Tours Confront Gambling From Stands

Written by: Staff on 12th January 2012

Tours Confront Gambling From Stands |

The tours continue to confront the problems of fans using mobile devices from the stands to affect betting outcomes. At the Auckland tournament, two fans were ejected for suspicion of transmitting “inside” information.

“Somebody sitting in the stands with a cell phone can transmit this information to someone in Europe and the guy will bet that the first serve was a fault,” ATP referee Tom Barnes told the New Zealand Herald. “And the person who is making the bet will have the information before anybody else so they’re actually cheating in that respect. We see them. All of us look for that. The chair umpires, linesman, myself, we all look around. We’ve been trained in how to spot these people.

“Most of the time it’s pretty obvious, everybody in the stands is standing up applauding and one guy is sitting there with his hands in his pockets. So they’re transmitting the data from the matches, which doesn’t belong to them. What happens when they do that, especially in Europe, they gamble on that. On some of these European betting sites, you can bet for example on a first serve and whether a guy is going to make a fault or not.”

Some gamblers are alleged to pay people to sit at matches and text or email them information before it appears online so as to give them an edge when placing bets. While at smaller tournaments it may be possible to catch some offenders, it is very difficult to do in big stadium that hold 20,000-plus fans.

Barnes added that he believed the two people ejected were known to the ATP tour.

“It’s almost as if it’s a career opportunity for some people. They show up everywhere. These people are very crafty.”

Topics: Gambling