Betting and Gambling in Sport

Gambling is a multibillion-dollar industry, some legal, some illegal.A gamble in sports, as elsewhere, is essentially the bettor’s informed guess of the winner of a contest and his or her willingness to give up a sum of money if wrong. If right, however, a gamble will leave the bettor richer by that sum of money multiplied by the odds—a ratio whose two parts represent chances of winning and chances of losing. Even the luckiest gambler loses far more than he wins, but this has apparently curtailed the growth of sports’ gambling little if at all.

In some countries where sports are highly commercialized, estimates place the profits generated by both legal and illegal gambling as larger than the combined profits of several of the largest manufacturers. In many societies, the difference between buying a football card from a local bookie and buying stocks lies in cultural definitions of worthiness; one is disreputable and illegal, the other is an investment and praiseworthy. Both are gambles, and at some point for many people gambling becomes indistinguishable from the normal involvement with element of chance that is part of living. Gambling has brought a marked increase in interest in sport, especially by men.Although often far from the event, the viewer now assumes partial responsibility for the contest outcome, as if his personal participation is as essential as that of the actual participants in terms of outcome.

History

Gambling on sports events has a long history and is common in many cultures, two innovations have shaped modern sports betting and bookmaking in the United States. The first and more obtrusive was television. From the early 1950s, live telecasts of sports steadily gained popularity and generated huge profits for owners. Professional sport franchise owners, especially in football and baseball, and players with new collective bargaining agreements and favorable court decisions were able to accumulate huge amounts of wealth. Sports betting was the unrecorded part of the flood of money that television generated. The second invention involved not technology but an idea—the bookmaker’s point spread. For 200 years sponsors of sports betting (that is, bookmakers) had wrestled with the problem of setting the stakes in an event in which one party (that is, a horse, fighter, or team) appeared clearly superior. In mid-19^th-century England, different weights or handicaps were assigned to faster horses in a race; but rarely did the weights equalize or bring the field together. A really fast horse running against a slower one could most often pick up the extra 9 kilograms (20 pounds) of handicapped weight, take the track, and win easily. To entice more bettors, bookmakers began to offer different odds so that an unlikely horse assigned long odds would reward his backers with a rare but handsome return.The bookmaker’s goal was to attract different amounts of betting at different odds so that no matter which horse won, the payout would be the same, guaranteeing the bookie a profit.

In a prize fight or a contest between two teams, one fighter or team was likely to be favored, sometimes heavily. If a bettor wished to wager on a heavily favored fighter or team, $6 might have to be wagered to win $1, while if the bettor chose the underdog, $5 would be returned for a $1 bet. The bookmaker was adjusting the odds to the strength of the bettors’ opinions—in this case producing about five times as much betting on the favorite as on the underdog to protect his commission no matter who won. The bookmaking trade used the odds to split the payoffs profitably,until the early 1920s or 1930s when the point spread was introduced. Before World War II, giving or taking points was rare.After the war it became standard practice, especially in football and basketball.

With the point spread no odds are offered. Even money is bet by everyone and the bettor stakes $11 to win $10—the difference is the bookie’s commission. No odds are posted with the point spread; the favored team must win by a set number of points. The underdog bettor’s team may lose the contest but its backer wins the bet if the margin of defeat is less than the number of points offered.

Since the inception of the point spread a substantial number of collegiate basketball players in the United States have been involved in “fixing” scandals. These scandals have involved either a favored team playing to stay under the point spread (that is, “shaving points”) or one of the teams outright losing or “dumping” the game.“Shaving” is more common since the game still can be won and players are less likely to draw attention to their manipulation. For the most part, professional and college football have evaded these scandals.

The Attraction of Betting

In sports gambling, bettors derive their primary satisfaction from the feeling of “knowing” something, of outsmarting the cosmos by choosing correctly.When a bettor wins, he ascribes it to superior power of analysis. When a bettor loses, it’s bad luck. Bettors love to bet, but also enjoy the game. Because the sports bettor believes the game can be figured out, sports betting is the ideal outlet for satisfying gambling desire. “Real” sports bettors represent a minority, but still an appreciable fraction, of the sports audience, and a disproportionate number of those who constitute the passionate following. More numerous are those who desire a little stimulant to their involvement. If one makes a small side bet with a friend, the game becomes more interesting. The first type is the “habitual bettor,” the second the “casual bettor.”Between them,they form the backbone of the adult sports betting audience. Thoroughbred and harness horse racing are devices for legal betting, and the $2 bettor is no more interested in the horse as an animal than in a playing card as an artistic illustration. The democracy of horse racing, which attracts more customers each year than any other sport in the United States, is totally based on the equal opportunity to cash a bet.Without the opportunity to bet, openly, under supervision that guarantees the winners will be paid off and ensures a fair contest, horse racing and other events such as dog racing and jai alai would not draw crowds. And, such sports have been losing interest in recent years as governmentsponsored lotteries and other forms of betting have become commonplace in the United States. A few historic events, such as the Kentucky Derby, transcend betting interest and become entertaining, competitive sports events steeped in tradition for millions who do not bet. But these events are exceptions.

In other sports, betting is less fundamental but not necessarily less present. Horse racing, dog racing, and jai alai are legalized and licensed for betting by some states, and they do not exist where they are not. Other sports such as professional baseball and basketball are automatically legal and need no licensing (except for business purposes), while betting on them is illegal (except in Nevada, and professional football in Oregon). Boxing requires licensing for a different reason—in theory to protect the health and safety of the contestants—but does not involve legalized betting. Betting in illegal sports such as cockfighting is common. The reasons for this distinction between licensed and unlicensed professional sports become apparent when the requirements for attracting bettors are presented. First, the event wagered on must be sufficiently complex to provide suspense and mental stimulation, but simple enough to be easily followed. Second, there must be the conviction that the contest is truly unpredictable—that is, the outcome is not prearranged.

Third, the contest being bet on must occur frequently with its result easily accessible to all interested parties.

Further, the bettor needs continuity. The comparable event must recur, time after time, to allow one to get even after losing.

Finally, there must be someone to bet with. A large body of other bettors,with similar interests,must exist to create a “market”—in the sense of the floor of a stock market—where pools of winnings can be formed by collecting from losers.Gambling is not practicable without someone to function as a broker, whether it’s an illegal bookmaker, a legal one, the operator of a pool, or the state.

U.S. Betting Corruption

The problem of “manipulation” or fixing of sporting events has plagued sports betting since its beginnings. Manipulation in state-run betting is certainly possible, but less likely since the state’s elaborate security machinery is designed to prevent such occurrences. However, anyone who bets has, or quickly acquires, sensitivity to the possibility of “fixing” results and realizes that humans can manipulate without detection, if so inclined. Boxers can easily manipulate an event. Two people are in the ring, and if one does not hit quite as hard as he could, or falls down when hit, it is relatively difficult to prove they did so deliberately.Yet boxing remains one of the biggest betting sports, because it meets the four necessary conditions so well.More importantly, there is a public feeling that most major fights are honest, because the stakes are high (not only in terms of the winning purse, but also status for future earnings) and because each boxer faces the real physical danger of injury in the ring and, if suspected of manipulating the outcome, physical attack from “losers of big money.” “Point betting” has also led to serious problems with “fixing” in sports gambling,primarily in collegiate basketball. With “point betting” or the bookmakers’ point spread, the suspense in an event can become even greater, and more prolonged, in a one-sided game. Suppose Michigan is a 15-point favorite over Indiana, a fact that has already established the belief that Michigan is most likely to win and is considered the superior team. Sure enough, Michigan dominates the football game and is leading 21–0 in the fourth quarter, content to end the game that way, not going out of its way to embarrass the loser unnecessarily. But right down to the last play, an Indiana touchdown and an extra point can decide the bet, one way or the other. A 21–7 Michigan victory, every bit as good in the league standings as a 21–0 victory,would be a 15-point bettor’s defeat (or an underdog’s bettor’s triumph). The element of hazard and suspense has been prolonged and intensified. Point-spread betting is even better for basketball than for football, since so many points are scored quickly, and late-game margins can fluctuate so rapidly. But every benefit contains its drawbacks—crookedness, to be blunt, is much easier. To play badly enough to lose deliberately to an inferior team requires both a callous moral sense and substantial risk of arousing suspicion. Both are blunted if a favorite can guarantee that a bet on the underdog will pay off,without giving up his own victory. All a team has to do is win by a margin smaller than the point spread—which was set illegally in the first place.

Such a rationale has been behind the fixing scandals that have plagued college basketball since the early 1930s. Involved teams that were favored attempted to play well enough to win “under the points”without actually losing. If the game got out of hand and the favored team lost, that was a shame—but the bet’s success was not altered.

Recently, there have been numerous debates regarding the legalization of sports betting. All of the established sports have pronounced their opposition to legalized betting, based on the fear that athletes might perceive that society through governmental action is putting a stamp of approval on sports betting. With this view, athletes might still bet on themselves to win and play as hard as possible. However, sooner or later, there is a loss and to get even the only result that athletes can guarantee is to lose the next time out.While the above concern appears realistic, sports promoters probably have a stronger interest in ensuring that sport remains for fans (especially children) an event based on the illusion that winning is “all that counts.” Under legalized betting, this would subtly change to “winning the bet,” and the media will invariably reflect this view, as they now do in horse racing coverage. Children will just as inevitably quickly learn to become bettors rather than sports fans.Whether this is harmful or desirable from the standpoint of society,morality,mental health, economics, and ideation may be endlessly debated with no resolution.

Scandals outside the United States

Over the past decade soccer (association football) has become big business in France. Many clubs have annual budgets of over 200 million francs ($37 million). However, rumors have abounded of bribes, tax evasion, fraud, and doping. In 1993, France’s Olympique de Marseilles soccer team were national heroes. Not only had Marseilles won the French league championships for the fifth consecutive year,but it had also become the first French club to win the European Cup (“Corrupt” 1993). Shortly after the team completed its season, one of Marseilles’s players, Jean-Jacques Eydelie, was arrested and charged with attempting to bribe members of a rival team. Although Marseilles and eight other French league clubs had already been investigated on various charges (including “fixing” of games), this was the first time hard evidence had surfaced in connection with French soccer.

Outside Europe, soccer’s immense popularity has also been accompanied at times by scandal. In Malaysia, government sources have reported that 85 percent of Malaysia’s Premier League matches were fixed in 1994. Police investigations portray an even more dismal picture as they estimated that 95 percent of Malaysian match outcomes were rigged,with betting on certain games running as high as $2 to $4 million. Malaysian soccer fans, however, have not lost faith in their players even as they continue to be charged with fixing games and continue to jam stadiums to cheer their heroes.

The lure of beating the odds has made gambling the enormous enterprise it is today and, legally or illegally, the practice is certain to continue. The question of whether gambling should be more widely legalized remains a major issue.