Marco Cecchinato's ban due to match fixing has been reduced from 18 to 12 months
The Italian player will also pay the half of the fine planned at the beginning, from 40.000 to 20.000 euros, and overall he has to be pretty happy as the Tribunal decided that he did not do anything to fix intentionally a match. He was used to bet on sports matches including football and tennis.
The biggest accusation towards him at first was the fact that he had fixed the match played against Kamil Majchrzak in the Mohammedia Challenger in October 2015. A few weeks before playing this match, Cecchinato, angry because they had lost a bet on an Italian football match, had said to his friend Riccardo Accardi, who was the one to bet, that they could consolate only with the money earned in Morocco. But according to the Tribunal, Cecchinato would have intended that he wanted to get a good result in the tournament so that he could earn a good amount of prize money. He said to Accardi to bet for a Win of his opponent because was not feeling well, and not because he wanted to lose intentionally.
Cecchinato also revealed to Accardi that Andreas Seppi had some physical issues heading to the match against John Isner at the 2015 Roland Garros, he 'could have not done it', the Court said, but these infos were available already on the newspapers so Marco did not do something illegal.
Cecchinato won't be able to play National Tournaments until 16 October 2017, and if ATP will transpose the sentence of the Italian Court, he won't be able to play on the Challenger and ATP Tour as well. It would mean that Cecchinato would return to compete without any ranking.
