SPORTSBETTING SITES ON THE ALERT FOLLOWING TENNIS
FEARS
19 June 2009
New betting controversy surfaces
Gambling on tennis is at the centre of a Times newspaper
report from London this week, which claimed that only a
week before the start of the world famous Wimbledon
Tennis Championships, men's tennis is embroiled in fresh
gambling revelations.
Several bookmakers have
apparently voided bets on a grass-court match in the
Netherlands on Monday when the odds on one player
shortened from 5-6 to 1-5 and a four-figure sum was
wagered on him to win by a mystery punter.
The
moment that “unusual betting patterns” were charted in
the first-round match at the Ordina Open in 's
Hertogenbosch between Óscar Hernández, the world No 67
from Spain, and Daniel Köllerer, the Austrian ranked No
91, all bets were off and tennis authorities were
alerted, The Times reports.
Hernández, the man
whose odds were slashed and the only player on whom
money was placed, won 6-3, 6-2.
It is understood
that one bet - said to be in the region of GBP 4 000 -
was placed on Hernández with UK gambling group William
Hill by a backer whose identity was unknown to the
bookmaker, immediately raising a red warning flag. “We
are not suggesting there has been any skulduggery
because we cannot know that,” Graham Sharpe, the head of
media at William Hill, said. “But we had no option but
to close the book on this match for our financial
welfare.”
Tennis authorities are expected to
call for a report from their Integrity Unit, which was
established in the wake of a raft of suspicious matches,
the most celebrated of which involved Nikolay Davydenko,
of Russia, and Martín Vassallo Argüello, from Argentina,
in Sopot, Poland, in August 2007. Betfair, the online
gambling company, voided all bets after $7 million was
wagered - ten times the usual amount - most of it on
Vassallo Argüello, even after Davydenko won the first
set. Both players were ultimately cleared of any
suspicion of match-rigging.
Now Hernández and
Köllerer will come under scrutiny. Both are in the main
draw for Wimbledon.
Roger Federer, the president
of the ATP players' council, responding to the news of
another match causing concern, said: “It is never good
for tennis when we hear of things like this and it is in
the players' power to control what they do at all times.
That is the message to get across.”
Online Casino News Courtesy of
Infopowa
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