Australian Open bets. Tennis Australia (TA) president Steve Healy, stated that a couple of factors that led to the decision, the Australian Open will not display any of the courtside advertisements from betting agency William Hill after. In the aspect that affect the decision is include the match-fixing scandals that have continued to plague the sport throughout 2016.
The reaction against the advertisements and the bet agency led TA to cut their presence at Melbourne Park.
Healy affirmed to the ABC “We need to put it in perspective. The arrangements that were struck with William Hill before this issue had such a high profile and so we’ve worked with our partners to address that.”
TA has consolidated its integrity unit over the past year and for the first time will have two investigative officers on site to monitor suspicious betting at the Open. One of them is former Northern Territory police officer and teacher, Peter Peterson, who said “There’ll be no matches specifically targeted, it’ll just be random matches and from that then we’ll just be looking at the data.”
The Australian Open 2016 doubles match between David Marrero and Lara Arruabarrena and Lukasz Kubot and Andrea Hlavackova was investigated this year after suspicious betting activity. The investigation as perceived to be bungled and no action was taken.
To tackle the issue of match-fixing, TA has been conducting education classes to target young players, Healy believes that increasing the amount of education that players receive regarding match-fixing will also play a key role in stamping out the issue.
“Our role is to make sure that all of our Australian players are educated, they understand the risks, the deceptions that take place that might leave them into something unseemly”. There is no problem with the tournament’s ongoing relationship with the bookmaker and that the sponsor assists with the sport’s anti-corruption campaign.
With its international counterparts and law enforcement in an Open setting, it will be a learning curve for TA to see how its integrity unit works.
