No one has a greater interest in keeping the games honest than legitimate bookmakers.   Regulated bookmakers have successfully worked with the sports leagues and law enforcement officials to ensure games are fair and honest.

It is well known that the national sports leagues and NCAA are opposed to any form of gambling on professional or college athletics.    The sports leagues contend that gambling threatens character of team sports.  The sports leagues argue that prevalent sports gambling represents a “quick fix,” the desire to get something for nothing, and even corruption.  Allowing rampant sports gambling, the sports leagues argue, can cause a cynical and suspicious perception of athletic events, in place of the traditional American values they should represent.   For these reasons, the sports leagues have been proponents of laws to ban betting on college athletics and online sports betting.

The sports leagues’ position fails to take note of three factors: first, that Americans love to bet on sports and the will continue to do so with or without legal permission; second, that sports betting provides a dramatic increase of fan interest in sports, thereby increasing revenues for the sports leagues, owners and players, and, third, that regulated sports betting actually enhances fair and honest competition and prevents suspicious or corrupt play.

It is undeniable, historically, that Americans love to gamble on sports.   That is why Americans wager hundreds of millions of dollars each year on sports in Las Vegas, at online sportsbooks, in office pools, in fantasy leagues, and, even, with local underground bookies.    The American love of sports wagering has been, and continues to be, a reason why fans watch games and follow their favorite teams.   Credible gambling experts agree that regulated sports gambling provides a market safeguard against “fixed” games, because the sportsbooks have an economic and moral interest to ensure that games are fair and honest.    Of the very few sports fixing scandals that have emerged over the past 30 years, all were detected and reported to law enforcement by regulated sports books.  Therefore, a regulated, transparent bookmaking industry helps protect the integrity of the games.

The online sports betting industry has recently demonstrated its ability and willingness to catch and punish cheating on sporting events. In 2007, a prominent online sportsbook based in the Europe, Betfair, noticed unusual betting patterns on a second-tier professional men’s tennis match in Poland. The match, which should have normally generated $500,000 in wagers, generated $7 million, almost all of which was bet on the underdog. After the favorite suddenly retired (i.e., quit the match), Betfair immediately alerted the ATP and suspended all wagers on the match. Betfair ultimately voided all bets on the match due its internal fraud team’s conclusion the match was scripted to end with the underdog prevailing.

The reason that Betfair notified the ATP about the suspected fraud was due to a written Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between Betfair and 42 separate professional sports leagues. The goals of the MOU are to identify unusual betting patterns that indicate possible cheating and to protect Betfair’s customers against fraud.

After the suspect tennis match, Betfair began to review the full audit trail for the wagering on the event. As part of its investigation, Betfair had the ability to review every wager, who made the wager, where it came from, the exact time the wager was placed, whether it fell within the customer’s normal betting range, and other recorded data such as the normal volume of wagering in terms of total handle and players on similar matches. The access to all of this information allowed Betfair to make a careful reasoned business opinion that the wagering on the match was suspect and, therefore, Betfair voided all wagers on the match.

This is not the only time Betfair has assisted a sports league in catching suspected fraud. In 2008, a United Kingdom horse trainer and jockey were suspended by the British Horse Racing Authority (BHA) after Betfair alerted the BHA about possible horse race fixing. The investigation, which included an analysis of betting patterns at Betfair for races involving the trainer and jockey, demonstrated that the jockey was involved in a scam where he would lose a race on purpose in exchange for money from bettors who profited on advance notice of the scam. Betfair’s betting exchange information was crucial to the investigation because it demonstrated that certain bettors were “shorting” the jockey’s horse because they knew it was destined to lose. At a traditional bookmaking shop, a bettor who was “in on the scam” would have to bet all of the other horses in the race in order to take advantage of the information from the fraudulent jockey. After the matter was uncovered the BHA commented: “The real watershed for racing was the betting exchanges because they didn't cause the corruption, they brought it out into the open and exposed what was already there.”

These two examples illustrate the benefit of licensed and regulated online sports betting. Indeed, gaming experts believe that online sportsbooks might have prevented or detected sooner the suspicious wagering activities of disgraced NBA referee Tim Donaghy, who pled guilty to participating in gambling point shaving conspiracy. In Donaghy’s case, law enforcement learned of Donaghy’s involvement through an unrelated investigation of an organized crime syndicate, which, by mere chance, led to information about Donaghy’s involvement in fixing NBA games. This was not a targeted investigation into manipulation of cheating on sports events. If, at the time Donaghy was engaged in the game-fixing activities, there were existed licensed and regulated remote gaming operators who were willing to cooperate with US authorities, either Donaghy would have avoided cheating in the first place for fear of being detected through the exact data available to the remote gaming operators, or the scheme would be been detected sooner than the time the US law enforcement stumbled upon it.

Accordingly, if, as they publicly claim, the major sports leagues in the US were truly interested in preserving the integrity of events, they would support the existence of companies like Betfair. After all, it is through the collaboration between Betfair and the sports leagues in Europe that detected two prominent cheating episodes, and which have prevented numerous others from arising.

Letter by the National Football League, Major League Baseball, National Basketball Association, National Hockey League and National Collegiate Athletic Association to Members of Congress supporting passage of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (1 February 2006). View Here

Anthony Cabot and Robert D. Faiss, Sports Gambling in the Cyberspace Era, 5 Chap. L. Rev. 1, Chapman Law Review, Spring 2002, pp. 17-18.  ("It is unclear why some members of Congress and the NCAA have been such vocal advocates for legislation that would criminalize wagering that takes place in Nevada's highly regulated sports books.   .
. .there is no evidence of campus bookies or the involvement of organized crime in Nevada sports wagering. In fact, the Nevada experience has demonstrated just the opposite: that sports wagering, when it is highly regulated and scrutinized, forecloses the ability of
criminal elements to expand their nefarious operations through bookmaking profits. Because the Internet has rendered it even more difficult for federal and state authorities to eradicate sports wagering, now, more than ever, Nevada's model of regulation and taxation should be emulated, not discarded. . . .

The existing evidence suggests that, if anything, Nevada's sports books are tools that can be used to weed out the troubling aspects of sports wagering.  Under Nevada's strict regulatory scheme, Nevada sports books are required to transact their business through a computerized bookmaking system approved by state regulators. These computerized systems create a detailed record of every transaction.  Furthermore, while cash transactions are highly monitored throughout Nevada casinos, sports books are the only casino department that must report non-cash transactions of more than ten thousand dollars.

For their own protection, Nevada's sports books closely monitor fluctuations in betting activity that indicate irregularities, and must report suspicious wagers that appear to relate to illegal sports wagering activities. If someone is attempting a "fix," Nevada's sports books may be the target.  As a result, Nevada's sports books have been the first to alert law enforcement agencies and those that guard the integrity of America's professional and amateur sports leagues to any suspicious betting activity. Without assistance from Nevada's sports books, college point shaving scandals may not be uncovered as quickly, or may not be discovered at all.  Therefore, to outlaw Nevada's $2.3 billion in annual sports wagering with the hope that it will somehow eradicate the $380 billion in illegal wagering would not only be naive, it would be counterproductive to the very purpose of such an action.")

The American Gaming Association “strongly opposes any effort to ban legal wagering on college sports in Nevada.” The AGA takes the position that regulated sports gambling enhances both the goals of integrity and honest play. http://www.americangaming.org/hillupdate/reports_detail.cfv?id=13