OddJack
G.O.A.T.
Jan. 14 (Bloomberg) -- Bets on tennis pay off for the Australian Open, the only Grand Slam tournament sponsored by a gambling house.
A portion of each wager with Betfair Australia placed on Roger Federer, Serena Williams or any of the hundreds of players at the event goes to Tennis Australia, the nonprofit federation that runs the two-week event, which starts Jan. 18 in Melbourne.
Officials of the tournament and the betting exchange say the amount of money the Open makes from the deal is extremely small, and that it guards the integrity of matches in a nation where gambling is a social staple. It is the highest-profile commercial link between betting and a sport involved in investigations of suspicious wagering as recently as last week.
“You’re opening yourself up to allegations from the general public that you’re condoning online gambling or are complicit in online gambling scandals,” Simon Chadwick, a 45- year-old professor of sport business strategy and marketing at Coventry University Business School in Coventry, England, said in an interview. “You have to make sure that the public knows everything is monitored very carefully.”
Hobart-based Betfair Australia, listed as the tournament’s official sports betting operator and one of 32 Open sponsors and suppliers, is required to give the identities of customers betting on tennis matches and a record of their wagers to Tennis Australia if asked. The closely held company does the same for all of the country’s major professional sports, according to Andrew Twaits, its chief executive officer.
“The key to managing integrity is giving the relevant authorities complete access,” said Twaits, 38. “Everything is out in the open.”
Integrity Unit
The agreement began in 2007, a year before the Grand Slams -- the Australian, French and U.S. Opens and Wimbledon -- joined with the men’s and women’s tours and the International Tennis Federation to fight potential corruption after several gambling cases.
They set up the Tennis Integrity Unit, headed by former Scotland Yard detective Jeff Rees, after suspicious betting on a match in August 2007 involving Russia’s Nikolay Davydenko, then ranked No. 4 on the ATP Tour. More than a dozen players said publicly that year that they had been approached to throw matches and the tour banned three Italian players for betting.
London-based Betfair Ltd., whose closely held owner The Sporting Exchange Ltd. owns 50 percent of Betfair Australia, nullified all $7 million in wagers on Davydenko’s 2007 loss to Martin Vassallo Arguello. As the match in Poland progressed, more bets were placed on Davydenko to lose, even after he won the first set. Davydenko, now ranked No. 6, denied wrongdoing and was cleared by the ATP Tour in September 2008 after a 13- month probe.
Earlier Probes
Tennis’s governing bodies said in May 2008 that investigators uncovered 45 matches in the previous five years that needed studying because of “unusual betting patterns.”
The threat of corruption remains. On Jan. 8, Russia’s Ekaterina Bychkova was fined $5,000 and suspended for 30 days for “failing to report an offer to influence the outcome of a tennis match.”
“This is a sport where you have only two people performing,” eight-time Grand Slam singles champion John McEnroe said Jan. 11 at a news conference in Adelaide, Australia. “If you were one of these guys who wants to try to fix a sporting event, it would probably be easier for you to get one person rather than say 10 people if you were playing a cricket match or soccer game or something. So that’s a huge concern.”
‘General Rule’
The ATP “as a general rule doesn’t encourage its tournaments to have betting sponsors,” tour spokesman Graeme Agars said. The WTA Tour’s Hobart International, an Australian Open warmup, is sponsored by state-owned betting company TOTE Tasmania, while bet-at-home.com AG sponsors women’s events in Austria and the Czech Republic and the men’s Valencia Open.
The London-based ITF, which oversees the sport worldwide, declined to comment on what spokesman Nick Imison described as “an independent commercial decision of the Australian Open.”
Fans can’t bet at the Open but will be able to sign up for Betfair accounts at a demonstration stand in the shadow of Rod Laver Arena, the tournament’s main court. The sponsorship doesn’t give Betfair courtside signs, said Steve Ayles, who oversees Melbourne-based Tennis Australia’s revenue. On-site promotion by Betfair began last year.
Betfair Australia, a joint venture between The Sporting Exchange Ltd. and Australia’s Crown Ltd., pays Tennis Australia a share of revenue from wagers on matches during the two-week Grand Slam, which Twaits said was “one of Betfair’s biggest worldwide betting events.”
Ayles said Tennis Australia gets a “very small percentage” of Betfair’s take. He declined to be specific.
Tournament Turnover
“Ultimately, it does relate to revenue turnover on the Australian Open, but there’s other factors that go into it,” he said in an interview.
Richard Lapchick, director of the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sports at the University of Central Florida, called the Betfair deal a “slippery slope” for a sport with gambling problems. The argument that it generates little revenue for tennis doesn’t help, he said.
“That almost makes it sound silly that, ‘We’re doing this, we’re not really making much money at it and we’re taking a risk of all the public criticism,’” Lapchick, 64, said from his Orlando, Florida, office. “It enhances the perspective of it being a bad decision to begin with.”
Not Immune
Australian Open revenue is forecast to grow to A$152 million ($140 million) this year, up from A$84 million in 2005, said Steve Wood, the tournament’s chief executive officer.
The tournament has replaced two sponsors lost last year, and its sponsorship portfolio has gained 10 percent compared with 2009. Sponsorship deals make up about 30 percent of total revenue, Wood said.
“We’re not immune to the world economy,” Wood, 47, said in an interview. “We’ve had our challenges, but we’re navigating through them.”
Placing a bet -- or “having a punt” -- is an accepted part of life in Australia, a nation of almost 22 million people. Wagering makes up 14 percent of Australia’s A$18 billion gaming industry, with most of the money coming from slot machines, according to a draft report by the government’s Productivity Commission based in the national capital, Canberra.
“We certainly believe that responsible gambling is part of Australian culture,” Tennis Australia’s Ayles said. “We can also ensure that money goes back into developing the sport.”
BusinessWeek
A portion of each wager with Betfair Australia placed on Roger Federer, Serena Williams or any of the hundreds of players at the event goes to Tennis Australia, the nonprofit federation that runs the two-week event, which starts Jan. 18 in Melbourne.
Officials of the tournament and the betting exchange say the amount of money the Open makes from the deal is extremely small, and that it guards the integrity of matches in a nation where gambling is a social staple. It is the highest-profile commercial link between betting and a sport involved in investigations of suspicious wagering as recently as last week.
“You’re opening yourself up to allegations from the general public that you’re condoning online gambling or are complicit in online gambling scandals,” Simon Chadwick, a 45- year-old professor of sport business strategy and marketing at Coventry University Business School in Coventry, England, said in an interview. “You have to make sure that the public knows everything is monitored very carefully.”
Hobart-based Betfair Australia, listed as the tournament’s official sports betting operator and one of 32 Open sponsors and suppliers, is required to give the identities of customers betting on tennis matches and a record of their wagers to Tennis Australia if asked. The closely held company does the same for all of the country’s major professional sports, according to Andrew Twaits, its chief executive officer.
“The key to managing integrity is giving the relevant authorities complete access,” said Twaits, 38. “Everything is out in the open.”
Integrity Unit
The agreement began in 2007, a year before the Grand Slams -- the Australian, French and U.S. Opens and Wimbledon -- joined with the men’s and women’s tours and the International Tennis Federation to fight potential corruption after several gambling cases.
They set up the Tennis Integrity Unit, headed by former Scotland Yard detective Jeff Rees, after suspicious betting on a match in August 2007 involving Russia’s Nikolay Davydenko, then ranked No. 4 on the ATP Tour. More than a dozen players said publicly that year that they had been approached to throw matches and the tour banned three Italian players for betting.
London-based Betfair Ltd., whose closely held owner The Sporting Exchange Ltd. owns 50 percent of Betfair Australia, nullified all $7 million in wagers on Davydenko’s 2007 loss to Martin Vassallo Arguello. As the match in Poland progressed, more bets were placed on Davydenko to lose, even after he won the first set. Davydenko, now ranked No. 6, denied wrongdoing and was cleared by the ATP Tour in September 2008 after a 13- month probe.
Earlier Probes
Tennis’s governing bodies said in May 2008 that investigators uncovered 45 matches in the previous five years that needed studying because of “unusual betting patterns.”
The threat of corruption remains. On Jan. 8, Russia’s Ekaterina Bychkova was fined $5,000 and suspended for 30 days for “failing to report an offer to influence the outcome of a tennis match.”
“This is a sport where you have only two people performing,” eight-time Grand Slam singles champion John McEnroe said Jan. 11 at a news conference in Adelaide, Australia. “If you were one of these guys who wants to try to fix a sporting event, it would probably be easier for you to get one person rather than say 10 people if you were playing a cricket match or soccer game or something. So that’s a huge concern.”
‘General Rule’
The ATP “as a general rule doesn’t encourage its tournaments to have betting sponsors,” tour spokesman Graeme Agars said. The WTA Tour’s Hobart International, an Australian Open warmup, is sponsored by state-owned betting company TOTE Tasmania, while bet-at-home.com AG sponsors women’s events in Austria and the Czech Republic and the men’s Valencia Open.
The London-based ITF, which oversees the sport worldwide, declined to comment on what spokesman Nick Imison described as “an independent commercial decision of the Australian Open.”
Fans can’t bet at the Open but will be able to sign up for Betfair accounts at a demonstration stand in the shadow of Rod Laver Arena, the tournament’s main court. The sponsorship doesn’t give Betfair courtside signs, said Steve Ayles, who oversees Melbourne-based Tennis Australia’s revenue. On-site promotion by Betfair began last year.
Betfair Australia, a joint venture between The Sporting Exchange Ltd. and Australia’s Crown Ltd., pays Tennis Australia a share of revenue from wagers on matches during the two-week Grand Slam, which Twaits said was “one of Betfair’s biggest worldwide betting events.”
Ayles said Tennis Australia gets a “very small percentage” of Betfair’s take. He declined to be specific.
Tournament Turnover
“Ultimately, it does relate to revenue turnover on the Australian Open, but there’s other factors that go into it,” he said in an interview.
Richard Lapchick, director of the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sports at the University of Central Florida, called the Betfair deal a “slippery slope” for a sport with gambling problems. The argument that it generates little revenue for tennis doesn’t help, he said.
“That almost makes it sound silly that, ‘We’re doing this, we’re not really making much money at it and we’re taking a risk of all the public criticism,’” Lapchick, 64, said from his Orlando, Florida, office. “It enhances the perspective of it being a bad decision to begin with.”
Not Immune
Australian Open revenue is forecast to grow to A$152 million ($140 million) this year, up from A$84 million in 2005, said Steve Wood, the tournament’s chief executive officer.
The tournament has replaced two sponsors lost last year, and its sponsorship portfolio has gained 10 percent compared with 2009. Sponsorship deals make up about 30 percent of total revenue, Wood said.
“We’re not immune to the world economy,” Wood, 47, said in an interview. “We’ve had our challenges, but we’re navigating through them.”
Placing a bet -- or “having a punt” -- is an accepted part of life in Australia, a nation of almost 22 million people. Wagering makes up 14 percent of Australia’s A$18 billion gaming industry, with most of the money coming from slot machines, according to a draft report by the government’s Productivity Commission based in the national capital, Canberra.
“We certainly believe that responsible gambling is part of Australian culture,” Tennis Australia’s Ayles said. “We can also ensure that money goes back into developing the sport.”
BusinessWeek
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