William Hill lose Australian Open courtside presence

The Australian division of UK bookmakers William Hill won’t have a courtside presence at this year’s Australian Open tennis event.

Hills made history at the 2016 Australian Open by becoming the first official betting partner of the nation’s biggest annual sporting event. The deal, believed to have been worth a cool AU$5m, marked the first time a bookie had partnered with a Grand Slam event and Hills said its betting turnover rose 80% year-on-year thanks to the extra exposure.

But the tie-up provoked no shortage of controversy, particularly in light of other bookies’ claims of suspicious betting patterns on an Australian Open match. Though investigators subsequently cleared the players involved in the suspect match, the publicity wasn’t the kind tennis organizers would have preferred.

On Thursday, Tennis Australia president Steve Healey confirmed that Hills’ courtside advertisements won’t be visible when the 2017 event gets underway next month. Healey said the 2016 deal with Hills was signed “before this [match-fixing] issue had such a high profile and so we’ve worked with our partners to address that.”