Novak Djokovic has given his views on gambling in tennis, saying that players do not receive a fair share of the money made by betting companies involved with the sport.
Betting in tennis has long been a controversial subject, particularly when it comes to matches between lower-ranked players at smaller tournaments. This is because the room for corruption here is huge, with players match-fixing in order to earn more money due to the minimal amounts offered to players outside of the top tiers.
Non-ATP and WTA professional competition matches in Great Britain and the USA sell match feeds to betting sites in order to help fund their events.
Djokovic makes radical proposal
Now, World No. 1 and 24-time Grand Slam champion Djokovic has made a radical proposal in order to ensure that the huge sums of money made from tennis by gambling companies also benefits the players.
"Because of the integrity of the sport we are not allowed as players to put any of the betting companies patches on our clothes clothes while we’re playing on the court and we do not get a fair share," he said.
"When I say fair share I mean 50/50 at least with the tournaments that are allowed on the other hand to have the major sponsors from the betting world.
"So that’s as simple as it gets and for me, it’s completely unacceptable. Personally, I probably would not get a betting sponsor on my sleeve but I know that probably 95 per cent of the players would do that.
"I would support that but if that’s not allowed then what we would deserve to have is 50 percent of the share that the tournament gets from these sponsorship deals with with betting houses," he continued.
However, players associating with betting companies has sparked controversy in the past, with some fans vehemently disagreeing with the endorsement of what is often considered to be an unethical practice.