The International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA) recently banned Stefan Milićević for 24 years and fined him $70,000. It accused him of fixing six matches, five of them his own, attempting to fix six more between 2022 and 2024, and recruiting or attempting to recruit other players into a corrupt network. The ban was announced on October 15, and three days later, tennis journalist Jon Wertheim urged the sport’s governing bodies to consider learning from the NBA.

Wertheim, a Sports Illustrated writer since 1997, 60 Minutes correspondent since 2017, and Tennis Channel commentator, wrote on X on Sunday: “Can tennis not do the same? Restrict microbets, restrict betting on challenger level and below, etc. Note how many of the @itia_tennis convicted match-fixers had sub-1000 rankings…your serve @atptour, @WTA, @worldtennis.”

Allen McDuffee, a journalist who has worked for The Washington Post, replied with a reality check: “Certainly they can. But dare I say that the numerous betting house sponsors — especially at the lower levels where they are sometimes title sponsors — would not take that well.”

Wertheim’s comments came two days after the NBA directed its sportsbook partners such as DraftKings and FanDuel to drop several bet types, such as:

• Parlays combining multiple under bets on the same player’s statistical performance, such as wagers predicting that the player will fall short of specified points, rebounds, assists, or other statistical thresholds.
• Under bets on players who average fewer than 12 minutes of playing time or are expected to play for less than 12 minutes.
• “First-of” wagers covering specific opening-game events, including which player scores the first basket, makes the first three-pointer, records the first block, or wins the opening tip.

The league can do this through its sportsbook contracts, and it estimates those partners account for upward of 99% of the U.S. betting market. It has also built an in-house AI monitoring platform and will require players, coaches, and training staff to attend in-person training on betting rules in addition to an annual online course requirement, led by former NFL player and retired FBI agent Charles Tillman. A revised fan code of conduct will also treat betting-related harassment as prohibited.

NBA executive vice president Scott Kaufman-Ross told ESPN that the Jontay Porter and Terry Rozier cases were factors in banning single-player under parlays, which the memo calls “low likelihood, high payout bets.”

The rules apply only to traditional sportsbook partners. Kalshi and Polymarket sit outside them, and Commissioner Adam Silver told CNBC the league wants their data: “We also want control of the market”. Tennis has its own version of that exposure, and it starts with data.

“Microbets” refers to wagers on a slice of an event, such as who wins the next point in a tennis match. Whether such markets exist on a given match depends partly on the data feed behind it.

The Independent Review of Integrity in Tennis, led by Adam Lewis QC, described the problem in its December 19, 2018 final report as “particularly acute and pervasive” at the lowest level, ITF men’s $15,000 and $25,000 events.

It said official live-scoring data sales had greatly expanded betting markets there and recommended ending supply for the developmental base tier. By September 2019, Sportradar’s David Lampitt described that phase-out as still in a “transitional phase”. In February 2025, ITIA CEO Karen Moorhouse told Tennis365: “There are clear risks of there being a betting market at that level.” She also said lower-level events depend on data sales and betting sponsorship to go ahead.

The ITIA’s 2025 annual review recorded 68 match alerts, down from 95 in 2024. Challenger events produced 28, ITF men’s events 28, and ITF women’s events nine. WTA Tour events produced two, the US Open one, and the review’s ATP Tour row shows none. The ITIA states that an alert alone is not evidence of match-fixing and that many more matches are played at the bottom of the pyramid than at the top.

Rankings in recent cases back part of Wertheim’s point. Milićević peaked at 1,338. Pang Renlong, suspended for 12 years after admitting to fixing five singles matches and making 17 corrupt approaches to other players between May and September 2024, peaked at 1,316. Ángel Maleno Rosario, banned for three years for fixing a 2022 doubles match, reached 2,372 in singles. Others ranked higher: Quentin Folliot, banned for 20 years, reached 488.

Betting money also moved closer to the sport this summer. Front Office Sports reported on August 30 that the US Open had added Kalshi as a last-minute partner, and Wertheim called the decision disappointing, writing that the tournament had taken sponsorship from “a platform predicated on profiting from inside information”.

In early August, Polymarket was named the ATP’s official prediction-market provider, with exclusive streaming rights in that category for ATP Tour and Challenger Tour matches, roughly 20,000 per season, and Sportradar supplying official data. That deal covers the Challenger level Wertheim named.

And the tours’ own step concerns money rather than markets. It was shared in September that rules for 2027 will require betting sponsors and the tournaments they back to put 10% of the applicable contract amount toward player welfare and benefit programs, 5% for combined events. Not much in that report limits which bets can be offered.