WTA TENNIS IRREGULARITIES RESOLVED

12 October 2007

Betfair's sophisticated security measures acted on by tennis officials


Achieving major headlines in the global sporting press this week is another instance of Betfair security officials 'doing the right thing' in flagging suspicious betting activity in tennis. The betting exchange has highly sophisticated tracking facilities to ensure betting is fair.

The UK newspaper the Daily Telegraph reported at length on the issue, saying that Betfair had delayed payment on bets laid on a women's match played in India after becoming concerned about what appeared to be irregular gambling patterns.

The disclosure comes in the wake of revelations that a number of players on the men's tour, including Britain's Arvind Parmar and Belgium's Gilles Elseneer, have turned down approaches to throw matches.

The women's match in question was the quarter-final of a tournament in Kolkata two weeks ago, played by Tatiana Poutchek, the world No 96 from Belarus, and Ukrainian Mariya Koryttseva, ranked 120th. Koryttseva won 6-4, 6-2, but officials at Betfair contacted the Sony Ericsson WTA Tour to inform them that they were delaying payment as they felt there was reason to investigate what seemed to be suspicious betting patterns during the match.

It is understood that almost GBP 1 million had been wagered on the outcome.

The Telegraph reports that Betfair, who retain a large fraud and security department, conducted an investigation of the circumstances surrounding the match. However, even though they then felt satisfied to go ahead with all the payments, Andrew Walker, the vice president of the WTA Tour, told the newspaper that they were "investigating this situation", but emphasised that, "at this time", there was no indication of any wrongdoing on the part of the players or their entourages.

Since 2005, Betfair have had a memorandum of understanding with the WTA Tour, which means that the bookmaker alerts the governing body about any suspicions they might have. Mark Davies, Betfair's director of communications, said he believed that it was the first time that they had looked at a women's match so closely.

"We need to be certain that the markets are clean," Davies said. "We delayed settlement. We then settled as normal. We wanted to check that we were happy, and in the end we were."

In August, Betfair refused to pay out on more than GBP 3 million of bets which had been put on the outcome of Nikolay Davydenko's match against a little-known Argentine player at a tournament in Poland.

Davydenko, the world No 4 from Russia, retired from the match in the third set after citing an injury, and he is presently being investigated by the ATP.

"We have a zero tolerance policy when it comes to gambling-related activity," added the WTA's Walker, "and we have been in close contact with Betfair and are investigating this situation."

"To be clear, at this time there is no indication of any wrongdoing by anyone."

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