The NY Times reports that Bill Simmons will be launching his new website in April. The name of the new site will be The Ringer and supposedly Simmons is hiring a bunch of folks who wrote for Grantland before ESPN shuttered that site. If indeed Simmons is trying to get his new venture started on a vector that directs it toward the same end as Grantland, then I shall be looking for the launch of the new site and will likely be a frequent visitor. I very much enjoyed the sports aspect of Grantland because it afforded the writers there the opportunity to present their “arguments” in sufficient space and with sufficient detail to be thorough. I hope The Ringer does the same.
About a month ago, ESPN’s Outside the Lines did a piece on the link(s) between major sports enterprises in the US and Daily Fantasy sports websites. Those “partnerships” had been known for a while but the report last month from OTL pointed to new ties between sports leagues and gambling enterprises. Here is a brief summary:
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MLB – already a minority owner of DraftKings.com – signed a deal with a British company, Sport Integrity Monitor, for the stated purpose of keeping an eye on the betting lines for MLB games. The idea is to look for oddities there which could point to “fixed games”. Who can be against that? Well, it also turns out that Sport Integrity Monitor is not a stand-alone enterprise. It’s parent company sets betting lines for bookmakers in Asia and Europe. Hmmm…
The NBA owns a portion of FanDuel.com. With that minority ownership stake, the NBA is also a part owner of NumberFire which is a company that offers fans, fantasy players and other bettors advanced analytical looks at players and games. Oh, NumberFire also makes betting “suggestions” on various games including NBA games. Hmmm…
The NFL is a part owner of SportRadar US which is a subsidiary of SportRadar – a Swiss entity. This parent company provides real time stats and suggests in-game odds to bookmakers and some of its clients allegedly are offshore Internet sports books that provide outlet for illegal Internet sports gambling in the US. Hmmm…
Three individuals who also have an ownership stake in SportRadar US reportedly are Mark Cuban, Michael Jordan and Ted Leonsis. All three own an NBA franchise; Leonsis also owns an NHL franchise. Hmmm…
I mention this because these three US sports leagues vigorously oppose the effort(s) by the State of New Jersey to offer sports wagering in the Atlantic city casinos and at NJ racetracks. They assert loudly and continuously that gambling threatens the “integrity of their games”. However, none of these leagues has any qualms about doing business with Daily Fantasy websites or these other business entities whose total existence depends on gambling activities related to the games put on by these leagues. I think these leagues operate on this basis:
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They think that the Hippocratic Oath is what they take to absolve themselves from the hypocrisy they spout on this subject on a daily basis.
In recent weeks, we have heard about the possibility of fixed matches in tennis and a report that a top player was offered a six-figure sum to “take a dive” in a specific match. Those allegations are under investigation and have not been proven as yet, but there is an interesting linkage to the deals I mentioned above. SportRadar – the parent company of the entity that the NFL bought in to – has a 5-year deal with the International Tennis Federation whereby the ITF gets $70M in exchange for SportRadar’s “exclusive access to live match data”. Hmmm…
Consider these two comments from Brad Dickson in the Omaha World-Herald as a cynical view of the “integrity of the game”:
“A website compiled a list of sports that aren’t corrupt. It included darts, toe wrestling, wife carrying and cheese rolling. That sounds suspiciously like the ESPN2 weeknight lineup. “
And …
“There are allegations of match-fixing in professional tennis. You look at pro tennis. Football. Major League Baseball. Boxing. Soccer. Soon, our cleanest event will be the Tour de France.”
While the major sports endeavors in the US wring their hands about the dangers they face from gambling, they rarely have to deal with life and death matters. Yes, baseball umpire, John McSherry, suffered a fatal “cardiac event” on the field on Opening Day 20 years ago. Yes, Chuck Hughes (WR, Detroit Lions) had a heart attack and died on the field during a game in the early 1970s. However, none of the US leagues had to deal with anything like what happened recently in a soccer match in Argentina.
According to a report in The Guardian, César Flores was the referee in a soccer game in Córdoba province – a region in north-central Argentina about halfway between Buenos Aires and Santiago, Chile. At some point in the game, Flores issued a red card to a player and sent the player off the pitch. The player – not identified in the report I read – evidently went to his equipment bag, took out a gun, returned to the field and shot Flores three times killing him there on the pitch. Another player in the game, Walter Zárate, was also injured in this event but survived. Police were still looking for the assailant at the time of the report I read, but here was a statement from the police that I think may be one of the greatest examples of understatement in history:
“It all happened during the football match. We don’t know [exactly what took place], but it appears the player was angry, fetched a gun and killed him.”
Angry? I should say so…
Finally, staying in the world of soccer, here is an observation from Greg Cote in the Miami Herald:
“Fort Lauderdale Strikers signed Kleberson, one of those one-name players. But shouldn’t that be an honorarium for only great players? ‘Kleberson’ sounds like a guy working at a deli.”
But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………