Today’s sports gambling looks nothing like the sports betting of the past.Another week, another sports betting scandal.It’s never been this easy for a player to fix the outcome of a bet. The onset of proposition or “prop” bets, in which gamblers can place wagers on specific outcomes in a game, has opened a Pandora’s box for athletic integrity. This month, the NCAA announced that a ring of college athletes had manipulated their performance in games to aid bettors and permanently revoked their eligibility. In October, the NBA faced its own seismic gambling indictments, more alleged prop rigging, complete with connections to the mafia. Now, the MLB is under scrutiny for a betting scandal of its own, with pitchers being accused of taking bribes in exchange for rigging pitches during a game.Eight years after the Supreme Court struck down a federal law that had banned most states from legalizing sports betting, sports betting can feel like it’s embedded into every aspect of American sports culture. From bars to live broadcasts, online betting is changing how we consume sports. This is the age of the betting scandal — and the main suspect is that increasingly popular way to bet on games: prop bets.
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75 sats \ 10 replies \ @BlokchainB 20h
This isn’t going away anytime soon.
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69 sats \ 8 replies \ @Undisciplined 19h
Incentive problems can only be fixed by fixing the incentives.
A zero-tolerance policy from the leagues (i.e. one strike and you're banned) plus more financial rewards for winning, would make this kind of behavior prohibitively costly for most athletes.
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42 sats \ 5 replies \ @SimpleStacker 19h
Is there any evidence that the equilibrium is even suboptimal? It may be that the net demand for gambling (which includes any fixing going on), simply outweighs whatever financial value stakeholders place on athletic integrity. No one's forcing fans to watch the games, or the leagues to make deals with the betting companies.
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30 sats \ 3 replies \ @Undisciplined 19h
Exactly. If the leagues start perceiving losses they’ll change the incentives.
Fans who don’t like gambling will presumably not like the equilibrium state though.
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94 sats \ 2 replies \ @SimpleStacker 18h
I mean, I'm sympathetic. I hated how online micro transactions turned my beloved NBA 2k into a loot box hell circa 2019, but I think they got the message and toned down some of that stuff. If gambling gets out of hand, the leagues are already sufficiently incentivized to respond. It feels like they're already on the cusp of that, with even a lot of players complaining about it. Just gotta avoid jumping the gun to government regulation as a solution
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined 18h
The problem is that there will almost certainly be a moral panic over this. Isn’t Congress already convening hearings about it?
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @BlokchainB 18h
Haha loot box hell
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @adlai 17h
has anybody else wasting cowboy credits on this thread gotten pissed off from the lack of twenty first century reprints of Hazlitt ?
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @adlai 17h
how, teaching managers to hire bookies along with coaches ?
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined 17h
I suspect they already know how to do that
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93 sats \ 0 replies \ @0xbitcoiner OP 20h
Agree, especially given the amount of money involved. It's a billion dollar industry!
https://sherwood.news/markets/americans-bet-more-than-usd140-billion-on-sports-last-year/
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33 sats \ 2 replies \ @grayruby 18h
I think this is just the tip of the iceberg.
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40 sats \ 1 reply \ @adlai 17h
@grayruby began,
.... and forgot to edit the comment adding any more words within ten minutes.
so I wonder, who is the you that worries so much about these icebergs? atlantis's mendelsohn?
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35 sats \ 0 replies \ @grayruby 17h
No specific you. I just think we will see more of these betting scandals in the future.
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