Good girl, bad boy: Corrupt behavior in professional tennis

Objective: In order to study gender differences in competition and corruption, this paper identifies matches on the male and female professional tennis tours in which one player faces a high payoff from being “on the bubble” of direct entry into one of the lucrative Grand Slam tournaments while their opposition does not. Entry into Grand Slam tournaments can generate significant portions of yearly income relative to other tournaments for players who are on the bubble, as a loss in the first round of a Grand Slam tournament can rival prize monies for much greater performance in non-Grand Slam events. For players who have already qualified for Grand Slam events, this creates a situation where one player may be competing for a chance to access a significant payoff relative to their yearly income, while the opposing player is already guaranteed admittance and is only playing for prize money in the current match.

Data/Methods: We analyze over 378,000 matches from the male and female professional tennis tours incorporating logit regressions, numerous robustness checks, and an eventual Oaxaca decomposition to provide insight into the phenomenon.

Results: We provide strong evidence for corrupt behavior on the men’s tour, as bubble players are substantially more likely to beat better ranked opponents when a win is desperately needed to gain entry into the Grand Slam events. However, we find no such evidence on the women’s tour in comparable situations. These results are consistent throughout a series of extensions and robustness checks, highlighting gender differences regarding corrupt and unethical behavior, but also concerning collusion. We especially find evidence for collusion after monetary incentives were further increased in 2012. Finally, the market for sports betting does not seem to be aware of this phenomenon, suggesting a market imperfection and further confirming our suspicion of irregular activities in men’s tennis.