\nAlex Duff, Bloomberg \u00b7 September 1, 2014 at 6:10 am<\/p>\n
\t(Bloomberg) \u2014 Swings in betting odds suggest an average of 23 professional tennis matches might be fixed each year, according to a study that found suspicious patterns in three matches at Wimbledon.<\/p>\n
\tThe research analyzed 6,204 first-round matches on the men\u2019s and women\u2019s tour between 2011 and 2013. The study, written by Ryan Rodenberg, an assistant professor of Sports Law at Florida State University, and South Bend, Indiana-based professional tennis gambler Elihu Feustel, was published by the Journal of Prediction Markets.<\/p>\n
\tThe study tracked betting market prices against the \u201ccorrect\u201d price determined by two predictive models. The methods use data from previous matches to judge the likelihood of each player winning. In 20 cases, the market price drifted away from one model\u2019s price by between 16 percent and 29 percent before play started, the study found.<\/p>\n
\tSuch a deviation in pre-match odds could have resulted from about $100,000 of wagering on a lower-ranked player winning at eight sports books, the study said. While the study\u2019s methods have limitations, they are \u201ca strong starting point for detecting and predicting match fixing,\u201d according to the authors.<\/p>\n
\tA fixing scandal at Wimbledon could scare off tournament sponsors and hurt sports gambling companies, who generated a total of $58 billion of gross profit in 2012, Warwick Bartlett, chief executive officer of Isle of Man, U.K.-based Global Betting & Gaming Consultants, said by phone.<\/p>\n
\t\u201cIt would be a problem because credibility is everything in sports,\u201d Bartlett said. \u201cPeople don\u2019t want to bet on roulette if the wheel is rigged.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tFirst-Round Matches<\/p>\n
\tSome of the most unusual swings happened in three first- round contests at Wimbledon in 2011 and 2012, and one at the 2012 London Olympics. The study didn\u2019t identify the dates of the games or players involved. It also found opening-round matches at the 2011 French Open and 2012 Australian Open with unusual betting patterns.<\/p>\n
\tWimbledon spokesman Johnny Perkins referred a request for comment on the study\u2019s findings to the Tennis Integrity Unit, or TIU, which declined to comment. The unit\u2019s spokesman Mark Harrison cited a policy of not discussing cases because they might lead to rumors and innuendo about innocent players. Australian Open spokesman Darren Pearce declined to comment, citing the same policy as the TIU.<\/p>\n
\tEmilie Montane, legal director of the French tennis federation which runs the French Open, said the tournament has had an algorithm made by Sportradar AG since 2010 that flags unusual betting patterns.<\/p>\n
\tExplained Irregularities<\/p>\n
\t\u201cWe have had small alerts very few times, and they were all explainable by sports reasons\u201d such as injuries, Montane said by phone from Paris.<\/p>\n
\tTo be sure, matches with irregular betting patterns aren\u2019t necessarily manipulated. A possible explanation for an unusual swing could be tour insiders placing bets or leaking information to a gambler about a player\u2019s injury or illness without the athlete\u2019s knowledge or consent.<\/p>\n
\tWhile that\u2019s against tennis rules, it\u2019s hard to police, according to Rodenberg.<\/p>\n
\t\u201cIt\u2019s incredibly difficult for tennis authorities to make rules that are binding for physios and coaches,\u201d Rodenberg said.<\/p>\n
\tRodenberg said he conducted the study to find out how much progress tennis had made since a 2008 report commissioned by the sport\u2019s authorities found that 73 matches in five previous years had \u201csuspected\u201d betting patterns, and 45 warranted further review.<\/p>\n
\t\u201cOur results are fairly similar, they are in the same ballpark,\u201d Rodenberg said.<\/p>\n
\tStruggling Players<\/p>\n
\tFixing is more likely instigated by players \u201cstruggling to make ends meet\u201d than criminal syndicates because the low volume of first-round betting in tennis doesn\u2019t make it worthwhile for organized crime, according to Bartlett.<\/p>\n
\tAfter the 2008 report, tennis authorities set up the integrity unit to investigate possible cases of match manipulation. The London-based unit\u2019s website lists nine players who have been banned for fixing or other betting-related offenses since 2011.<\/p>\n
\tIn the latest case in June, authorities banned Russian player Andrey Kumantsov for life after finding him guilty of 12 charges between 2010 and 2013. Kumanstov, who didn\u2019t play in the main draw of a Grand Slam during those years, had a career-high rating of No. 261. Efforts to reach Kumanstov through the Russian tennis federation, which said it didn\u2019t have contact information for him, were unsuccessful.<\/p>\n
\tFeustel, the study\u2019s co-author, said in an interview earlier this year that he has data from 260,000 tennis matches dating back several years which he has used to create an algorithm to make bets.<\/p>\n
\tThe ELO model used in the study gives each player a rating that is used to calculate the probability of winning. The other model estimates that probability based on service and return points won by each player against common opponents.<\/p>\n
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Alex Duff, Bloomberg \u00b7 September 1, 2014 at 6:10 am (Bloomberg) \u2014 Swings in betting odds suggest an average of 23 professional tennis matches might be fixed each year, according to a study that found suspicious patterns in three matches…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7953","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-other-games"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7953","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7953"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7953\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}