In its response, Sportradar said that while it supported the majority of recommendations, it felt that a ban on data sales at the lower levels of professional tennis would further harm, rather than protect, the sport's integrity.
The report was published in April this year, and claimed that tennis had been engulfed by a “tsunami” of corruption at the lower levels of the game. This, the report authors said, had been kicked off by Sportradar’s 2012 deal with the International Tennis Federation (ITF) to distribute data on small and intermediate tournaments for betting purposes.
“Attempting a total data black-out on a sport has never been done, or even trialed or tested before. Counter evidence and expert analysis indicate that such an approach is likely to have a harmful effect on integrity, which would be hard to reverse if unsuccessful,” Sportradar managing director of group operations David Lampitt said.
“So, the Panel is staking its reputation, and that of the sport, on an uncertain ‘guess’, when there is good evidence that a different approach and an incremental process of implementing enhanced and targeted measures would be more likely to deliver successful outcomes and integrity benefits.”
“If the recommendations remain unchanged, they would push the betting market underground where the integrity issues would be out of sight. This may give the veneer of improving the situation but would not deal with the underlying issues,” he added. “These must not be brushed under the carpet.”
Instead of a blanket ban on data collection for low-level ITF competitions, Sportradar instead recommended restrictions be implemented for specific matches that were particularly at risk of corruption. This, it said, would tackle corruption on a case-by-case basis, and is already being done through its ITF partnership.
Sportradar also called for a new body, comprising representatives from tennis, betting companies and sports data providers to lead new, collaborative efforts to tackle corruption.
Sportradar concluded by saying that it could ultimately not support an arbitrary ban on data collection or betting at any level. While it said that this could even be commercially advantageous to its commercial business, such measures would ultimately fail to achieve the goal of tackling corruption.
Source: GMB / Totallygaming.com
