French Open organizers taking online betting companies to court over gambling

[clevfan]

French Open organizers taking online betting companies to court over gambling

The Associated Press
Friday, February 1, 2008

BRUSSELS, Belgium: French Open organizers opened a landmark court case Friday in a bid to ban online gambling companies from offering bets on the Grand Slam tournament.

The French filed a complaint before a Liege court in eastern Belgium and in Paris, claiming the Internet betting companies stain the reputation of the clay-court championship at Roland Garros.

"There is urgency to act because sporting ethic is at risk," said Jean-Francois Vilotte, director general of the French tennis federation, told The Associated Press. "It is an issue as important as the fight against doping."

The issue of integrity in tennis came to the fore in August, when an online betting site — Betfair — voided all wagers on a match in Poland between fifth-ranked Nikolay Davydenko and 87th-ranked Martin Vassallo Arguello because of irregular betting patterns. Davydenko withdrew from the match in the third set, citing a foot injury.

Since then, several players came forward to say they have been approached with offers to fix matches for money.

The French federation is suing three companies — Betfair, Bwin and Ladbrokes — with a court injunction to stop their betting activity on the French Open. It seeks a fine of €50,000 ($75,000) a day for any violations, said Vilotte's lawyer, Jean-Louis Dupont.

If successful, the court case could drastically affect the multibillion euro (dollar) sports betting industry, which thrives on such events like the tennis majors.

With soccer and horse racing, tennis is among the most popular sports when it comes to betting and gamblers can put wagers on such small detail as how many points will be won by one player in a specific game.

When Vilotte monitored the ATP Masters Series tournament in Paris, which the FFT also organizes, he said bets over the weeklong tournament totaled between €500 million (US$750 million)and €1 billion (US$1.5 billion).

"You can imagine that for Roland Garros, the totals would be much higher," he said.

Dupont said the federation's case is built on two basic tenants: that the betting companies are tainting the reputation of the French Open and unfairly using the tournament as a way of making money.

If a match-fixing scandal would break at the French Open, it would undermine the value of the tournament, which had a 2007 turnover of €118 million (US$175 million) and attracted 450,000 fans to Roland Garros and a potential 3 billion viewers worldwide, Dupont said.

The federation says the betting companies manage to avoid being stuck with the fallout when there is suspicion of match fixing.

"They purely scrap the bets on the event in question and by doing that generate a scandal that the organization and players have to deal with. It can give them a lifelong ugly reputation," Dupont said.

The ATP opened an investigation into the Davydenko match, interviewing him and his wife and reviewing telephone records. No findings have been announced.

Late last year, three Italian pros — Potito Starace, Daniele Bracciali and Alessio Di Mauro — were suspended for betting on tennis matches involving other players.