's what the International Tennis Association (ITF) and the Tennis Integrity Supervisory Board will imagine in the future. A new project is to achieve this in the lowest category tournaments, according to an ITF press release in the form of bans on live scoring. In addition to switching off live scores, which play a central role in so-called "match fixing", according to the ITF publication, betting providers are to be provided with even less data than before.
Given the incredibly large number of WTT tournaments in this category, with over 1,000 tournaments in around 500 venues in over 80 countries, it could be a difficult undertaking to stem live betting and thus betting frauds like the recent betting scandal this week . In the press release, the ITF, which claims to invest $ 8 million in measures such as an accreditation and control system, was confident of the new approach from 2020. "The scope of this project is unprecedented. We are confident that it will will bring real benefits to all participants and will contribute to the trend of reducing corruption risk seen in 2019, ”ITF President David Haggerty is quoted in the report.
Responsibility passed on to the organizer
It is still unclear how tournament organizers can implement the new regulation. Given the lack of personnel and limited resources, the organizers of tournaments are often simply overwhelmed to take action against suspicious people on the course who film matches with cell phone cameras and forward scores in real time. “The ITF is simply passing on its responsibility to us, but it is not our job to fight the betting mafia. Unfortunately, it is now normal that even at our tournaments, the police have to move to expel suspicious people from the facility, ”said two-time German 15k tournament organizer Marc Raffel to tennismagazin.de .