It is not all that long ago that Wimbledon had a betting booth on site at the All England Club, a throwback to an era when it was considered perfectly fine for players to bet on themselves – or someone else, for that matter.

In the intervening 40 years, tennis has undergone huge modernisation, from racket and ball technology to the huge boost in television viewers that helped to usher in the enormous wealth the sport now enjoys.

But with wealth comes corruption and officials were reeling yesterday after a joint investigation from the BBC and BuzzFeed claimed that tennis authorities had sat on information that many top players, some of them grand slam champions, had been involved in match-fixing.

There were no names – with no phone records or bank statements it is virtually impossible to prove fixing – and there was little new in the report, bar the accusation that one grand slam singles champion was among those implicated.

“I would like to hear the name,” Roger Federer said yesterday. “I would love to hear names. Then at least it's concrete stuff and you can actually debate about it.

“Was it the player? Was it the support team? Who was it? Was it before? Was it a doubles player, a singles player? Which slam? It's so all over the place. It's nonsense to answer something that is pure speculation.

“It's super serious and it's super-important to maintain the integrity of our sport. So how high up does it go? The higher it goes, the more surprised I would be, no doubt about it.

“Not about people being approached, but just people doing it in general. I just think there's no place at all for this kind of behaviour and things in our sport. I have no sympathy for those people.”

The report focused on the men’s Tour only so considering that only three men other than the big four of Novak Djokovic, Federer, Rafael Nadal and Andy Murray have won grand slams since 2007, the potential list is a short one.

A total of 16 players who have been ranked in the top 50 and eight players entered in this fortnight’s Australian Open, the report said, had been involved in matches flagged by suspicious betting patterns.

This information was passed onto the Tennis Intergrity Unit, a joint initiative of the International Tennis Federation, the men's and women's tours, and the Grand Slam Board set up to tackle betting-related corruption in the sport.

While the BBC and BuzzFeed say it was not acted upon, the TIU said every piece of information is looked into, although irregular betting patterns, in themselves, are not evidence of match-fixing.

The head of the TIU, Nigel Willerton, sat alongside ATP chief Chris Kermode yesterday as the Tours released a joint statement, strongly refuting suggestions that they had suppressed the information.

Djokovic yesterday confirmed that he was once offered $200,000 to lose a match in St Petersburg.

The low prize money at Futures Tour and Challenger Tour levels make tennis vulnerable to match fixing and spot fixing, as does the fact that it only takes one player to fix a match.

The timing of the report was aimed for maximum damage and the smiles usually on show at the Happy Slam were replaced with frowns as officials scurried to offer a response, though the press conference lasted 10 minutes.

It is possible that good work is being done by the TIU behind the scenes but it’s impossible to know because nothing is said by an organisation lacking transparency and accountability.

“On the basis of the BBC/Buzzfeed exposé Tennis is again exposed for both for its vulnerability to betting-fraud related match fixing and for its poor choice of structure and process for the so-called Tennis Integrity Unit,” Chris Eaton, the director of integrity at the International Centre of Sports Security, told Herald Sport.

“Integrity is by definition open and transparent. The TIU is neither.

“If we have learned anything from the continuing and shocking unfolding scandals in international sports such as FIFA and the IAAF, it is that in the global realities of today, sport governing bodies cannot effectively self-regulate in isolation of governments or each other.

“(Tennis) is no different and is in fact more vulnerable than many due to its enormous attraction as a gambling product. Tennis is the third most targeted sport for betting fraud match fixing behind football and cricket.”

The year-long investigation relied heavily on a nine-year-old report surrounding the notorious case involving a match between Russian Nikolay Davydenko and Argentina’s Martin Vassalo-Arguello in Poland, in 2007.

Despite damning evidence, nothing was proved against either player but led to the instigation of the TIU.

In its eight years, the TIU has managed 18 convictions with six life bans, mostly of players ranked well down the pecking order.

The ATP said yesterday that is a distinction between betting and corruption but with so many bets on offer, especially in-play, the area between the two has become increasingly grey.

With so much money at the top of the game, it seems likely that most of the match-fixing is at lower levels.

If authorities and bookmakers wanted to make a real impact, then in-play betting would be banned, removing the vast majority of spot-fixing opportunities, while betting would also be restricted to the main Tour.

But with so much money in tennis – and with tournaments, including the Australian Open, who partnered with William Hill this year, happy to take the betting dollar, there is too much money for it to be a possibility.