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Stefan Milicevic’s career high was a world singles ranking of 1,338, reached in August 2014. His punishment is considerably more conspicuous: a 24-year suspension from tennis, running until 8 October 2050, by which point the Serb will be 53 years old.
The International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA) announced the sanction on Wednesday, alongside a $70,000 (£52,800) fine, after finding that Milicevic fixed six matches — five of which he played in himself — and attempted to fix six more between 2022 and 2024. He was also charged with recruiting, or attempting to recruit, multiple professional players into what the ITIA described as “a corrupt network”, a scheme that led to further fixed matches by others.
Outside of a lifetime ban, it is among the heaviest penalties the sport’s integrity body has ever imposed.
Twenty-four years, and silence
The length of the ban is explained as much by what Milicevic did not do as by what he did. The ITIA investigated the case through 2026 and found the 29-year-old entirely unresponsive, noting “seven separate ITIA attempts, through multiple channels, to raise a response from the player.”
He was issued with a Notice of Major Offence on 24 September. He did not reply to that either. Under the ITIA’s rules and sanctioning guidelines, non-response triggers a deemed sanction — the case is resolved without a hearing, and the proposed penalty simply takes effect. Milicevic’s did so on 9 October.
The terms are comprehensive. For the next 24 years he cannot play in, coach at, or even attend any event organised or sanctioned by World Tennis, the WTA, the ATP, the four Grand Slams, or any national association. In practical terms, a player ranked outside the world’s top 1,300 has been removed from the sport permanently; the calendar date is a formality.
Tennis Up To Date reports that Milicevic’s former doubles partner, Marino Jakic, has been under provisional suspension since 24 June, with an appeal against that suspension dismissed by hearing officer Amani Khalifa in August. That investigation remains open, and no final sanction has been issued against him.
The tier where fixing actually happens
Nothing about this case touches the professional game most people watch. Milicevic never came close to a Grand Slam main draw. That is precisely the point.
Corruption in tennis clusters at the base of the pyramid, on the ITF World Tennis Tour and the lower rungs of the Challenger circuit, where prize money at an M15 event can be a few hundred dollars, there is often no television coverage, and a single player losing a set on purpose is enough to move a betting market. The ITIA’s own quarterly data has repeatedly traced suspicious-match alerts to ITF M15 and Challenger 75 tournaments. The agency is careful to warn against reading too much into that distribution — there are vastly more matches at the bottom of the sport than the top — but the economics are not complicated. A player grossing less than the cost of their flights is a cheap target.
The precedents point the same way. In December, French player Quentin Folliot was suspended for 20 years and fined $70,000, and ordered to return $44,000 in corrupt payments, after the ITIA found 27 breaches of the Tennis Anti-Corruption Programme and identified him as central to a match-fixing syndicate; his career-high ranking was 488. Chinese player Pang Renlong received a 12-year ban and a $110,000 fine for a spree involving 22 matches across just five months in 2024. The Egyptian brothers Karim and Youssef Hossam were both banned for life, in 2018 and 2020 respectively.
Recruitment is the offence that matters
What separates Milicevic’s 24 years from Pang’s 12 is not the number of matches. It is the network. Fixing your own first-round match in Antalya damages one result; persuading six other players to do the same creates a supply chain that outlives whoever started it. The ITIA has sharpened its sanctions accordingly — Folliot’s 20 years and Milicevic’s 24 both attach to recruitment rather than simply to tanking — and the message to anyone acting as a conduit for a syndicate is now unambiguous.
The wider trend offers little comfort. Industry monitoring recorded tennis as the second most-reported sport for suspicious betting alerts in 2025, behind football, with 74 flagged matches. Deterrence of this scale only works if the people being deterred believe they will be caught, and Milicevic’s refusal to engage suggests a calculation that stonewalling was the cheaper option. It cost him the next 24 years.
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**Sources:** [ITIA sanction release](https://www.itia.tennis/news/sanctions/serbian-tennis-player-stefan-milicevic-suspended-for-24-years/) · [Sky Sports](https://www.skysports.com/tennis/news/13599716/stefan-milicevic-given-24-year-ban-for-match-fixing-serbian-player-29-banned-from-tennis-until-2050) · [Yahoo Sports/AP](https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/serb-player-banned-2050-tennis-162834921.html) · [Tennis Up To Date](https://tennisuptodate.com/atp/serbian-tennis-player-hit-with-24-year-itia-ban-after-fixing-six-matches-and-recruiting-fellow-players) · [ESPN (Pang Renlong)](https://www.espn.com/tennis/story/_/id/47356610/chinese-tennis-player-banned-12-years-match-fixing-spree) · [Front Office Sports (Folliot)](https://frontofficesports.com/tennis-match-fixing-itia/) · [ITIA Q2 2025 update](https://www.itia.tennis/news/itia-news/itia-quarterly-update-q2-2025/)
Two notes: the story is verified — the ITIA published it on 15 October 2026. The Marino Jakic detail comes from a single outlet, so I attributed it in-text rather than stating it flat; drop that paragraph if you’d rather not carry it. Word count is 735.
Sports journalist and editor at SportsPortal.net. Covers cricket, football, Formula 1, tennis, and basketball with a focus on how global sports connect with Pakistani audiences. Follows the PSL, Pakistan national cricket team, Premier League, and major international tournaments. Has reported on sports for digital audiences since 2021.
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