Online Gambling and Tennis Do Not Mix
 
July 28, 2009

There are very clear rules in the tennis world – they don’t want their players being involved in online gambling of any kind. They are careful to keep even a hint of impropriety out of the sport by eliminating all ways of participating in the online gambling – and thus there is no confusion as to what is allowed and what isn’t.
 
But several tennis professionals found out the hard way what happens when you break the no online gambling rule – you get suspended. The Association of Tennis Professionals or ATP is in trouble from the tennis pros that they recently suspended for participating in online gambling. The ATP says that they have a zero tolerance policy and if they allow the tennis pros to participate in online gambling it would be very easy for them to manipulate matches so that they could win.
 
However, the tennis pros say that they are being used as scapegoats so that the ATP can show everyone how tough they are on those that participate in online gambling. They say that their co-defendant Interwetten actually gave the ATP the names of those tennis players that participated in online gambling so that they could curry favor with the ATP.
 
They say that the fact that the online gambling companies are now getting sponsorship for their events is evidence enough that they are being set up. They said that the online gambling company had no right giving out their online gambling history to anyone, and that they had not broken any rules or set up any matches to gain anything.

Back to July 09 Archive.