French tennis player’s ban extended to three years

A French tennis player has seen his ban for match-fixing extended to three years after his appeal backfired, with the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) increasing the original penalty. The International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA) confirmed the decision on Wednesday, July 15, 2026.

Samuel Bensoussan, a 34-year-old whose career-high singles ranking was 405 in June 2018, was initially suspended for one year and 11 months last June. An independent anti-corruption hearing officer found him guilty of fixing four matches in lower-tier events for an organized crime syndicate based in Belgium. He was also fined 12,000 euros.

Bensoussan appealed to CAS to overturn the ban, while the ITIA cross-appealed, seeking a suspension of six and a half years. The court dismissed Bensoussan's appeal, upheld all but one of the 18 anti-corruption charges against him, and agreed the original sanction was too lenient. The three-year ban is backdated to start in May 2025, when his initial suspension began, meaning it will now run until May 2028.

The case is linked to a wider criminal investigation. According to the CAS verdict published by the ITIA, the probe "uncovered a criminal organization that...