Veteran tennis player Feliciano Lopez shared his view on the rampant game-fixing in tennis in the wake of a latest controversy involving two Italian players who are reportedly associated with people involved in game-fixing businesses.
Lopez, who started playing in the ATP Tour since 1998, believed the ATP is still struggling to pacify game-fixing in the sport despite already setting harsh punishment against offenders.
"It`s a shame that professional tennis players get involved in these betting scandals. It`s a difficult problem to challenge, because it`s very easy for players to make money this way,” Lopez told the press in response to report that Daniele Bracciali and Potito Starace were caught talking with game-fixing people on Skype just to drop matches.
There are plenty of criminals that contact players about it, although it never happened to me. But I know of other players who reported to the ATP that they`ve been offered money to lose their matches. It`s a disgrace for our sport."
The 33-year old Lopez said he hasn’t received any offer to fix matches, but he’s very much aware that anyone in the sport, even top-caliber players like Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer, and Novak Djokovic, could fall prey to these criminals.
"It`s very hard to prove that one loses 6-2, 6-2 because the match was fixed. Nowadays unpredictable results are very common in tennis, since even the lower ranked players can beat the top seeds.
“The ATP is trying to fight against this plague, but still there are people who take advantage of the system and manage to make a lot of money."
Game-fixing has been a problem not only in tennis, but in other sports as well. There are several accusations of corruptions in professional football, basketball and boxing over the years, but game-fixing businesses kept on finding ways to infiltrate matches by negotiating with competitors.
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