IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/soecon/v74y2008i4p1063-1069.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Widespread Corruption in Sports Gambling: Fact or Fiction?

Author

Listed:
  • Richard Borghesi

Abstract

We examine whether point‐shaving is widespread in National Collegiate Athletic Association basketball by comparing bet and game outcomes with those in professional sports. Results suggest that unusual patterns previously suspected to be indicators of point‐shaving are ubiquitous throughout sports and unlikely to be caused by corruption. We suggest that line shading by sports books may explain the anomalies in game and bet outcome distributions.

Suggested Citation

  • Richard Borghesi, 2008. "Widespread Corruption in Sports Gambling: Fact or Fiction?," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 74(4), pages 1063-1069, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:soecon:v:74:y:2008:i:4:p:1063-1069
    DOI: 10.1002/j.2325-8012.2008.tb00881.x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/j.2325-8012.2008.tb00881.x
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1002/j.2325-8012.2008.tb00881.x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gray, Philip K & Gray, Stephen F, 1997. "Testing Market Efficiency: Evidence from the NFL Sports Betting Market," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 52(4), pages 1725-1737, September.
    2. Woodland, Linda M & Woodland, Bill M, 1994. "Market Efficiency and the Favorite-Longshot Bias: The Baseball Betting Market," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 49(1), pages 269-279, March.
    3. Justin Wolfers, 2006. "Point Shaving: Corruption in NCAA Basketball," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(2), pages 279-283, May.
    4. Steven D. Levitt, 2004. "Why are gambling markets organised so differently from financial markets?," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 114(495), pages 223-246, April.
    5. Roger Vergin, 2001. "Overreaction in the NFL point spread market," Applied Financial Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 11(5), pages 497-509.
    6. Golec, Joseph & Tamarkin, Maurry, 1991. "The degree of inefficiency in the football betting market : Statistical tests," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(2), pages 311-323, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Borghesi, Richard & Paul, Rodney & Weinbach, Andrew, 2024. "Point shaving? A novel experiment and new insights," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 42(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Stekler, H.O. & Sendor, David & Verlander, Richard, 2010. "Issues in sports forecasting," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 26(3), pages 606-621, July.
      • Herman O. Stekler & David Sendor & Richard Verlander, 2009. "Issues in Sports Forecasting," Working Papers 2009-002, The George Washington University, Department of Economics, H. O. Stekler Research Program on Forecasting.
    2. Philip W. S. Newall & Dominic Cortis, 2021. "Are Sports Bettors Biased toward Longshots, Favorites, or Both? A Literature Review," Risks, MDPI, vol. 9(1), pages 1-9, January.
    3. Igan, Deniz & Pinheiro, Marcelo & Smith, John, 2011. ""White men can't jump," but would you bet on it?," MPRA Paper 31469, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Adi Schnytzer & Guy Weinberg, 2008. "Testing for Home Team and Favorite Biases in the Australian Rules Football Fixed-Odds and Point Spread Betting Markets," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 9(2), pages 173-190, April.
    5. Michael Sinkey & Trevon Logan, 2014. "Does the Hot Hand Drive the Market? Evidence from College Football Betting Markets," Eastern Economic Journal, Palgrave Macmillan;Eastern Economic Association, vol. 40(4), pages 583-603, September.
    6. Arne Feddersen & Brad R. Humphreys & Brian P. Soebbing, 2018. "Sentiment Bias in National Basketball Association Betting," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 19(4), pages 455-472, May.
    7. Gross, Johannes & Rebeggiani, Luca, 2018. "Chance or Ability? The Efficiency of the Football Betting Market Revisited," MPRA Paper 87230, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    8. Richard Borghesi, 2008. "Weather biases in the NFL totals market," Applied Financial Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 18(12), pages 947-953.
    9. Benjamin Waggoner & Daniel Wines & Brian P. Soebbing & Chad S. Seifried & Jean Michael Martinez, 2014. "“Hot Hand” in the National Basketball Association Point Spread Betting Market: A 34-Year Analysis," IJFS, MDPI, vol. 2(4), pages 1-12, November.
    10. Sathya Ramesh & Ragib Mostofa & Marco Bornstein & John Dobelman, 2019. "Beating the House: Identifying Inefficiencies in Sports Betting Markets," Papers 1910.08858, arXiv.org, revised Oct 2019.
    11. Borghesi, Richard & Dare, William, 2009. "A test of the widespread-point-shaving theory," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 6(3), pages 115-121, September.
    12. Andy Fodor & Michael DiFilippo & Kevin Krieger & Justin Davis, 2013. "Inefficient pricing from holdover bias in NFL point spread markets," Applied Financial Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 23(17), pages 1407-1418, September.
    13. Igan, Deniz & Pinheiro, Marcelo & Smith, John, 2012. "Racial biases and market outcomes: "White men can't jump," but would you bet on it?," MPRA Paper 36069, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    14. Vandenbruaene, Jonas & De Ceuster, Marc & Annaert, Jan, 2023. "Does time series momentum also exist outside traditional financial markets? Near-laboratory evidence from sports betting," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 104(C).
    15. Bryan C. McCannon, 2015. "Replacement Referees And Nfl Betting Markets," Journal of Gambling Business and Economics, University of Buckingham Press, vol. 9(2), pages 14-26.
    16. William H. Dare & Steven A. Dennis, 2011. "A Test for Bias of Inherent Characteristics in Betting Markets," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 12(6), pages 660-665, December.
    17. Klaassen, F.J.G.M. & Magnus, J.R., 2006. "Are Economic Agents Successful Optimizers? An Analysis Through Strategy in Tennis," Other publications TiSEM 73e12d86-8fe4-4a87-9181-7, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    18. Daniel M. Chin, 2011. "A Test of Unbiasedness and Sports Book Profits in the NFL Point Spread Betting Merket Using Circadian Advantage," Journal of Gambling Business and Economics, University of Buckingham Press, vol. 5(3), pages 15-26, October.
    19. Angelini, Giovanni & De Angelis, Luca & Singleton, Carl, 2022. "Informational efficiency and behaviour within in-play prediction markets," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 38(1), pages 282-299.
    20. Rodney Paul & Andrew Weinbach, 2011. "NFL bettor biases and price setting: further tests of the Levitt hypothesis of sportsbook behaviour," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 18(2), pages 193-197.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wly:soecon:v:74:y:2008:i:4:p:1063-1069. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://doi.org/10.1002/(ISSN)2325-8012 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.