Tennis match-fixing update: Thanasi Kokkinakis reveals he was offered to fix tennis match via social media
Australian tennis prospect Thanasi Kokkinakis has revealed he was offered money on social media to purposely lose tennis matches, following controversial allegations about widespread match-fixing that rocked the sport, as well as the 2016 Australian Open at Melbourne Park.
Kokkinakis, who is nursing a shoulder injury that has kept him sidelined in this year’s Australian Open, is the latest tennis player to reveal he was offered money to throw away a match. According to the Aussie teen, this happened nearly a decade ago.
The 19-year-old told radio station 3AW Breakfast that players like him have always been part of such schemes, although what he experienced was not a face-to-face incident.
"You read some stuff on your Facebook page, just randoms from nowhere, saying, 'I'll pay you this much money to tank the game', but you try to block it off ... get rid of that stuff and focus on what you need to do ahead,” Kokkinakis said, reports the Sydney Morning Herald. "You don't really take it seriously, there's all these randoms around the place."
The 2016 Australian Open was hit with shocking allegations about match-fixing involving more than 70 players on nine leaked lists of suspected fixers who have been flagged but unsanctioned by tennis authorities, including a top-50 ranked tennis pro currently competing at the first Grand Slam event of the year, according to the BBC and BuzzFeed.
Prior to Kokkinakis’ confession, world No. 1 Novak Djokovic was the first to break silence about the controversial claims that surfaced on Monday. Djokovic admitted he was offered $200,000 in 2007 to lose a first round match at a tournament in St. Petersburg, Russia, one of the two countries mentioned in the report, where international crime syndicates orchestrate match-fixing.
"It made me feel terrible because I don't want to be anyhow linked to this kind of -- you know, somebody may call it an opportunity," Djokovic said, reports ESPN. "For me, that's an act of unsportsmanship, a crime in sport honestly.”
