The International Betting Integrity Association’s (IBIA) Q1 ’22 report on suspicious wagers found that tennis is currently generating more suspicious wagers than any other sport. This news comes as sports betting continues to boom across the world, and regulators are taking a closer look at every aspect of the gaming industry.
According to the IBIA’s report (which can be viewed here), the first three months of 2022 generated 42 cases of they call “suspicious betting” cases. Of those 42, 14 of them involved tennis. Football was the next biggest offender with 10 reported cases of suspicious betting. Table tennis (which is a very serious sport for punters) was also flagged with 10 cases. Coming up in the rear were volleyball (4), pool (3) and e-sports (1).
While even a single suspicious bet is bad news for the gaming industry, the IBIA reports that Q1 ’22 saw a 39 percent reduction from Q4 ’21’s 69 cases and 34 percent drop from Q1 ’21. According to IBIA CEO Khalid Ali, these types of fluctuations are pretty normal. “Alerts continue to fluctuate from quarter to quarter, but it is nevertheless welcome that Q1 saw a sizeable fall in suspicious betting, and potential corrupt activity, on IBIA members’ markets.
Tennis also saw a 57 percent drop in reports of suspicious activity from Q4 ’22.
“That drop is more noticeable given that those alerts come from a substantially widened membership base in the first three months of 2022, with the association set to become the leading integrity provider in the newly opened markets of the Netherlands and Ontario, and pushing across US states,” he told SBC News recently.
In the past, professional tennis was particularly prone to match-fixing and other criminal activities, though a strong effort from The International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA) and other regulating bodies have curbed those types of activities significantly.