Tennis once again dominated the suspicious betting alerts reported to sporting governing bodies by regulated gambling operators that are members of sports integrity body ESSA, comprising 31 of 37 alerts for the third quarter of 2016. It is important to point out that a suspicious betting alert does not mean that match-fixing has taken place, but that a sporting event has attracted unexpected betting activity with atypical bet sizes or volumes that continue even after price adjustments have been made to deter such activity. ESSA only confirms a betting pattern as ‘suspicious’ after it has asked its members whether the unusual patterns could be for legitimate reasons, such as pricing the market incorrectly.

Tennis was followed by football (three alerts), beach volleyball (one alert), volleyball (one alert) and table tennis (one alert). Tennis also dominated the suspicious alerts (34 of 41) reported by ESSA during the second quarter of this year, and during the first quarter (nine of 11 cases). Tennis has dominated ESSA’s integrity statistics for seven consecutive quarters since ESSA introduced quarterly reporting at the start of 2015. As such, ESSA has engaged with the Tennis Independent Review Panel appointed in January, which is expected to publish an interim report in the first quarter of 2017 – a year after it was set up.

The panel was established in response to allegations that tennis has failed to fully investigate match-fixing, after the BBC and BuzzFeed alleged that the sport were ‘repeatedly warned’ about a group of 16 players suspected by integrity investigators. ‘Whilst the TIU has made some welcome additions to its investigatory team, the implementation of any wider recommendations unfortunately looks to be some way off’, wrote ESSA Chairman Mike O’Kane in the Q3 report.