Victoria Police alerted to suspicious betting claims in Australian Open match
A major sports betting website suspended betting on a weekend mixed doubles match at the Australian Open after reporting a huge betting plunge to Victoria Police.
Pinnacle Sports, which is one of the largest betting sites in the world, noticed large amounts of money pour in for the match between Spain's Lara Arruabarrena and David Marrero and Andrea Hlavackova and Lukasz Kubot on Sunday, the New York Times has revealed.
A red flag was raised by Pinnacle Sports after noticing nearly all of the money coming in was for Czech star Hlavackova and Polish national Kubot to win, head of sportsbook at the website Marco Blume told The Times.
“We saw a small number of people placing a large amount of money," Mr Blume said.
“In context, these matches are rather small. That means that any aggressive betting behaviour is very easy to detect on our side.”
Hlavackova and Kubot went on to convincingly defeat the two Spaniards 6-0, 6-3, with the first set lasting only 20 minutes.
Following the match, which was not expected to draw much gambling attention, Marreo and Arruabarrena denied any wrongdoing, rather Marreo cited a knee injury for the poor performance.
Since reports emerged last week that 16 players were repeatedly flagged over suspicions they had thrown matches, tennis officials have emphasised consistently that betting patterns alone are not evidence of match-fixing.
Victoria Police confirmed to Yahoo7 News that it did receive information from Pinnacle Sports but declined to comment further on the details passed on, releasing in a statement that "Victoria Police continues to liaise with Tennis Australia throughout the 2016 tournament."
A spokeswoman for the International Tennis Federation told The Times that the organisation had not been notified of any suspicious activity. Tennis Australia has been contacted for comment.
The BBC and BuzzFeed News said last week that that 16 top players had been suspected of involvement in fixed matches but never faced action.
The Tennis Integrity Unit of the sport's governing body has denied that there was any coverup over suspicious cases.
World number one Novak Djokovic called for those making corruption allegations to provide proof after blasting as "absurd" an Italian newspaper which suggested he could have thrown a match.
"It's not true," the 28-year-old Serb told a tense press conference at the Australian Open last Wednesday when asked about the suggestion in Tuttosport newspaper about his 2007 defeat by Frenchman Fabrice Santoro at the Paris Masters.
A host of players have called for any evidence of alleged wrongdoing to be made public.
Morning news break - January 25
