Australian Open betting has seen a mysteriously high number of odds were placed on two tennis players in a mixed doubles match between Andrea Hlavackova & Lukasz Kubot and Lara Arruabarrena & David Marrero. Due to this suspicious event, all the bets taken prior to the Australian Open Tennis Championship were suspended by Pinnacle Sports gambling company.
The reason of the decision was the exceptional amount of money which was wagered on bets before the sport event.
Furthermore, gambling activity was stopped 13 hours before the game, which also could be the indication of the same – the match had been fixed in advance.
Everything started with massive betting on the Czech and the Polish players. At the same time, the odds of Arruabarrena & Marrero winning dropped down drastically – to be exact, by 18% – within 30 minutes.
Marco Blume, the Head of Sportsbook at Pinnacle stated that they realized massive gambling activity on their website; a small number of people operating with huge amounts of money which is really unusual regarding these kind of small matches.
Furthermore, as it was clearly visible through the taken bets Australian Open betting predicted the victory of the Czech/Polish duo, the final result is 6-0, 6-3 against the Spanish players.
Neither the International Tennis Federation (ITF) nor the Tennis Integrity Unit (TIU) has not been informed of any related issues about match fixing and ITF refused the accusation of covering up match fixing.
Pinnacle Sports have started to investigate with the support of BBC and Buzzfeed against the top 50 ranked players in connection with the suspicion of match fixing, but nothing happened officially. However, plenty of player’s name were in “the starting field of the Australian Open” generating more questions in relation to the mystical background of the Australian Open betting.