Can we fix it? The inside story of match fixing in tennis

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 14 February 2019

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Last month, law enforcement officials in Spain said they had broken up a major match fixing ring in tennis. The Guardia Civil said 28 players competing at the lower levels of tennis were implicated. It's alleged that a group of Armenians had bribed the players to fix matches.

Assignment reveals the inside story of how players and betting gangs are seeking to corrupt the lower tiers of the sport. In many cases, a player only has to lose a set or certain games - not the whole match - to get paid. Players and fixers communicate on social media as matches get underway to ensure the correct outcome is achieved. The rewards can be significant with players sometimes being paid thousands of pounds - often much more than they can earn in prize money. For the betting gangs who have placed money on a guaranteed outcome, the pay off can be much greater.

Two years after the BBC first revealed concerns about match fixing in the game, Assignment looks at how the tennis authorities have responded to the issue and examines the measures put forward by an independent panel to reduce the risk of corruption.

Reporter: Paul Connolly Producer: Paul Grant

(Image: A tennis ball on a tennis court. Photo credit: AFP / Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to assignment on the BBC World Service.
0:03.4	I'm Paul Connolly.
0:04.8	This week the story of how a young Egyptian player became central to one of the largest
0:10.2	match fixing rings in professional tennis. With access to confidential
0:15.0	documents and to social media messages we show how players and gamblers
0:19.8	cheated and contrived the scores of matches and then pocketed the often substantial profits.
0:30.0	My name is Karima Sam and and my ear birthday is in April 1994.
0:37.0	I agree that anything said by me in this interview will be based on facts and matters
0:44.0	within my knowledge and are true. I know and accept that. A record of this
0:48.8	interview can be used as evidence. In the world of professional tennis Karima Sam was once seen as a
0:56.4	rising star especially in his days of Egypt. In the recording you've just heard
1:01.2	however he's being grilled by investigators who believe
1:05.2	he's involved in fixing tennis matches.
1:08.8	Welcome to assignment on the BBC World Service.
1:11.9	I'm Paul Connolly and in this program my
1:14.6	lay bare private word-for-word messages exchanged between players detailing how
1:20.9	they planned to cheat and to contrive the score of competitive matches.
1:25.6	Bro, you lose the first set, then win the match. You get 2,500.
1:30.4	Okay. Hopefully it's okay because I need the money. God willing, we all need the money, my friend.
1:39.3	If you can bet on it, you can fix it. And so international organized crime have a giant appetite across all
1:45.8	sports but particularly easy sports that they can fix so things such as tennis.
1:49.6	Players do say they've been threatened that their families have been threatened.
	...

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