Really sad and upsetting news from The Age today about 18-year-old Australian Open Boys Champion Oliver Anderson charged with match-fixing. Anderson was charged fixing a match at the Traralgon Challenger tournament in October 2016. I suggest you to read the article to find out more about the case, but it’s just very sad that a player who has a bright future on the men’s tour resorts to such crude means to getting more money.
Match-fixing in tennis is not unheard of by any means and something the International Tennis Federation is trying to target more through their Tennis Integrity Unit (when you sign up for the IPIN* you have to actually answer a few questions from TIU to make more people aware about the existence and perils of match-fixing).
Obviously the presence of online gambling and live betting on sports, makes it tempting to tamper with results for quick earnings and it’s not an easy fight that the ITF and other sports has on their hands. But what can you do besides educating players and striking down hard on crime? Gambling has been around for ages and will continue to be around as creating restrictions for online betting companies will just put betting onto the black market.
However, it will hopefully be a lot tougher for match-fixers now that more and more eyes are aware of their existence in our beautiful sport and it will be interesting to follow what other measures ITF can take to reduce the possibility and allure of match-fixing in tennis.
* IPIN is an abbreviation for international player identification number.
