Serbian tennis player Stefan Milicevic banned 24 years for match-fixing

The sanction and its timing

The International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA) has suspended Serbian player Stefan Milicevic for 24 years and fined him $70,000 for serious breaches of its anti-corruption rules. The ban took effect on 9 October 2026 and runs until 8 October 2050. The ITIA announced the sanction on Thursday, 15 October 2026. It bars him from playing, coaching or attending events organised or sanctioned by the ITIA, the ATP, the WTA, the Grand Slam tournaments, World Tennis or any national federation. Milicevic is 29, and his best singles ranking was 1,338th, reached in August 2014.

What the ITIA says he did

According to the agency, Milicevic manipulated six matches between 2022 and 2024, and five of them were matches he played himself. He also tried to fix six other matches in the same period. The ITIA further alleges that he recruited, or attempted to recruit, several professional players into a corrupt network, and that this led other players to fix matches. World Tennis records show he played 11 professional matches in that period, all on the third tier of the professional tour. An ITIA spokesperson said the length of the ban reflected the severity of the match-fixing and his recruitment attempts, not his failure to cooperate.

No response to the investigation

The ITIA investigated during 2026 and says it made seven separate attempts, through multiple channels, to get a response from Milicevic. He did not take part in the process or cooperate with it. On 24 September 2026 the agency issued him a Notice of Major Offense. Because he did not answer, his case never went before an anti-corruption hearing officer. Instead he received a deemed sanction, so no written hearing decision exists.

Other lengthy bans

Milicevic follows other lower-tier players who received long bans. France's Quentin Folliot was banned for 20 years after 27 breaches of the tennis anti-corruption protocol, and China's Pang Renlong was banned for 12 years after 22 offences committed over five months. The comparison places the new ban at the top of this group.

Milicevic also played doubles on the third-tier ITF World Tennis Tour. In August 2023 he partnered Croatian player Marino Jakić at a tournament in Osijek, Croatia, where they reached the final. The ITIA provisionally suspended Jakić in June 2026 pending an investigation into alleged breaches of the anti-corruption rules.