For a long time, football was considered the leader in terms of the number of match fixing organized per season. But in 2017, tennis took over the palm. The number of agreements in this sport has simply gone off scale.
Naturally, many fans of sports betting wanted to take advantage of this situation: someone is trying to actively sell fake contractual matches in tennis, and, oddly enough, there are enough people who want to buy this “linden”. As part of the material, we have to find out the reasons for the massive agreements in tennis, whether this can really be used when playing in a bookmaker's office and whether it is worth trusting the sellers of dishonest matches.
See also: How to recognize a negotiated match in football?
Content
- Reasons for fixing matches in tennis
- How is a negotiated match arranged?
- Use of fixed matches when playing in bookmaker's office
- Summing up
Reasons for fixing matches in tennis
All the problems are hidden in the uneven distribution of prize money. Several thousand athletes play professional tennis among men and women, but only the first hundred of the world ranking earns good money that allows them to live comfortably.
And even within this first hundred, money is unevenly distributed. Representatives of the TOP-20 usually earn huge prize money, amounting to millions of dollars. Slightly worse, but tennis players in the TOP-50 also earn a lot. Tens of thousands of dollars, and sometimes hundreds of thousands, are earned by TOP-100 players. Sometimes representatives of the TOP-150 can make good money one-time. Everyone who is not included in the TOP-200 sometimes earns very little, often not covering their performance costs.
It should be borne in mind that tennis players fly to tournaments at their own expense, rent hotel rooms, and rent training courts. They need to eat well and quality, buy comfortable clothes and expensive rackets. Participants in rating tournaments, even when they fly out in the early stages, are able to cover all expenses and even save a little for life. Participants in ITF-category tournaments and Challengers do not earn much. Let's look at a specific example and a lot will become clear.
This is the final of the Challenger held in Italy – Ortisei challenger 2020. It is worth noting that the 126th and 113th rackets of the world rankings reached the final. The prize fund of this tournament is 44,820 euros. This Challenger starts with two qualifying rounds, which took place on October 14 and 15. The matches of the 1/16 finals began on October 18.
Here it is worth paying attention to the Russian tennis player, Alexei Vatutin, at that time he was the 248th racket in the world. He overcame both qualifying rounds, but was eliminated out of the 1/16 finals. And now it's worth taking a look at how the prize money is distributed.
Photo source: tennisexplorer.com
It turns out that Alexey earned only 450 euros. And now it is worth considering a few points: Alexey Vatutin paid for a ticket for the flight, paid for hotel accommodation from October 13 to October 18, trained periodically on rented courts, food in Italy is not cheap, and he had to pay for a ticket to fly out of Italy. The 248th racket of the world ranking is clearly in a good minus in this tournament.
Those who were eliminated at the qualifying stage did not earn anything at all. Only the winner of the tournament will earn 6,190 euros.
For example, in the “Gran Canaria ITF 2020” ITF tournament held in Spain among women, the prize fund amounted to 25 thousand euros. Here, earnings will be almost two times less in comparison with the above example.
So it turns out that many tennis players are forced to take part in an agreement in order to earn a living. Tennis collusion is the result of poor earnings for the vast majority of athletes.
How is a negotiated match arranged?
There are special shadow organizations involved in arranging negotiated meetings. They go to tennis players with low income and offer them to perform some actions for a good reward (in low-rating tournaments – several thousand dollars). Let's reveal the main ones:
- Collusion is the oldest way to drain a match and is rarely used today;
- Draining the first set – often takes place in the confrontation “clear favorite – complete outsider”, where in strange meetings the favorite unexpectedly loses the first set, and then recoups in the next (there are really a lot of such strange matches);
- Collusion for the first two sets – in this case, tennis players deliberately lose to each other in a set, deciding the outcome of the fight in the third set in a fair fight, without playing giveaway;
- The result of a specific serve – as noted by the security services of bookmakers, this is the most often used method of leaking: at a certain moment, bets are made on the tennis player's serve in the office, at this time a conditional signal is given to the tennis player from the tribune and he commits a double error on his serve and loses the serve.
The security service understands which match is negotiated by strong and unreasonable loads. Often, bets are not calculated for such a game, in this way bookmakers try to fight against agreements. From time to time it is possible to prove that the match was negotiated. Athletes received a lifelong disqualification. But this is an extremely rare case.
Now it's worth imagining that at the Ortisei challenger 2020 in Italy, one of the low-rated tennis players was offered to drain the serve for 2-3 thousand euros. In this tournament, even a semi-finalist earns 2,160 euros. And here you can earn as much as a semi-finalist by simply pouring out one serve. And after all, it is almost impossible to prove the conspiracy, the disclosed cases are a drop in the ocean.
Use of fixed matches when playing in bookmaker's office
I must say right away that you should not buy predictions for agreements in tennis. This is a tough deception. If bookmakers, actively fighting the organizers and participants of the agreements, sometimes for years sue such persons and cannot prove anything, then where will the sellers of the agreements get information about the loss of the game?
Such information is simply not disclosed. Some may think that it is the organizers of the merging games themselves who are trying to get additional income from the sale of agreements. This is not true. The organizers try not to betray themselves in any way and not to give an extra trump card to law enforcement agencies and the security service of bookmakers.
Drain meeting sellers simply take information from the ceiling and sell this linden to gullible bettors. There are coincidences, but they are random.
You can find a contractual game on your own and make a promising bet on it. Pay attention to low-rated tournaments, especially in the early stages: 1/16 finals – quarterfinals. Now bookmakers on their websites using the “video broadcast” function allow you to track almost all current low-rating meetings. Two points should be taken under special control:
- After a bright victory in the first set, the winning tennis player begins to fail greatly in the second set – if during the second set it is clear that the winning tennis player begins to make too many unforced and double mistakes, he began to abruptly not reach the ball, you can safely bet on the victory of his opponent precisely in 2nd set;
- In the meeting “clear favorite – complete outsider”, the favorite is completely spilled in the first games of the first set – the bet on the victory of the outsider in the first set.
Only in all this there is another side. If the bettor will really often guess leak matches and make successful bets in them, he will fall under the suspicion of the bookmaker's security service. In such a situation, the game account may be blocked to study the history of bets, and the user himself will be suspected of using dishonest methods of the game. In order not to get into such a situation, it is better not to be zealous with bets on suspicious matches.
Summing up
Solving the money problem in tennis is difficult, and to be realistic, it is impossible. There will always be tennis players who earn very little money, so they will use the services of the organizers of the agreements and make good money, like the semi-finalists and finalists of the Challengers. For this reason, tennis plums will remain for a long time. And to try to use this in sports betting or not – everyone decides for himself. Fortunately, there are many other ways to bet on tennis and win.
