{"id":707,"section":"sports","section_label":"Sports","url":"https://www.brokenews.co/sports/707","headline":"Serbian player Milićević banned from tennis for 24 years","dek":"The ITIA found Stefan Milićević fixed six matches and tried to recruit other players into a corrupt network.","body":"Stefan Milićević, a 29-year-old Serbian player whose career-high ranking was world No. 1,338, has been banned from tennis for 24 years, running through 2050. It is one of the harshest penalties the sport's anti-corruption body has handed down short of an outright lifetime ban.\n\nThe International Tennis Integrity Authority said Milićević fixed six matches, five of which he personally played in, and charged him with attempting to fix six more between 2022 and 2024. He spent his career on the lower rungs of the professional circuit, far from any tour-level spotlight, which investigators say made him useful as a recruiter rather than just a participant.\n\nThe ITIA also accused Milićević of recruiting, or trying to recruit, multiple other professional players into what it called a corrupt network. Some of those players have themselves been accused by the ITIA in connection with the scheme. According to The Athletic, Milićević did not engage with the investigation.\n\nThe case underscores how match-fixing in tennis tends to cluster at the sport's lower levels, where prize money is thin and players are easier targets for corruption rings.","published_at":"2026-10-15T23:35:54.461229+00:00","source_count":4,"written_from":[{"outlet":"ESPN","publisher":"ESPN","title":"Serbian tennis player Milićević gets 24-year ban for match-fixing","url":"https://www.espn.com/tennis/story/_/id/50189908/tennis-player-stefan-milićević-banned-24-years-match-fixing"},{"outlet":"Yahoo Sports","publisher":"Yahoo Sports","title":"Serb player banned to 2050 for tennis match-fixing","url":"https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/serb-player-banned-2050-tennis-162834921.html"},{"outlet":"The Athletic","publisher":"The Athletic","title":"Tennis player suspended for 24 years after fixing six matches, corrupting other players","url":"https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/7692493/2026/10/15/tennis-match-fixing-stefan-milicevic-ban/"}],"more_coverage":[{"outlet":"Yahoo Sports","publisher":"Yahoo Sports","title":"Serbian tennis player banned for 24 years for match-fixing","url":"https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/serbian-tennis-player-banned-24-172931939.html"},{"outlet":"Yahoo Sports","publisher":"Yahoo Sports","title":"Serbian tennis player Milicevic handed 24-year ban for match-fixing","url":"https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/serbian-tennis-player-milicevic-handed-181834959.html"},{"outlet":"New York Post","publisher":"New York Post","title":"Serbian tennis player hit with 24-year ban in match-fixing scandal","url":"https://nypost.com/2026/10/15/sports/serbian-tennis-player-hit-with-24-year-ban-in-match-fixing-scandal/"}],"image":null,"embed":null,"license":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/","attribution":"Analysis data is licensed CC BY 4.0. Credit brokenews and link to the story page you took it from. Source headlines, story titles taken from a source headline, and quoted passages remain the property of their publishers and are quoted for comparison, not licensed onward.","terms":"https://www.brokenews.co/about#reuse"}