Popularity of Online college sports betting continues...

Sports betting website operators located in Caribbean, the Cayman Islands, Antigua and Costa Rica amongst others are smiling. They are making sports betting very easy and convenient, making the sports gambling problem worse according to the National Collegiate Athletics Association.


Data sourced from a 1999 report by the National Gambling Impact Study estimate that bettors illegally wager between $80 billion to $380 billion on sports each year and over 118 million Americans bet on sports says an ESPN survey. The current figures would have only increased exponentially in 2003.


Bill Saum, director of agent, gambling and amateurism activities for the NCAA comments that more people are watching the game for the point spreads (which are published in most newspapers) than for the action. According to him, the consumers are converting themselves into gamblers by believing that because it’s published in the mainstream press it is legitimate.


Teenagers and college students are the biggest catch for these sports betting websites. Nearly 30 percent of college athletes wager on sports, and 4 percent wager on their own games and most campuses in America would have a student bookie.@@

These sure are some smart folks that write these articles

Let me do this fuzzy math from the article.
Ok 30% of athletes wager
4% wager on their own teams.

They are not trying to say that 26% wager against their own teams are they?

How would they even arrive at the 30% figure? A wild guess at best.

Studies like this include in that data things like betting on yourself to score a TD in the game with a buddy for 10 bucks as being among the 4% that wager on your own games. Two guys on the hoops team sitting around on Sunday morning decide to bet a 20 spot on the game on TV today, now you have two decrepit athletes who dare bet on a sporting event (and make up that 30% number)! Stupid math really, if they think only 30% are betting on games then I think they missed a lot of people. Imagine the betting rates they would see if they visited say a construction site or a barber shop.

People that do surveys like this are always looking for the easiest way to make some false statement. And the NCAA just eggs them on. Look what they did to Rick Neuheisel, guy puts some cash up with neighbors to bet on a tournament he has no possible way of having any influence on and if the media would ever let people have their privacy it would never be an issue. Notice there was nothing illegal about what he did, the police even looked at it and said it was a legal activity since no one was keeping a percentage. Yet they made it out like he and all these people who make their ratings and pay their ticket prices are evil for daring to enjoy themselves however they wish. So whenever you see NCAA sanctioned studies just assume they came out of the garbage, where they really belong.