Four Table Tennis Players Suspended Following Investigation

Four table tennis players have been named and suspended as part of a new far-reaching investigation that accused Luke Savill, Darius Knight, Joseph Langham-Ferreira, and Kazeem Adeleke of various offenses.

Table Tennis Players Targeted in Far-Reaching Investigation

The four players were investigated by a task force that brought together the UK Gambling Commission, the International Table Tennis Federation, and Table Tennis England, with all four players found in breach of the TTE Anti-Corruption Regulations.

Specifically, the players are said to have placed wagers on prohibited games and have further been found to be placing bets on markets that generated an “unusual betting activity.” This is often an indicator of game-manipulation that sports bodies, regulators, and operators have often used to trace back match-fixing offenses to the people responsible for them.

The investigation was originally launched by Table Tennis England, which was tipped by the Sports Betting Intelligence Unit, which works under the UKGC, about an unusual betting activity about several games that were played in Ukraine in 2020.

Sports betting accounts in the United Kingdom were responsible for generating the unusual betting handle, the SBIU told Table Tennis England. According to the investigators, Savill has been involved in fixing table tennis games in the country, although it is not immediately clear if this was a sole transgression or had been going on for a while.

Knight and Langham-Ferreira were implicated in the same crimes as Savill. The only person not to have colluded in order to manipulate games was reportedly Adeleke, but he was nevertheless found guilty of placing wagers on table tennis games.

Table Tennis England has clearly defined that contestants are not allowed to place wagers whether personally or through a proxy on competitions in the sport.

As a result, the Disciplinary Committee that wrapped up the investigation for Table Tennis England has awarded a six-year suspension from the sport to Savill and Knight. Langham-Ferreira’s transgressions were deemed to be less severe, and he was given a three-year suspension.

Suspensions Granted Over Match-Fixing and Regular Betting

Although Adeleke did not himself participate in any attempts to fix games, his sports betting habits incurred a five-year penalty during which he won’t be able to play at events sanctioned by table tennis governing bodies, nor appear at such events, or participate in professional or amateur table tennis on any level – including but not limited to advisory or coaching roles.

More importantly, however, the case against the four players highlights the importance of bringing different stakeholders together, no matter what their geography is.

Andrew Rhodes, the CEO of the UKGC, has said that the case of the four players specifically highlighted what global collaboration can do in helping uproot match-manipulation and betting offenses.