There is a secret that no one dares speak about in the sports betting integrity world. It lies at the heart of the current FBI investigation of the NBA.

• Well they would say that wouldn’t they?
• This is my response to many of the commentators who have been claiming the FBI arrests are a triumph of the legal betting market and its ability to show corruption in the bets. Some of the people making these comments are simply shills for the gambling industry. “Journalists” who are little better than betting touts. The number of journalists and media organizations who have taken money from bookmakers in a way that they would never do from a tobacco company or alcohol manufacturer will be the subject of someone’s doctoral thesis in twenty years.
• However, there is a fair point in their argument. Let’s unpack the idea and see how much is true, how much is partisan nonsense.
• The true part is that a well-regulated bookmaking market allows the world to see the volume and price of all bets. T Here is how it works. For example, the NFL’s betting integrity team surveys the betting market during a game between Team A and Team B. They find a whole bunch of bets on the field goal kicker of Team A to miss his next kick. Most of these bets come from the community in Team A’s home town where the kicker lives. The next kick the field goal kicker misses and – Bingo! – the integrity team has a case to investigate.
• This does not necessarily mean fraud. Someone in the kicker’s neighbourhood may have seen him walking with a limp into the corner store and word has gotten out he has a hamstring injury. But suspicious betting patterns are the thing that blew the whistle on the Iowa College scandal of last summer. So truthful up to this point.
• The false part is the unspoken secret of the gambling integrity world: they cannot actually spot corruption in the betting odds if the amount of bets are too high!
• Thus monitoring bets in a small market – the “prop bets” – how many points an individual player will score, whether a player will get a yellow/red card in a soccer game, who will win the next serve in a tennis match – are all easy to read.
• BUT a fixed bet with lots of money on it – the final result or spread of an NFL game – fuhgeddaboudit!
• BTW – my distaste is not for bookmakers or the gambling industry or for other journalists. I have many friends, contacts and colleagues whom I respect in those industries. However, like the honest cop, who hates fellow officers who are on the take, I loathe scummy media/academic types who do not reveal their secret funding sources. If you take money from private bookmakers, say it. Don’t pretend to be an independent journalist let everyone you know you are a gambling tout.
• There is more, much more to unpack about this NBA scandal: including the secret match-fixing that dwarves this scandal, the NBA knows about it, and everyone pretends it does not exist.
• More on this story in the next couple of days…