NBA gambling indictments

 The NYT has the story of the latest sports-gambling scandal in which several NBA players and veterans were arrested for giving gamblers information that certain players could be expected to underperform.

NBA gambling indictments  By Mike Vorkunov

" The alleged betting scheme feasted on and weaponized what law enforcement officials called non-public information about who wasn’t playing in future games. Several games were bet on because bettors found out that players would sit out for tanking teams trying to better position themselves for the league’s draft lottery. This is something the NBA has paid some attention to in the past, but now, it will have to be extremely strict about it. Injury reports have always been important to gamblers, but the indictments show how they can be used and potentially criminalized.

...

"There is a throughline to the Jontay Porter case from last year. Some of the same people were indicted today and named in the court filings that were arrested and named in the case related to Porter. That case also led to an FBI investigation into college basketball and game manipulation. 

######

And by coincidence, here's a timely New Yorker cartoon:

“Some people say sports betting has gone too far, but I like the on-field bookie.”
Cartoon by Brendan Loper October 7, 2025
 

In-game sports betting is something different

 The NYT has the story:

The Seductive, and Risky, Power of Live Sports Betting
In-game betting is predicted to grow to more than $14 billion by the end of the decade. It’s a huge part of the sports gambling industry. Public health officials worry that it could be increasing the risks for gamblers.  By Jenny Vrentas 

"These bets — known as in-game or live betting — have become ubiquitous and are one of the fastest growing areas of the sports gambling industry in the United States. They range from wagers on the result of a game while it is underway to what are known as microbets on events that are resolved quickly, sometimes in a matter of seconds, like the speed of a baseball pitch. Others are on outcomes of random events — will the halftime point total be an odd or even number, for instance. Once you are on the FanDuel or DraftKings mobile apps, there are scrolls and scrolls of bets, worldwide, day or night.

"For betting companies, or sportsbooks, the popularity of live betting is driving rapid revenue growth. Bets during games accounted for more than half the money wagered on FanDuel and DraftKings in recent quarters 

...

"With artificial intelligence being used to automate and accelerate the creation of more betting markets, in-game betting is expected to continue its rapid growth. Revenues from in-game bets could triple by the end of this decade, to more than $14 billion, according to a report released last October by the investment bank Citizens. That is an amount on par with the total revenue generated by the U.S. sports betting industry last year.

...

"Some professional sports leagues now allow ads for sports betting companies to be integrated into the live action of a game broadcast — as opposed to just during a commercial break. Michael Kay, the Yankees play-by-play announcer, or the N.B.A. commentators Charles Barkley and Kenny Smith will offer odds or set up predictions and direct viewers to a sportsbook that sponsors the broadcast and takes the bets. The N.B.A. and Major League Baseball permit up to two of these integrations per game.

"Streaming, too, has enabled new ways for fans to bet while they watch. Last year, the N.B.A. debuted an optional overlay on its livestreaming platform that displays in-game betting odds. Users can tap to click through to a prefilled bet slip in the DraftKings or FanDuel apps. The N.F.L. has gone a step further, allowing its games to be streamed inside sportsbook apps (and still count toward the Nielsen audience ratings).

"The professional sports leagues also benefit from live-betting revenue through their financial stakes in data providers, like Sportradar and Genius Sports. Those data companies sell the real-time data from games that facilitates live bets to sportsbooks, and they get a portion of the sportsbooks’ gambling revenues. The data companies have said that the percentage they take from in-game bets is higher than from pregame bets. (Chris Dougan, a spokesman for Genius Sports, said its partnership with the N.F.L. enabled legal and fair betting on N.F.L. games."

All's fair in love and sports, from marathons to stone skipping

 It turns out that sports are just war by peaceful means. Incentives matter, and some people play to win.

First, the WSJ writes about qualifying for competitive marathons:

The War Over Downhill Running .  Tempers are flaring over mountain races that produce faster qualifying times for Boston and other marathons; ‘These people should burst into flames.’
By  Sharon Terlep

" a subset of long-distance races ... begin high in the mountains and pitch participants downhill. They’ve exploded, partly as a way for runners to notch quicker times that qualify them for the pinnacle of distance races, the Boston Marathon.

Critics call it a shortcut that edges better runners out of big events. Downhill enthusiasts have a message for them: Get over yourselves, and if you think it’s so easy, try it.

About 2,000 invitees to last year’s Boston Marathon made it in by running races that were at least 2,000 feet downhill.

Boston requires most runners to hit times that vary based on age. Because of the race’s popularity, there are thousands of runners who qualify and still don’t get to be among the 30,000 participants.

“To find out that there are people who will maybe bump me off the race who ran 6,000 feet downhill kind of pisses me off,” said Chrysostom, who finished the Myrtle Beach Marathon in under three hours and figures he’s on the cusp of getting into Boston. "

########

And here's another shocker, from the BBC:

Cheating scandal rocks world stone skimming championships  by Benjamin Russell 

"The world stone skimming championships have been rocked by a cheating scandal, after several competitors were disqualified for tampering.

More than 2,200 people, from 27 countries, attended this year's event on the tiny island of Easdale off the west coast of Scotland.

Rules state that stones must come from naturally occurring island slate, however some were found to have been ground into a "suspiciously circular" shape to help them bounce on water.

Organiser Dr Kyle Mathews told BBC News that the offenders had "held their hands up" and apologised."

Tour de France competitions: conditioning, bikes, and drugs?

 Agence France Presse (AFP) reports on the bike race, and speculates on the historical competition between drug takers and drug testers.

Pogacar's Tour superiority stirs up old doping debate.  Tadej Pogacar's towering domination of this year's Tour de France is once again raising eyebrows in a sport long tainted by the spectre of doping.

"Pogacar himself brushes off the suggestions of skulduggery he has had to face ever since his first Tour win five years ago, always insisting that he should be "trusted".

"Last October he said to dope "is to ruin your life". "I don't want to take the risk of falling ill one day," he added, pointing out that cycling was "a victim of its past".
"
He continued, with an air of resignation: "There is no trust, and I don't know what can be done to restore it."

Dope-testing on the Tour

"Around 600 blood and urine samples will be collected from the peloton during this year's race, with 350 out-of-competition samples taken in the run-up to cycling's blue riband event. 

...

"A selection of the samples are held for 10 years to allow for retro-testing with the advance of new detection techniques.

The UCI also inspects bikes to prevent any technical cheating.

While ketones to help store energy are permitted and widely used, the UCI banned the inhalation of carbon monoxide earlier this year.

...

"Pogacar's ability to smash records set by infamous dopers like disgraced seven-time winner Lance Armstrong or Pantani is remarkable.

...

"And as in other sports, cycling has made enormous progress since the EPO years.

"Technology has led to faster bikes, with the Tour's technical director Thierry Gouvenou suggesting a there has been a 10% gain in performance just thanks to better two-wheeled machines. Nutrition and training have also evolved."

Is gambling exhibiting a sinister interest in sports?

 Is a single missed pitch in a baseball game a sign of gambling's sinister interest in discrete events in sports contests?  It might be, if aa lot of money was bet on that one pitch...

The  has WSJ story:

The Scourge of ‘Spot-Fixing’ Is Coming for American Sports
U.S. sports has been riddled with gambling scandals in recent years, but MLB’s latest investigation raises the specter that one of the most pernicious forms of corruption has finally arrived
By Jared Diamond  and Joshua Robinson

 "American sports has been riddled with betting scandals over the past couple of years, with separate incidents involving former Toronto Raptors forward Jontay Porter, MLB umpire Pat Hoberg, and Shohei Ohtani’s interpreter, Ippei Mizuhara. The situation involving Ortiz, however, could turn out to be the most explosive of all. 

That’s because this one potentially signals that one of the most pernicious forms of corruption in global sports has finally arrived in America.

“Spot-fixing” is the practice of manipulating small, discrete events that have little to no bearing on the outcome of a game—the timing of a yellow card in soccer, a wide ball in cricket, a single double-fault in tennis. Or, in the case of Ortiz, the result of one of the roughly 300 pitches thrown in the average baseball game. 

What makes spot-fixing so insidious is how inconsequential the occurrences appear in real time. It doesn’t require throwing a game, like traditional match-fixing, or convincing a group of players to collectively shave points. All spot-fixing needs is a lone bad actor intentionally committing a small, common mistake, making the offense easy to commit—and perilously difficult to stop. "

College athletes are now professionals

 For a long time the sports world tried to make a sharp distinction between amateur and professional athletes, especially in the Olympics and in college sports. The idea was that it was repugnant to pay amateurs, who just played for fun.  Like student athletes.

The last shreds of that posture are crumbling, after a long decline.

ESPN has the story:

Judge OK's $2.8B settlement, paving way for colleges to pay athletes by Dan Murphy

"Schools are now free to begin paying their athletes directly, marking the dawn of a new era in college sports brought about by a multibillion-dollar legal settlement that was formally approved Friday.

Judge Claudia Wilken approved the deal between the NCAA, its most powerful conferences and lawyers representing all Division I athletes. The House v. NCAA settlement ends three separate federal antitrust lawsuits, all of which claimed the NCAA was illegally limiting the earning power of college athletes."

Super bowl markets in ads and gambling (and also a football game)

 Today is a big celebration of advertising.  But the advertisements have to be fitted into pauses in a football game.  That takes some doing.

The NYT has the story:

During N.F.L. Games, Going to Commercial Requires Its Own Playbook
TV advertising is the lifeblood of the league, but knowing when to pause the games is a task undertaken by N.F.L. executives, network producers and on-field officials.  By Ken Belson

"Most games have 18 commercial breaks. A few timeouts, like at the end of the first and third quarters and at the two-minute warnings, are fixed. The league and networks avoid taking breaks if a team’s opening drive of the game ends quickly, because they want fans to settle into the broadcast. If all goes well, the last commercials run at the two-minute warning in the fourth quarter.

"Most commercial breaks, though, are chosen in real time as league executives, network producers and officials on the field look for natural breaks in the action. Finding them is more art than science because every game unfolds differently, with long drives, three-and-outs, injury timeouts and coaches’ challenges.

...

"The logistics of determining when to call television timeouts require an intricate phone tree over a three-hour game. The referee, who controls when a game starts and stops and can overrule a request for a break, communicates with the back judge, who is in constant contact with two sideline officials standing near the 20-yard line. One of them wears a green hat and represents the league. The other has on orange gloves and works for the network."

 ##############

Gambling (on apps, during the game, about anything and everything) is still relatively new:

Here's the Guardian:

Americans expected to place record $1.39bn in bets for Super Bowl LIX
The US sports betting industry has boomed since 2018 – with it brings a ‘dark side’ as gambling addiction also rises  by Lauren Aratani 

"Since the supreme court overturned a federal law that made sports betting illegal in 2018, the industry has boomed, with 38 states opting to legalize. Gambling revenue hit $99.4bn in 2022, according to the American Gaming Association (AGA), the industry lobby group.

‘A serious disease’: Congress weighs federal gambling crackdown amid growing concerns

Read more

"Super Bowl Sunday – the biggest sports event of the year – will be no exception. Even as TV networks have struggled to maintain audience numbers, with more people tuning in to video content online, the Super Bowl has continued to grow in viewership. In 2024, a record 123 million viewers tuned into the game, making it the most-watched telecast in history.

"The AGA estimated that $1.39bn worth of legal bets will be placed for Super Bowl LIX. This is the first year the trade association reported estimated bets solely from legal channels. In previous years, AGA relied on surveys that included all betting, including those placed illegally and casually among friends. Last year, research firm Eilers & Krejcik Gaming estimated $1.25bn of legal bets were placed for the Super Bowl last year.

...

"Betting companies have also become more aggressive at advertising. Last year, BetMGM, the sports betting arm of MGM Resorts, aired a star-studded commercial promoting its platform during the Super Bowl. Fong said that it has all contributed to a normalizing of sports betting in American culture."

For real passion in the discussion of market design, look to sports

 The Guardian weighs in on American football playoffs:

The NFL’s bogus playoff seeding system penalizes the more deserving  by Doug Farrar

"The injustice of the NFL’s playoff seeding system rears its ugly head once again.

"Now that we know how the 2024 NFL playoffs are seeded from top to bottom, it’s time once again to complain about the league’s ugly secret: its system for awarding playoff position, and thus which teams will have postseason games at home or on the road, is seriously flawed.

"The primary culprit is the league’s insistence that every division winner gets at least one home game. That would be somewhat equitable if every division winner was above average, but the process of elimination tells us a different story."

Sports gambling presents problems for gamblers, athletes, and sports

 Sports betting has some potentially dire implications both for betters and for athletes and sports. Gamblers can find in-app gambling while the game is going on addictive."Prop" bets on the performance of particular athletes during the game, can also subject athletes to pressures that may be at odds with their incentives arising simply from the rules of the game. And this may open up sports to gambling and point-shaving scandals that have been vigorously suppressed in the past.

Here's a variety of headlines (in sufficient number that I won't summarize the accompanying stories, but you can click through to see them).

The Guardian:

‘A serious disease’: Congress weighs federal gambling crackdown amid growing concerns
With sports betting now legal in 38 states, experts worry that gambling addiction is on the rise  by Callum Jones 

NPR:

The president of the NCAA calls for a ban on 'prop bets' in college sports,  by Becky Sullivan
Becky Sullivan

The Atlantic:

Legalizing Sports Gambling Was a Huge Mistake. The evidence is convincing: The betting industry is ruining lives.  By Charles Fain Lehman

Paul Krugman's substack:

America the Addicted. Gambling — on sports, stocks and crypto — is the new opioids.  by Paul Krugman

Competition between drug testing and drug taking in bicycle racing

 Some time ago the Cycling Independent Reform Commission (CIRC) issued a report on performance enhancing drugs in bicycle racing, which makes clear that there is vigorous competition between drug taking and drug testing...

CIRC report: 20-90 percent of modern peloton still doping
Doping has waned in professional cycling, but remains a serious issue, the CIRC report contends 

"The days of 15 percent gains in performance through massive EPO doping seem to be a thing of the past, according to CIRC. Instead, riders are skirting the edges of the anti-doping system, taking advantage of Therapeutic Use Exemptions, using overnight gaps in testing and a deep understanding of the Biological Passport to micro-dose without getting caught. Some are taking drugs that aren’t yet banned, like Tramadol, and using pill regimens that dull pain or improve recovery. 

...

"The Athlete’s Biological Passport (ABP), enacted in 2008, is named as a primary catalyst of the change, and a “paradigm shift.”

"CIRC wrote: “Prior to the ABP, only three riders were convicted of blood doping. In the first three years of the ABP, 26 riders were found positive for the presence of EPO stimulating agents in their specimens. In 20 out of the 26 positive cases, it was the abnormal blood profile which raised suspicions leading to a targeted anti-doping urinary or blood test.”

"An unheralded but important landmark in the decrease in doping, according to CIRC, was the introduction in 2008 of anti-doping chaperones at all UCI races. The report cites this change as a catalyst to a cleaner peloton, as riders could no longer quickly prepare for a test with masking agents or similar dodges.

...

"The CIRC concluded that it is still possible to micro-dose using EPO without getting caught by the Biological Passport, largely thanks to the lack of nighttime testing.

"The lack of testing between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m. is a problem, according to the report. Testers are currently barred from testing riders between these hours, unless a rider is under suspicion. This allows for micro-dosing, as “riders are confident that they can take a micro-dose of EPO in the evening because it will not show up by the time the doping control officers could arrive to test at 6 a.m.”

...

"CIRC wrote: “Corticoids are widely used today both to reduce pain and therefore improve endurance capability and to achieve weight loss to improve power/weight ratio.”

######

CIRC Report: Executive summary

"The general view is that at the elite level the situation has improved, but that doping is still taking place. It was commented that doping is either less prevalent today or the nature of doping practices has changed such that the performance gains are smaller. The CIRC considers that a culture of doping in cycling continues to exist, albeit attitudes have started to change. The biggest concern today is that following the introduction of the athlete biological passport, dopers have moved on to micro-dosing in a controlled manner that keeps their blood parameters constant and enables them to avoid detection. In contrast to the findings in previous investigations, which identified systematic doping organised by teams, at the elite level riders who dope now organise their own doping programmes with the help of third parties who are primarily outside the cycling team. At the elite level, doping programmes are generally sophisticated and therefore doctors play a key role in devising programmes that provide performance enhancement whilst minimising the risk of getting caught." 

Olympic scorekeeping (choose your comparison set)

 There are many local angles to the coverage of the Olympics. Some of them have to do with scoring systems.  Here's a story from the WSJ that counts medals in a way that's familiar where I live...

Which College Won the Olympics?  At the Paris Games, there were medalists from more than 100 schools. But there was one college that outperformed most countries—again. By Ben Cohen, Andrew Beaton,  and  Joshua Robinson

"When the Paris Olympics ended on Sunday, the final medal table looked exactly the way that everyone around the world expected. Team USA was once again at the top, followed by China, Great Britain, host France, Australia, Japan, Italy—and Stanford. 

...

"Stanford took home 39 medals, more than double the number of any other U.S. school—and more than the Netherlands, South Korea, Germany and Canada. ...

Harvard did well too:

"The eggheads from Cambridge, Mass., might not be known for starring in mainstream sports, but they thrive once every four years, when fencing, rowing and triathlon become the focus of global attention. This year, Harvard won 13 medals because the Crimson also came up big on the track, where sprinter Gabby Thomas blasted her way to three golds, and on two wheels, as cyclist Kristen Faulkner took gold in the women’s road race and the velodrome. "

Goldin arm

 Here's a great post-Nobel story from the Harvard Gazette.

Time to send in Goldin. Sox go with Nobel laureate southpaw to throw out first pitch by Jill Radsken 

“I’ve been throwing balls my whole life, but it’s been pitching to a dog with its mouth open 25 feet away. Using a real baseball has more heft,” said Goldin, the Henry Lee Professor of Economics."

######

Memory lane:

Sunday, October 28, 2012

The Nobel sport of football at Stanford

Child labor in soccer

Many laws seek to protect children from being exploited in the labor market, and there is widespread repugnance when it appears that such exploitation is taking place. (Think of the issues associated with children sewing soccer balls in Pakistan...)

But minors can also be professional athletes, and that turns out to be an issue in the Euro 2024 competitions, because star Spanish player Lamine Yamal is only 16 years old. (He was scouted at 6...)

Here's the story

Why Spain are Risking 30,000 Euro Fine by Playing Lamine Yamal at Euro 2024, by Robin Mumford 

"Yamal has started in each of Spain's group games so far, against Croatia and Italy, but a German law put Spain at risk of a €30,000 fine for his involvement in the game against Italy. That's because the German Youth Protection Act prohibits under-18s from working beyond a certain time - usually 8pm.

"Spain's first group game kicked off at 6pm local time, but their game against Italy started at 9pm. While there is an exceptional rule within the German law that authorises athletes to work until 11pm, the match finished very close to that time anyway, and post-match showers and interviews are also considered within the realms of labour, which means Spain may very well have met the conditions to be hit with a fine."

HT: Peter Biro

##########

The Centre for Sport and Human Rights has a White Paper called

CHILD LABOUR IN SPORT. Protecting the Rights of Child Athletes

Paying college athletes before it was legal

 Yesterday I blogged about the new NCAA rules on allowing college athletes to be paid: The ban on paying college athletes is history

It will no doubt shock you to learn that payments were made long before they were legal.  

The Guardian has a book review about that:

Hot Dog Money: behind the bribery scandal that rocked college basketball. A new book looks back at the federal investigation that found bribery and corruption within a major industry, by Andrew Lawrence, Tue 4 Jun 2024

"On 26 September 2018, 10 prominent US college sports figures were arrested in connection with a federal investigation into fraud and corruption. Specifically, the government alleged that business managers and financial advisers had bribed basketball coaches to secure business with NBA-bound players, and that a senior executive with Adidas had further conspired with them to funnel payments to high school players and their families in exchange for their commitment to Adidas-sponsored college sports programs.

"The scandal – which ensnared the top NBA draft pick Deandre Ayton, hall of fame coach Rick Pitino and Kobie Baker, the associate athletic director at Alabama, one of the country’s premier talent factories – was a black eye for the NCAA, the keystone cops who style themselves as virtuous defenders of amateurism in college sports while reaping billions off the backs of student-athletes, the majority of them Black and quite economically disadvantaged. The extent of the scheme wasn’t fully understood until one of the schemers, a middle-aged moneyman named Marty Blazer, was turned into an FBI informant. 

...

"Lawson’s latest nonfiction book, Hot Dog Money, is Blazer’s Goodfellas story – one largely told from Lawson’s one-on-one interviews with Blazer

...

"He was a mid-level financial adviser making six figures trading stocks and bonds with a client roster that slowly grew to include select members of the NFL’s Pittsburgh Steelers. The story of William “Tank” Black, the powerful football agent indicted for running a Ponzi scheme fueled with Detroit coke money, sparked Blazer’s larger ambitions.

"Blazer teamed up with an agent and recruited football players from Pennsylvania colleges with the aim of attaching himself to future pros. That’s where the “hot dog money” came in. Blazer didn’t just pass cash-filled envelopes under the table. He sent money home to players’ struggling families, supplied them with luxury cars, paid for lavish trips to Miami and Las Vegas, and comped their inevitable strip club binges. Sometimes he’d arrange to have girls flown in for parties closer to campus. “The girls are being trafficked, the kids are being trafficked,” says Lawson. “Forget morality, how do you even describe the decency of it all? This is what the swirling of a flushing toilet looks like.”

"In a typical hot dog money scheme, a college player receives cash in the form of a forgivable loan with the understanding that the bagman’s aboveboard services will be retained once the player turns pro; depending on the player, the bagman can make his money back many times over in boring management fees. A proudly devoted husband and father of three, Blazer was more interested in helping his clients make the most out of a corrupt system and went the extra mile to look out for them, paying for information that could help clients avert potential disaster.

The ban on paying college athletes is history

 The idea that paying college athletes is wrong has given way to the realities of the sports markets in which they perform.  For many years, college athletes were required to be unpaid amateurs, but that time has passed.

The WSJ has the story.

NCAA Agrees to Share Revenue With Athletes in Landmark $2.8 Billion Settlement. Breaking with more than a century of policy, the NCAA will pay billions in damages to former athletes and allow schools to pay athletes up to $20 million a year    By Laine Higgins  and Jared Diamond

"The National Collegiate Athletic Association and the five most prominent athletic conferences agreed to a $2.77 billion settlement of a class-action lawsuit on Thursday, ushering in a new era of college sports in which schools can pay athletes directly. 

"The move marks a dramatic shift for the NCAA, breaking with its century-old stance that college athletes are amateurs and therefore cannot share in any of the money they generate for their universities.

...

"It also marks the latest rule the NCAA has been forced to change amid an onslaught of legal challenges in recent years. 

"First, the NCAA allowed athletes to receive academic bonuses and profit from their name, image and likeness. Now, the biggest domino of all has fallen: For the first time ever, some players are going to be paid directly by their schools for playing their sports—a seismic shift that will completely reshape the business model for the top end of this billion-dollar industry. 

"The result is the creation of a system that will give Division I schools the ability to distribute roughly $20 million a year to their athletes, said people familiar with the matter. "

Sports and celebrity (salary and income)

 Basketball superstar Caitlin Clark recently went pro for a salary of $76,535.  What's going on?  The LA Times has the story of rags and riches...

Caitlin Clark is worth millions. Why will she only make $76,535 in base salary as a WNBA rookie?  By Chuck Schilken

"Clark, the Iowa phenomenon who set the NCAA career basketball scoring record and helped the women’s March Madness tournament reach all-time highs in TV ratings, was the No. 1 overall pick for the Indiana Fever in Monday’s WNBA draft.

"Her jersey sales are already through the roof. The league scheduled the Fever for 36 nationally televised games, more than any other team this season, several days before Clark officially became a member of the team. Likewise, tickets for opposing teams’ home games against Indiana saw a spike in interest (and price) long before draft night.

Clark will make $76,535 in base salary this year as a WNBA rookie, part of a four-year contract worth $338,056.

...

"Those salaries are the maximum allowed for rookies, as laid out in the most recent collective bargaining agreement between the WNBA and its players association. 

...

"As the WNBA pointed out in a statement emailed to The Times on Tuesday night, however, Clark will have the opportunity to make more money on top of her base salary.

“Caitlin Clark stands to make a half million dollars or more in WNBA earnings this coming season,” the statement read, “in addition to what she will receive through endorsements and other partnerships, which has been reported to already exceed $3 million.”

...

"In addition to the individual endorsement deals she has already secured, Clark will undoubtedly will have a stream of other lucrative opportunities come her way. BIG3 co-founder Ice Cube has offered Clark $5 million to become the first female player in his three-on-three basketball league.

"Still, it might come as a bit of a shock to learn how relatively little Clark and other star WNBA rookies will make in base salary, especially compared with their counterparts in other leagues. Like Clark, Victor Wembanyama was seen as a generational talent when he was selected No. 1 overall by the San Antonio Spurs in the 2023 draft. His four-year rookie contract is worth $55.2 million."

##########

Update:

 How Nike Won the Battle for Caitlin Clark  By Rachel Bachman, WSJ, April 19, 2024

"When it came to Clark, Nike looked even further into the future. The duration of the proposed contract, eight years, suggests that the brand sees not only long-term stardom potential, but truly global appeal. The next eight years, Nike executives reasoned, would give Clark a chance to represent the U.S. at three Olympic Games—this summer in Paris, 2028 in Los Angeles, and 2032 in Brisbane, Australia. (The U.S. roster for Paris won’t be announced until June or July.)

"Nike’s initial offer of $3.5 million a year, though an eye-popping number, didn’t initially come with a signature shoe. One possibility floated was that Clark would instead become the female face of the Kobe Bryant line, which relaunched in August 2023 to great fanfare.

"In its final offer to Clark, however, Nike upped its offer to include a signature shoe. That would give her the most lucrative and attractive shoe deal in women’s basketball—and yet another record for her collection."

Gambling on sports, by and on athletes

 Now that sports betting is legal, and apps allow people to bet on particular events within a game as it unfolds, there is concern that players could be (illegally) incentivized to under-perform in order to cause some bets to become winning bets.

The WSJ has the story:

America Made a Huge Bet on Sports Gambling. The Backlash Is Here.  Less than six years after a Supreme Court ruling paved the way for widespread legal sports gambling in the U.S., sports leagues face an onslaught of scandals related to betting.  By Joshua Robinson, , Jared Diamond,  and Robert O'Connell

"American sports spent more than a century keeping gambling as far away as possible, in the name of preserving competitive purity and repelling scandal and corruption. 

"Now, less than six years after the Supreme Court opened the door for states to embrace legal sports betting, major U.S. leagues are already confronting the darker sides of sports betting with alarming frequency. And at the heart of the problems is the population whose ability to bet on sports is the most severely curbed: the athletes themselves.

...

"The situation has become worrisome enough that National Collegiate Athletic Association president Charlie Baker on Wednesday amped up his organization’s call for a nationwide ban on bets on the performance of individual college athletes. 

...

“All of the positive benefits and additional fan engagement that could potentially come from sports betting mean nothing if we’re not protecting the integrity of the game,” Marquest Meeks, MLB’s deputy general counsel for sports betting and compliance, said in an interview last summer.

"Gambling scandals have long tainted sports. The 1919 Black Sox scandal involved eight players accused of throwing the World Series for money. Baseball superstar Pete Rose received a lifetime ban for betting on baseball, a penalty that has blocked the game’s all-time hits leader from the Hall of Fame. Point-shaving scandals have periodically roiled college basketball, and NBA referee Tim Donaghy went to prison for betting on games he officiated.

...

"Odds are now openly discussed on live broadcasts. Ads for betting apps seem to appear during every commercial break and are plastered around stadiums and arenas. Sports leagues even have gambling-focused programming on their official networks. 

...

"What’s at stake now is the promise that lies at the very center of the sports experience: Fans and participants must believe that what they are seeing is true. Yet as the leagues and the gamblers grow closer together, the mere suggestion that players could be motivated to manipulate outcomes has been enough to create fresh doubts. 

...

"Since the prohibition on sports gambling was lifted, leagues that had once viewed betting as an existential threat to their integrity scrambled to partner with gambling companies and brought them into the tent. This winter, Los Angeles Lakers superstar LeBron James became a brand ambassador for DraftKings, where he will dispense picks for football games. The NBA itself also announced a new feature designed to mesh the betting experience with live action: Fans watching games on League Pass, the flagship streaming platform, would be able to opt in to view betting odds on the app’s interface and click through to place wagers.

"Nothing, however, made the American marriage between sports and betting more public than what took place in the Nevada desert in February: The NFL held its first ever Super Bowl in Las Vegas.

...

“To half the world, I’m just helping them make money on DraftKings,” [Indiana Pacers point guard Tyrese] Haliburton said Tuesday evening, naming one of the league’s partners. “I’m a prop.” He was referring to so-called proposition bets, in which gamblers can place wagers on specific outcomes such as how many points a player scores or rebounds he grabs."

Gambling in video games--entry level gambling for minors?

 In-game gambling for video game tools has become an unregulated form of online gambling that may provide minors with their first gambling fix...

The Guardian has the story:

‘It’s rotting young people’s brains’: the murky world of gambling in video games. In-game purchases of bonus items have long been available. But now gamers are being lured into casino-style betting to win them.  by Rob Davies

"For the uninitiated, “skins” are virtual items within a computer game that can be bought for money, or won as a reward for gameplay. Skins might be devastating weapons, a snazzy uniform for a character or – in a football game – a player who could be the missing link to complete an all-conquering team.

...

"Typically, skins are contained in “loot boxes” or “cases”, which gamers pay small sums for without knowing what they will get.

"Loot boxes have already become a lightning rod for controversy due to their gambling-style mechanism, although the UK government has refused to recognise them as gambling products.

"While skins can be found in loot boxes, they can also be bought in the online marketplace operated by online gaming platform Steam – the medium through which many games such as CS:GO are played.

"Through that marketplace, skins can also be transferred between players and into the game. There, competitors can use them to gain an advantage, or just for cosmetic effect.

"What bothered Jeff [a professional video gamer], however, was not so much the loot boxes or the skins in themselves but another phenomenon that they have spawned: skins gambling.

'This works like any other casino. You load up your account with funds, place a bet, watch the graphics spin and either win or lose.

"The big difference in this case is that the casino taking your bet has no gambling licence and, in some cases, no reliable mechanism to stop under-18s getting their first taste of gambling – via an online ecosystem that is, to many parents, a total mystery

...

"Some skins carry enormous price tags in the real world. One website that tracks skin prices values a “Gungnir” sniper rifle, available in the CS:GO game, at more than $18,000. A knife – a “factory new, case-hardened Karambit, pattern 387 (blue gem)” – is reputedly the most expensive CS:GO skin in history, attracting a $1.5m offer that its owner turned down. Further down the scale, guns, outfits, stickers and knives sell for hundreds of dollars.

...

"it can be literally child’s play to turn skins into hard cash. To use sites such as KeyDrop, players must have an account on the Steam platform, which was created by the maker of CS:GO, US-based game developer Valve.

"Steam has its own marketplace, where gamers can trade skins. Gift cards to help gamers buy such skins are big business at Christmas, an obvious choice for anyone with a relative or a friend who loves nothing more than spending hours in front of a game.

"The Steam marketplace is self-contained, at least initially. You can load cash into your wallet and use those funds to buy skins from Steam or from other gamers. You cannot, however, withdraw the funds. In ­theory, therefore, the marketplace is not somewhere you could properly cash out any winnings.

"But an industry has sprung up: third-party marketplaces such as SkinBaron and Skinwallet, where you can sell skins, including those won on gambling sites, for real money."

The NFL embraces sports gambling for fans but not for players

 The Superbowl is in Las Vegas, and gambling is being embraced by the NFL for fans, but not for players and other NFL employees.

The NYT has the story:

N.F.L.’s Rapid Embrace of Gambling Creates Mixed Signals. The league is pushing to popularize and benefit from sports betting while still trying to guard against the potential pitfalls for its players, employees and fans.  By Jenny Vrentas

"Since the Supreme Court struck down, in 2018, a federal law that effectively banned sports betting outside Nevada — a prohibition once backed by the N.F.L.’s commissioner, Roger Goodell — the N.F.L. has embraced the gambling industry. It has forged partnerships reportedly worth nearly $1 billion over five years with sports betting companies, and permitted a sports book to operate inside one of its stadiums. Now it even has a team in Las Vegas, which the league shunned for decades because any affiliation was seen as a threat to the integrity of the game.

"Yet the embedding of sports gambling so quickly into the culture of the league has resulted in jarring contradictions. The N.F.L. is pushing to popularize and benefit from sports betting while still guarding against the potential pitfalls that it long condemned. While the league donates money to promote responsible gambling, its broadcasts are peppered with advertisements for sports betting companies. The N.F.L. is part of a growing apparatus that encourages casual fans to regularly place wagers on games, while punishing league employees — most notably players — who might do the same.

...

"Americans legally wagered more than $115 billion on sports in 2023, according to the American Gaming Association, the national trade group for the gambling industry. Nearly 25 million more Americans bet on sports last year than in 2018, the group said, and the number of states where betting on sports is legal will reach 38 this year.

...

"[A] report projected that around $1.5 billion would be legally wagered on next Sunday’s Super Bowl, more than 1 percent of the money bet legally on all sports last year.

...

"n 2021, the year the N.F.L. struck deals with its three sports book partners, it gave the National Council on Problem Gambling a three-year, $6.2 million grant that was used in part to modernize the help line that appears at the bottom of betting ads. The league’s contribution is a small fraction of what gambling companies pay to be part of the N.F.L.’s marketing apparatus, but it is the largest grant in the council’s history and exceeded the nonprofit’s grant total over the previous four years, according to tax filings.

...

"The league’s approach to gambling violations within its own ranks, though, remains punitive. For decades, sports leagues have believed that gambling could damage the integrity of results — with worries over a player’s throwing a game because of a bet, for instance — so the focus has been on enforcement and punishment over prevention and treatment.

"The N.F.L. prohibits league and team personnel from betting on any sport, while players are allowed to bet on sports other than the N.F.L., as long as they do not do so at the team facility or while on team or league business. While in Las Vegas for the Super Bowl, members of the Kansas City Chiefs and the San Francisco 49ers and the hundreds of league employees, many staying at Caesars Palace, are not permitted to play casino games and may enter a sports book only if passing through to another part of the hotel."

Market design in major league baseball

 The rules of professional Major League Baseball are changing in an effort to make attending the games more popular.  Among the rule changes are rules requiring pitchers to pitch more quickly, including rules that prevent them from too often taking time to defend against base stealing.  It's a good example of a game within a game: the players have, over time, adjusted their behavior to win games under the existing rules. These behaviors, collectively, have caused games to slow down, take more time, and be less easily appreciated as exciting.  That in turn makes it hard for baseball to fill stadium seats.

The NY Times has the story: 

How New Rules Turned Back the Clock on Baseball, By Ben Blatt and Francesca ParisMay 24, 2023

"Baseball’s future may look a lot like its past.

"Nearly two months into the season, a series of rule changes — including the new pitch clock, enlarged bases and a ban on the infield shift — has translated into a game that evokes the 1980s more than the 2020s."