Italian pair Daniele Bracciali and Potito Starace banned from tennis for match-fixing offences

The Tennis Integrity Unit has announced stringent match-fixing bans against the Italian pair Daniele Bracciali and Potito Starace, in what is expected to be the last word on a case that has dogged the sport for over a decade.

Bracciali – who returned to the court this year and won an ATP title in Kitzbuhel in August – has been banned for life and also fined $250,000, in a sentence that equals the heaviest ever handed down by the TIU. Starace received a 10-year ban and $100,000 fine.

The two players – who reached the 2012 French Open semi-final as a doubles partnership – were originally fined £35,700 between them and banned for a combined total of four-and-a-half months for making bets in 2005.

Then, in 2015, law-enforcement officers from the Italian city of Cremona brought further charges, based on intercepted phone and internet conversations. In a phone call with a businessman, Bracciali had supposedly discussed making €50,000 through deliberately losing sets, while Starace was alleged to have accepted illicit payments for losing to Pablo Andujar in Casablanca. In a confusing sequence of events, both men received life bans from the Italian Tennis Federation in 2015, only to have them rescinded on appeal two months later, although Bracciali still served a year’s ban.

The TIU’s investigations focused on a different tournament: Barcelona 2011, where Starace abandoned his first-round match against Daniel Gimeno-Traver early in the deciding set. Starace is 37, and had climbed as high as No 27 in the world shortly before he was originally banned in 2007. Bracciali is 40, and reached No 49 in the singles rankings in 2006.

Meanwhile, the ATP celebrated their achievement in passing the 2.5 million mark for spectators at the O2 Arena, where the Nitto ATP Finals have been held since 2009. However, the figures showed that the 2018 attendance of 243,819 was the lowest yet recorded by the tournament since it moved to London. The highest figure was the 263,560 who came through the doors in 2014, an event which reached an unexpected conclusion when Roger Federer withdrew from the final with a bad back and Andy Murray stepped in to play an exhibition match against Novak Djokovic instead.

London’s hosting agreement is due to run out after the 2020 edition of the ATP Finals, which have never remained in one place for more than 13 years. Tokyo – the home city of new sponsors Nitto – is seen as one potential successor to London’s reign.