Tennis. Life. And Opportunity
“It’s no accident, I think, that tennis uses the language of life. Advantage, service, fault, break, love, the basic elements of tennis are those of everyday existence, because every match is a life in miniature. Even the structure of tennis, the way the pieces fit inside one another like Russian nesting dolls, mimics the structure of our days. Points become games become sets become tournaments, and it’s all so tightly connected that any point can become the turning point. It reminds me of the way seconds become minutes become hours, and any hour can be our finest. Or darkest. It’s our choice.” Andre Agassi, “Open” ( 2009, Knopf )
When Agassi wrote those words in his Autobiography, he was speaking about Tennis mimicking life. If you’ve ever Live Bet Tennis, you know what he is talking about. Within the last few years, several prominent Bookmaking outfits have rolled out the advent of Live Betting. This platform treats a Tennis match like a video game. You are able to bet the match any way possible. Set outcomes, game outcomes, how the game will be scored, i.e Nadal wins Game 2 of Set 1 to 15. It has it all. The NBA also lends itself nicely to the Live Betting platform, as does Soccer. Treating the user with constant stimulation with live odds that don’t freeze after play starts back up. Football and Baseball don’t transition as well in live betting in my opinion because most books only offer action in between innings, commercial breaks or stoppage in play. Live Betting can offer the Trader great hedging opportunities along with controllable upside and downside protection if situations arise. It’s no secret the NBA is an advocate for legalized sports betting. Live betting is a big reason why. Legalized sports betting opens the door to higher attendance on the simple grounds of people will go to Live Bet what they are watching. It’s happening now. Taking a look at Live Betting through the lens of a Macro perspective deserves its own attention. For now, I want to touch on how its aided in the prevailance of match fixing within the game of Tennis.
Agassi also said “Tennis is the loneliest sport.” Maybe that is why anyone who watches competitive tennis matches regularly with an eye for odds can spot when the “fix is in.” Thankfully for the I.T.F, not many people actually watch the sport outside of the nationally televised Majors and Finals. Since the cover got blown off this match fixing scandal in Tennis last year, not much has been done to rectify the situation. For starters, The I.T.F wants to make you believe this has only affected the lower levels of Tennis, namely the Futures and Challengers series and continue to suspend no name players. They let the headlines surface on busy news days or bury the story on a Friday night. A few judges have been axed along the way as well. But there is something way deeper here. On September 30th the Associated Press reported two Turkish officials, Serkan Aslan and Mehmet Ulker, were banned for life for manipulating the scores of matches. They delayed inputting scores into a device at games in Turkey. That gave third parties an advantage when placing bets. That “Device” the judges use to input scores is given to them by the I.T.F. Live scoring was implemented in the summer of 2013 and offers the live feed updates of matches for its subscribers. The model calls for Chair Umpires to input scores, transmitted through the scoring device with a 30 second delay to the broadcast. In this 30 second delay, is where the manipulation takes place.
We come full circle when you know the Live Betting aspect of tennis and how a tennis match can change on a whim. Take what happened just this week. Grigor Dimitrov had a round of 16 matchup against Lucas Pouille. To start the match, he was an even money underdog against the Frenchman, Pouille. Pouille took the first set from Grigor 7–6 and was leading 5–4 in the second set, up a break and serving it out for the win with a 30–15 advantage. I don’t have the odds for Pouille but at that very moment, with him serving, Dimitrov was roughly a + 4700 underdog to come back and win the match in the Live Bet platform. He went on to break Pouille right then, took him to a second set tie break. Bageled him there 7–0 and went on to win the 3
rd set 6–4. Handing the pre match even money underdog a win and ultimately careened Grigor into the Finals where he lost to Andy Murray on Sunday morning. The box score doesn’t do the dramatics of his Pouille match justice, especially if you attach the swing in odds associated with it. See that is the turning point Andre Agassi is essentially referring to the opening quote.
I’m not saying that match was fixed. The root of this match fixing scandal plaguing tennis lies within the Chair Umpires, the players, and live betting. It’s faux pau and risky as hell to tank a whole match. Why try to fix an entire game when, yes, the odds may still be enticing to influence the outcome of a matchup. But the live odds, Live Betting creates is just so much juicier. Last year, Ivo Karlovic, set the All Time Aces record on the ATP tour with his 10,247th career ace. The point being is, he rarely gives up a break. So the odds of him dropping a game while he serves is extremely hard to come by. Those odds are reflected in Live Betting in real time. Now imagine you knew he was going to drop his opening service game during a first round matchup to a lowly ranked opponent in a tournament played halfway around the world that airs maybe 2 am EST. Better yet, imagine you knew he was going to lose that opening game after being up 30-Love, he doesn’t earn another service point and his opponent breaks him. Do you know how much that is worth? A lot more than if you bet this past weekend’s biggest long shot that came through. The scenarios for high pay out match fixing in Tennis without altering the final outcome of the match are endless. It all depends on how creative one is willing to get.
That is how modern day match fixing in tennis works. It isn’t mobsters in the back room threatening to break a players legs or by offering ungodly sums of money to players who won’t even have a solid betting line with depth offered on them. Match fixing today is done with the help of 30 second delays, conveniently slow fingers by Chair Umpires and players who aren’t affected if they lose a game, set or match. Nobody even has to lose on purpose anymore. The scores just need to be manipulated in a believable fashion that offers up enticing odds. The goal for a majority in professional tennis isn’t to win every tournament. Rather, they play for tour points that help their rankings.
Don’t let the ITF fool you into thinking this doesn’t happen on the Pro tours. Where do you think most of the betting money is made? The average daily volume wagered on matches is watched by many. If the fix is in, it’s easier to bury the excessive dollar volume on matches that have a higher average of daily volume wagered than on a futures match that may only draw a few thousand dollars wagered globally. I’m not going to give you my list of Pro’s that I think have partaken in this magical realism, But I will say, I find it hilarious how often Marin Cilic dropped the first set of his matches to much lower competition the year following his US Open title.
I included the ITF link to how the live sports works
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