I can think of few things less important than who wins a basketball game. Despite what some fans seem to think, lives are not at stake. I suppose the fact that millions of people do care about the outcome, and care enough to wager, and money does change hands based on the outcome, may change things somewhat, but at its core they’re throwing a ball through a hoop. I’d be more upset about lumpy wallpaper.
Let me try a different comparison. During the financial crisis of ought-8, and the subsequent bailout of failing financial institutions, much was made of how the companies kept the profits when their risks paid off, but got bailed out for the risks that didn’t. Private profits, and public losses.
It seems to me that sports teams and leagues turn a hefty profit based on public belief in the integrity of their sports. But backing up that integrity has become a matter of public enforcement. Suppose this enforcement is successful, all the perpetrators are discovered and rooted out, and faith in the game is restored. Who has the most to gain, monetarily, from that happening? I don’t think it’s the fans.
Seems like just outlawing those kinds of bets, where a single crooked athlete can singlehandedly guarantee a result, would be an easy way to eliminate a lot of this stuff.
They, betting companies, have been closing this barn door after the recent stampedes of indictments. Much more they could do, but you have to balance restrictions against profits.
Sports books don’t benefit from this sort of thing. They get their cut no matter who wins. If anything, they end up losing money when an athlete conspires with bettors to throw a game.
ETA. Let’s say Team A is playing Team B, with neither team favored, both listed at -110 to win. Let’s say both teams have 11,000 bet on the to win. Normally if Team A wins, the book takes 10K from the 11K bet on Team B to pay the winners who bet on Team A and keeps an extra 1K as profit. Now let’s say the fix is in, and a player or coach on Team B, or maybe a referee, conspires to guarantee that Team A wins. Let’s say the bettor they are in league with bets another 11K on Team A. Now the book is on the hook to pay off 20K in winnings, not just 10K. Where will they get that extra 10K? Not from the people who bet on Team B, because there’s still only 11K bet on Team B. It’s going to come from the pocket of the sports book.
How the sportsbooks do on the actual bets isn’t the issue; they stand to lose massive amounts of money, and possibly have their entire industry outlawed, if the public gets the idea their games aren’t honest.
Of course that’s the worst case scenario from their viewpoint. What I was responding to was the idea that keeps popping up that somehow “Vegas” is driving all this, and that the sports book somehow benefit from fewer regulations, presumably because that would make it easier for them to manipulate outcomes of sporting events. Of course the sports books don’t benefit from a particular outcome, and would therefore have no incentive to “balance restrictions against profits”, as the poster above me mentioned. Obviously the sports books want more profit, but loosening restrictions (to make it easier for them to manipulate an outcome that doesn’t matter to them one way or the other is seemingly the implication) won’t help them profit.
ETA: Yes, they would lose if their industry was outlawed. But they would also lose their entire industry if they got caught going into the business of deciding the outcomes of sporting events rather than merely taking bets and profiting on the vig. There are people that are cheating. Those people aren’t MGM Grand, Caesar’s Palace, Draft Kings, FanDuel, etc.
Well, they do significantly benefit in the short term from having prop bets, since it gives them a wider menu of sucker bets to offer to stupid gamblers. And it can be very hard for businesses to pass on short-term profits in the interest of their industry’s long-term health.
As a rule bookies don’t bet their own money, but if the results were guaranteed, that could change.
But that is not what I was thinking. Somehow generating overall betting. Maybe a star athlete is close to a record, maybe the hitting streak (ok, that would be hard to manipulate). If you could alter it so they tie it, I imagine there would be a lot of bets on beating it. Lots of bets equals lots of vig, and you wouldn’t even need to fix the result.
That’s not how it works. Everyone gets their money back in a push and I think bets are typically set up so that there aren’t pushes which is why the point spreads will be in half points.
The book can certainly lose on particular bets. They set the line and odds to encourage equal bets on both sides, but it isn’t guaranteed. If the fix is in and large bets are heavily on one side, the book can lose massive amounts.
Well, they normally don’t benefit from having one side or the other win. But as you say, if the fix is in, the book stands to lose. After all, the money the cheaters get has to come from somewhere, and the competitors that are throwing the game / a particular play can’t just magically conjure up suckers to take the opposing side of the bet. Therefore the money that the people fixing an outcome win comes from the sport book.
