Yeah, the initial revelations were all a bit ho-hum. Like, yeah, obvs, and whatever, who cares?

The Graun is now digging quite a lot deeper. There is a long article here, full of information that was new to me...

www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/feb/10/sportsradar-data-deal-tennis-online-betting

...and another here, which touches on the real scandal, as I see it, of players remuneration, written by Irish doubles player James Cluskey...

www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/feb/10/james-cluskey-tennis-futures-betting

I am actually delighted with a lot of this. I think it's fantastic to have the spotlight of international press attention shone on the ITF pro tour. I would love to see a proper in-depth professional journalist's tournament feature article on a 10k tournament; and the human stories of what the competitors and their families have to go through to carry on competing.

It's also being proposed that live video webcasts are introduced; just to cut corruption; but if so that would transform the sport entirely. Rather than providing just bookies data, the ITF would be webcasting entertaining sporting action, 24/7, worldwide.

Adidas, Nike, etc, could be throwing (small) clothing and racquet contracts around like confetti.

US$14M p.a. is a lot of money. I seem to remember that in 2014, total prize money on the ITF was US$11M, the same amount as Serena earned in prize money alone. And she might quadruple that, with endorsements. Who knows?

Note the Guardian, very typically for all mainstream media, didn't even report NaomiB's or Kyle's tournament wins. All "second tier" and, by implication "second-rate" stuff.

So I rather hope this scandal is going to force the ITF to display their product in front of the global marketplace, via live webcasts. And that, with this amount of heat, Sportsradar will be very anxious to help them do so.

Global satellite TV coverage has introduced a massive gulf between the WTA sleb circus and the rest. I think there is now the potential for the next generation of technology, internet webcasts, serving the betting markets, but also entertaining tennis and general sports fans, to erode that gap, very rapidly. Here's hoping...

They will surely all see sense eventually. The USTA has already.

OK, not umpires but couldn't find another corruption site

Seemingly, the Czech tennis authorities got raided by police a couple of days ago

According to a translation site:

"The police charged four people and four legal entities for abusing the subsidies provided by the state to the Czech Tennis Association (TS) to support the sport. He is prosecuting them for subsidy fraud and for negotiating an advantage when awarding a public contract."

Supposedly, one of the very important tennis 'clubs' (not sure what the actual structure is) who receieve the lion's share of state funding, run by an influnetial Czech tennis guy, has been siphoning off funds (to him and family members - he also has family on the board etc)

czechia.postsen.com/trends/186915/Abuse-of-subsidies-at-the-tennis-association-The-police-intervened-in-his-residence-charged-four-people.html