Jimmy Connors - "Return to the Stone Age"
Old master Jimmy Connors reacted with incomprehension to the punishment for Mardy Fish and Bob Bryan because of their commitment to a kind of betting provider.
by tennisnet.com
last edit:
Dec 05, 2022, 05:18 pm
In September 2022, the US sports giant ESPN announced that a new record number of eleven million participants had signed for its in-house fantasy football league. The fantasy league business is not only thriving in football, but also in Major League Baseball (MLB) or, to a lesser extent, in the National Basketball Association (NBA). The platform that Mardy Fish and Bob Bryan briefly promoted over the summer offers just that: a way to build a team of NFL pros and compete with like-minded people.
When Jimmy Connors, with 109 tournament victories still the record holder on the ATP tour, now criticizes the fine for Fish and Bryan (US$ 10,000 and a conditional ban of four months) and in the same breath the benefits of bookmakers for the tennis circus emphasizes, then there are two things that you can't compare with each other: In fantasy football, you don't bet on the outcome of matches, but on the individual statistics of individual players. Match-fixing is almost impossible.
Betting providers are the ones who suffer
Things are different in tennis. Because here it has happened in the past that a player did not play a match with full commitment for financial reasons. The sufferers, besides the integrity of the sport, by the way: the bookmakers. On the other hand, they have been supporting tennis as sponsors for years, be it as the main sponsor of tournaments or as a second-rate sponsor.
In any case, Jimmy Connors only sees positive things in the combination of betting and tennis: "Betting gets people more involved with the sport, to be interested in what's going on with the players, who is the best, how they compete, and so on,” Connors explained on his Advantage Connors podcast.
In any case, the legendary left-hander classified the punishments for Davis Cup captain Fish and doubles legend Bryan as a throwback to the Stone Age.