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French Open fails to shut down internet betting 29/4/2008
Matt Scott

French Open organisers have failed in a major assault through the courts aimed at shutting down internet betting on their tournament.

A screen shot of Ladbrokes' betting site
A screen shot of Ladbrokes' betting site
The landmark ruling was delivered in a Belgian court in Liège yesterday with the defeat of the Fédération Française de Tennis's claim that the online bookmakers Ladbrokes, Betfair and Bwin are guilty of encouraging corruption in tennis. A secondary claim that the companies' offer of tennis markets amounts to profiteering by "parasites" was also thrown out and in both cases the bookmakers were awarded costs.

The FFT brought its case following a rash of incidents that have led to players being accused of fixing matches for online betting stings. It claimed that the presence of betting markets exploited "the name, reputation and renown" of the French Open and Paris Masters tournaments.


"The plaintiff is asking for, on the one hand, a total ban on online betting taken by the Belgian public on the 2008 Roland Garros tournament and the Paris Masters 2008 and, on the other hand, the annulment and reimbursement of bets already taken by Belgian residents," noted the judgement.

The FFT was represented by Jean-Marie Dupont, who cited the "Davydenko affair" - a case in which the Russian world No4, Nikolay Davydenko, has been under investigation for allegedly fixing a match at the Poland Open last August, following suspicious betting patterns that led Betfair to void all bets. The judgement cites Dupont's legal team for the FFT as saying: "Taking into account the Davydenko affair and the events that followed, a normally prudent and diligent economic operator would ... certainly abstain from practices that [present] major risks to tournament organisers."

But even the appearance of Dupont, Belgium's celebrity sports litigator who was effectively the architect of football's Bosman ruling with his successful challenge of Fifa's rules, was not enough to persuade the Liège court. It found in favour of the bookmakers who had argued that gambling is a legal and ancestral practice in sport that has never been challenged until now.

Indeed the bookmakers successfully turned the argument against the players who are guilty of match-fixing. "'Fixed' matches, as far as these may be established, are not down to what the [bookmaker] has done but down to the 'manipulations' or 'attempts at corruption' of certain players with whom the [bookmaker] has no links at all," said lawyers for the bookmakers. "Someone who offers a service cannot be rendered responsible for an inappropriate use of that service if he has taken steps to prevent such inappropriate use."

The court accepted Betfair's numerous memoranda of understanding with tennis's governing bodies as evidence of the steps it has taken as a "normally prudent and diligent" operator.

The failure of the case has been met with immense relief in the online gambling industry as it could have led to a domino effect of similar cases in other jurisdictions. A parallel action is being fought in a Paris court but yesterday's ruling will certainly not enhance the FFT's case.

And the FFT must now fight a counterclaim from Bwin in the Paris high court. The bookmaker is suing the federation for damages it perceives it has sustained to its reputation as a result of the FFT claim in the Liège court that its actions facilitate fraud. "The internet is an extremely efficient tool in providing operators with a perfect audit trail, one that can, where appropriate, be shared with regulators and other authorities in order to trace bets and hence provide valuable evidence in the fight against fraud in sports," said the European gambling industry's trade association, EGBA, in a statement.

"In contrast to the views of the FFT, any match-fixing would penalise bookmakers severely as they take financial risk when setting odds for all sporting events."
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