Justin Wolfers speaks

by on July 27, 2007 at 7:53 am in Sports | Permalink

Legalizing wagering on which team wins or loses a particular game,
while banning all bets on immaterial outcomes like point spreads, would
destroy the market for illegal bookmakers and make sporting events less
corruptible by gamblers.

And:

Point shaving may be widespread enough to have occurred in around 1 percent of N.C.A.A. basketball games.

Here is the full argument, and thanks to Chris F. Masse for the pointer; Chris also points me to this new and possibly very important study (a senior thesis by Jonathan Gibbs, at times the link isn’t working) of point shaving in the NBA.

11 comments

bjk July 27, 2007 at 8:15 am

If you had larger officiating crews, and then a coin flip before the game as to who would referee, the ref and the bettors wouldn’t be able to pick games to rig.

redd July 27, 2007 at 9:07 am

um, aren’t illegal bookies already illegal? How would banning bets on over/under or point spreads in Vegas all of a sudden make neighborhood bookies disappear?

He also seems to suggest that Congress should preempt all state regulation and make sports gambling legal across the US.

fustercluck July 27, 2007 at 9:18 am

In other words:

What’s worse – another Tim Donaghy scandal or another Black Sox scandal?

Bernard Yomtov July 27, 2007 at 10:29 am

The trouble with Wolfers’ suggestion is that he ignores the reason betting on point spreads exists: a very large percentage of football and basketball games are mismatches. Win/loss betting is unattractive in these situations, so if you want to generate betting you have to use something like point spreads.

Note that betting on baseball games is, in general, win/loss with odds. That’s because there’s a reasonable chance that Tampa Bay will beat Boston in a single game.

Hopefully Anonymous July 27, 2007 at 12:33 pm

Important? Basketball as entertainment seems to me to be wasteful in the context of the challenges the face and the resources we need to solve them. Although I suppose it’s an empirical question whether basketball overall helps maximize our productivity.

Rebunga July 27, 2007 at 1:55 pm

Eliminating point spreads would do nothing. For one thing most baseball bets are based on odds (i.e. “170″ means bet 170 to win 100). Furthermore there is a similar “money line bet for other sports.

Whit Stevens July 27, 2007 at 2:09 pm

Rebunga: I think the idea is that removing point spreads would destroy player’s incentives to under perform on purpose in order to capitalize on the spread. Bookmakers could use money lines or odds instead of point spreads to balance there books.

Bernard Yomtov July 27, 2007 at 3:20 pm

Another possible problem with an odds bet, in football at least, is that several days go by between the posting of the spread, or odds, and the game. During that time things like injuries can occur, or the betting can go in an unexpected way, causing the initial posting to be inaccurate. Spreads can be changed, though not without risk, but changing odds is a disaster. The bookmaker is handing out money to those on one side of the initial bet.

I have read that there are odds bets, “money line bets,” as rebunga calls them, for sports other than baseball, but they are hardly as popular as point spread bets.

HeShootsAndScores July 27, 2007 at 5:08 pm

Taking away point spread would also take away the incentive for a player to under-perform just enough to affect the spread. The implicit assumption (one of them) may be that the player would not want to throw away a whole game, but could be easily induced to affect the spread given the outcome is not at stake.

Matthew July 28, 2007 at 5:19 am

Bernard,

I’ve never bet, but I’m fairly certain that bettors get fixed spreads from the house. For example, the house can move a spread from 5.5 to 4.5, but the person who bets 5.5 will keep that spread.

The house can give fixed spreads because spreads are created to keep the money 50/50. If an injury makes gives the other team 10 extra points, the house won’t lose any money on the old bets since they collect as much on the losing side as they pay out on the winning side. The same thing happens with fixed odds, but with the expected payouts 50/50 instead.

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