Wimbledon matches flagged over suspicious betting
Three games at this year’s Wimbledon tennis championships were flagged for unusual betting activity, the sport’s authorities have confirmed.
The Tennis Integrity Unit (TIU), in its quarterly report, said a total of 53 match alerts were received from April to June, which was down 27% year-on-year.
The games that were identified will be investigated by the TIU for potential match-fixing.
Three of the flagged matches were at Wimbledon, including one in the main draw and two in qualifying.
A game at the French Open was also reported, along with four at ATP or WTA tour events. The other 45 were at low-level Challenger, Futures or ITF tournaments.
More than 31,000 professional tennis matches took place during the three-month period.
Meanwhile, in its quarterly report, international betting integrity body ESSA said 31 of 53 cases of suspicious betting during Q2 2017 involved tennis.
ESSA also identified 15 football matches, five basketball games and a handball and volleyball fixture.
ESSA secretary general Khalid Ali said: “Betting integrity issues continue to be a key feature of stakeholder discussions at national and international levels.
“To that end, ESSA has been asked by the Council of Europe (CoE) to deliver a report on behalf of the private sports betting industry highlighting the challenges facing regulated operators to feed into the CoE’s ongoing efforts to ratify the match-fixing Convention and implement international standards.
“This important process will also feed into ESSA’s own integrity conference in London on 12 October.”
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