Tennis clearly stands out among major sports for its susceptibility to match-fixing and corruption. As an individual sport dominated by singles matches, it only requires corrupting one or two players to manipulate outcomes with near certainty—unlike team sports, where bribing multiple athletes raises costs, risks detection, and lowers success rates.
With the sports unique scoring system, including points, games, sets, and matches, there are so many opportunities to enable “spot-fixing”: where players can deliberately lose specific segments (a game, a set, or even a point) without throwing the entire contest. The problem is, it fits perfectly with ‘in-play’ betting markets, where wagers on the next point, game, set score, or total games generate high profits for syndicates, while remaining hard to prove.
Richard Ings, former ATP Executive Vice President for Rules and Competition, spoke about this vulnerability in a 2005 report: “If a sport could have been invented with the possibility of corruption in mind, that sport would be tennis.”
What makes spot-fixing or match-fixing in tennis deceptively easy, is how seamlessly deliberate errors can be covered up as ordinary play. Professional matches can consist of hundreds of points, and even the best players routinely commit unforced errors and double faults. In fact, to win a match usually requires winning only 51% of the points – this gives plenty of space for some ‘errors’.
Fixers exploit this by instructing players to “tank” isolated moments: a double fault on serve at a crucial juncture, a couple of seemingly unintentional short balls that sit up invitingly for the opponent to attack, or returns and groundstrokes placed just wide of the line or into the net. These can often look indistinguishable from the normal ebb and flow of a tightly contested match.
I’ve personally seen this happen many times. As you, the reader, probably has. Not to say the matches were actually being fixed, but sometimes players tank matches. It happens. They’re not feeling great physically, they’ve checked out mentally, or they have a commitment to another tournament, and they prefer to lose the match.
An anonymous ex-tennis player from South America, speaking to the BBC in 2016, described recognising the signs instantly: “As a player, I know who is missing on purpose or returning a shot in the middle on purpose… who is trying, and who is not. So we work on this, we know.”
He added that watching a fixed match unfold could be surreal: “You start hitting it and, trust me, everything goes in… it can make you panic. So when I see the guy winning so easily and then he’s missing absolutely on purpose, every ball…”
Because unforced errors and double faults occur naturally and frequently, limited spot-fixing—throwing just a few games or points—rarely raises immediate red flags. A player might dominate early to inflate live betting odds on their opponent, then deliberately drop a set or game with a couple of sloppy double faults and short balls before resuming normal effort if the match outcome remains unaffected.
In the Grigor Sargsyan organised-crime ring dismantled in 2023, recruited players described exactly these tactics: one player told investigators he “had to do a couple extra double faults.”
The problem is most acute at the sport’s lower and middle levels. There are thousands of ‘professional players’, yet only the top 250 women and 350 men (approx..) earn enough to break even before coaching, travel, and equipment costs. Many scrape by on Futures or ITF World Tennis Tour events, where a tournament winner might pocket as little as $2,000.
For these athletes, the financial pressure creates what the 2018 Independent Review Panel (IRP) into tennis integrity—led by Adam Lewis QC—described as “a fertile breeding ground for breaches of integrity.”
The panel explained: “The player incentive structure creates a fertile breeding ground for breaches of integrity.” It added that the current tennis environment provides “a lamentably fertile breeding ground for breaches of integrity.”
A 2018 survey of more than 3,200 professionals for the IRP found that 464 reported first-hand knowledge of match-fixing. Men’s matches accounted for 83% of suspicious betting alerts between 2009 and 2017. The panel concluded there was a “tsunami” of corruption at lower levels, driven by struggling players, minimal on-site spectators, and limited oversight.
A pivotal catalyst came in 2012 when the International Tennis Federation (ITF) signed a roughly $70 million deal with data company Sportradar to distribute official live scoring from thousands of lower-tier tournaments.
This opened floodgates for bookmakers to offer odds—especially lucrative in-play markets—on matches that previously lacked reliable data. The number of matches available for betting jumped from about 40,000 in 2013 to 60,000 in 2016. Suspicious betting alerts surged from just three in 2012 to 240 in 2016. One betting operator told the IRP the situation in tennis was “grimmer than grim.” Tennis has consistently led other sports in suspicious betting patterns monitored by the European Sports Security Association (ESSA).
High-profile cases illustrate how easy recruitment can be. In 2006–07, a teenage Novak Djokovic was offered $200,000 to throw a first-round match at the St Petersburg Open. He turned it down. Speaking publicly in 2016, Djokovic said the approach “made me feel terrible because I don’t want to be anyhow linked to this kind of thing… Somebody may call it an opportunity. For me, that’s an act of unsportsmanship, a crime in sport, honestly. I don’t support it. I think there is no room for it in any sport, especially in tennis.”
We spoke with an ex-top 100 player who preferred to stay anonymous. They said they were offered a large sum of money to drop the opening set 6-0 against a top 20 player at an ATP event, just minutes before going on court. They turned it down, but proceeded to drop the set 6-1 anyway, having been mentally rattled.
Let’s be honest, the majority of players take up the offer. But enough do to make it a problem.
Lower-level players face more frequent and tempting approaches. Recent top 100 entry, Argentine, Marco Trungelliti was contacted in 2015 by two men posing as sponsors. They detailed a network offering “a few thousand for fixing a set or match at the Futures level, around $20,000 for Challengers, and $50,000 to $100,000 at the ATP level.” They even named eight involved players. Shocked, Trungelliti reported them immediately to the Tennis Integrity Unit (TIU, now the International Tennis Integrity Agency or ITIA) and cooperated fully, including testifying in related hearings. He later faced backlash from some peers, but stood by his decision.
The scale of organised corruption was laid bare in 2023 with the dismantling of a ring run by Grigor Sargsyan, an Armenian national based in Belgium with no tennis background. Over two to three years, Sargsyan recruited more than 180 professional players from over 30 countries. Investigators identified 105 by name. He targeted financially desperate players at obscure ITF events, offering cash—often €600–€4,000—to lose specific games or sets while still allowing them to win the match if needed.
Payments came via cash, wire transfers, or MoneyGram, sometimes routed through family members. Sargsyan cultivated loyalty with gifts, dinners, and promises of ongoing “sponsorship.” One player, Youssef Hossam, later told investigators: “If you fix this, you make money, you go practice, life goes on. If you don’t fix this, we don’t have money and you just stay at home.” Sargsyan himself described the players as “obsessed with Rolex” and said he focused on keeping them happy. A tennis lawyer called the case “one of the largest match-fixing files ever to surface in the world” and “the tip of the iceberg.”
The big problem for players is, that once a syndicate has hold of them, it’s tough to get out. For next time they are asked to ‘hit a double-fault in game 3’ for instance, a negative response could garner a blackmail scenario. Where the syndicate has information that the player has a history in match-fixing, the player is almost always backed into a corner. Keep fixing, or risk the authorities finding out, and potentially banning them from the sport.
It’s exactly why fixers exploit the economics: tournament prizes at lower levels barely cover costs, but a single fixed set can exceed a week’s legitimate earnings. Syndicates operate transnationally, using encrypted communication and betting across regulated and unregulated markets. Spot-fixing masks intent—double faults or unforced errors look like normal play. The 2012 live-scoring data made real-time betting seamless on non-televised matches.
The ITIA, successor to the TIU, has ramped up efforts. In 2025 it recorded 68 match alerts (down from 95 in 2024), though alerts are indicators only, not proof of fixing, and lower-tier matches vastly outnumber top events. The agency runs mandatory education via the Tennis Integrity Protection Programme (over 10,000 completions in 2025), launched a secure WhatsApp tip line called “The Line,” and issued numerous sanctions—including lifetime bans for players, coaches, and officials in 2025 cases. Organised crime groups still target tennis, but the ITIA emphasises intelligence-led investigations, player support (legal aid, counselling), and deterrence. Chair Jennie Price has stressed ongoing efforts to make the sport “a difficult environment for corruption” through education and enforcement.
Tennis governing bodies have implemented many IRP recommendations, including reforms to data sales and anti-corruption governance. Top-tier Grand Slams and ATP/WTA 250 events show fewer issues, partly due to higher earnings and scrutiny. Yet the pyramid’s base—thousands of low-stakes matches—remains vulnerable. As long as prize money fails to cover costs for most pros and betting markets thrive on obscure fixtures, the incentives endure.
Match-fixing in tennis is not inevitable, but its structural openness—combined with economic desperation—has made it one of sport’s most persistent integrity threats. Players like Djokovic and Trungelliti (and many others) who reject and report approaches show that resistance is possible. Sustained reform, transparent enforcement, and better financial support for lower-ranked athletes are essential if tennis is to close the door on the fixers.
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