I understand why you would not want athletes to throw games on purpose if they place a large bet for the opposing team to win, however let’s say I am a pitcher in baseball, and I place a bet for my own team to win, wouldn’t that only motivate me to play better because I stand to win more money by doing so?
In: 1352
Because if they bet on themselves to win they have an extra incentive to do *anything* to win, aka cheat
It might motivate the opposing party to lose the game by betting on its opponent winning, completely skewing the outcome.
Because bets aren’t that simple. You have bets like “we’ll win and beat the spread ” or not beat the spread.
Like say the bet is, we’ll win, but only by less than 3 points.
So if there’s a chance to win by more than that, they could do something that will make sure it doesn’t happen.
It gets very complicated with all the different types of bets being made.
Answer: What if, in sports that track *how many* points you win by, and use that to determine team standing, playoff seed, and the like…the possibilities for shenanigans are many, and adversely affect game play, and standings for *other teams*, and bring the whole sport into question.
If I’m betting on my team for an over/under saying we’ll *win*, but by -2.5 points, I’ll do everything to stay in the “under”. Because, *money*. Maybe I’ll not strike out *that* batter, but *the other one* instead? “Accidentally” miss catching that fly ball to let that batter get another attempt instead of being out, to keep it close?
But what if my team needs to win by 3 or over to achieve a playoff/special tournament placement/seed/position, or place *above* another team in rankings, or gain “home field” advantage or “bye” periods? You can see the conflict of interest, here. Instead of playing my best, and trying to win, regardless, I’m “fine-tuning” the game, which could *lose me the game* (if I’m holding back, the other team may pull off an upset), or affect where my entire team wants to be (seeds, position, tournament), or allow *another team* to place better than they should have if I were playing “full on”.
Athletes betting on their own or other teams opens up all kinds of fuckery to the mechanics of the game, and to the standings of their and other teams. No good for anyone.
There’s just a lot of illicit activity that could come about as a result.
* I could offer to secretly split my winnings with a player on the other team. He’s incentivized to play badly so that I win, and he gets around any regulations betting *against* himself.
* I could play badly for several games prior to my “big bet” game. My betting odds go up as a result, and I can win bigger when I play my best and actually win – now I’ve manipulated the bet spread to my advantage.
* There’s a lot of insider information available that might not be public. The opposing team has a star player, but our team’s scouts know that we have a strategy that gives us a great chance to beat him. The odds that I know are different from what the public knows, and I get an advantage over the betting market.
* Every athlete has incentive to cheat to a degree, but adding more money on top of it just makes cheating in my sport even more enticing
In some cases, leagues and commissions do allow players to bet on themselves (but not *against* themselves), such as boxing. But especially in team sports where there are lots of variables involved and more chance for manipulation, there are valid reasons to ban betting altogether, and avoid any of these issues from cropping up.
It’s much easier to make a ban that says players can’t bet than it is to ban players betting against themselves. As someone else mentioned, there are many bets beside “my team to win.” There are bets that a team will score a certain number of points, or that one team will score first, or that the most scoring will occur within a certain time frame. With all the different types of betting available, it could get very complicated to determine if the player was trying to sway an outcome and whether that outcome is detrimental to their team. For example, you’re a quarterback, and you place a bet that the first score will be a TD. First drive of the game, you end up 4th and inches. Does the QB pressure the coach to go for it instead of kicking a field goal? Is he hurting his team if they go for it and get the TD? What if they go for it an don’t make it? Should the QB get in trouble because the play did or did not work out? Much easier to just say “no betting.”
It also has to do with their connections within the league. They can ask their associate/friend on the other team to throw that they played together with last season.
I could see situations where someone might overextend themselves or their teammates in some way that would trade short term gain for long term harm.
Also, perception is an issue. Once it’s known that you’re placing bets, then you kind of have to assume you’re placing all sorts of bets.
Plus if a player bets on his team to win every game but then suddenly doesn’t place a bet prior to the upcoming game, other bettors might take that as a sign that the player doesn’t believe his team will win and can influence other bettors accordingly
When it comes to betting, the most important thing an athlete has is NOT the ability to influence the outcome of a game. It is _access to information that can influence the outcome of a game._
So an athlete bets on his own team to win this week. Aw, he’s just confident in his teammates! But next week, he _doesn’t_ bet on his own team to win. Why not? Clearly he must know something that the betting public does not! Who’s hurt worse than we know? Who’s gonna be getting more carries? He might be illegally betting on inside information — and now the snowball is rolling.
Other gamblers say: We better find out what that inside info is! So now you’ve got gamblers coming at him and paying $10K for information about injuries, game planning and so on. They’re not paying him to throw the game (yet) — just paying for information. Contrary to popular belief, not all athletes are megamillionaires, and $10K is a lot of money to a guy on the bottom of the roster — a guy who only gets on the field for special teams, where he is in a prime position to miss a tackle on a kickoff return. And of course now that he’s taken money from gamblers, he’s compromised.
Pro athletes get a cut of the money that leagues get from their partner sports books. Part of that agreement is that they simply can’t bet on their own sport. There’s too much risk.
A lot gets made about the injury report in pro sports. Even when leagues were opposed to gambling, they wanted an accurate injury report so that everyone had the same information and gamblers would stay away from the players. The injury report came into being specifically because of the scenario above — gamblers were paying players for inside information, which left those players compromised and vulnerable to manipulation.
Of course, even if a player doesn’t bet at all, he could still get worked by gamblers trying to fish for information. But you’ve got to draw a clear line somewhere. If you’re playing in the game, or even if you’re just on the team, you just don’t get to bet on it.
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