Joe Barden and Chris Vanini write:
The Temple men’s basketball team, which came under the attention of wagering regulators for irregular betting activity ahead of Thursday’s game against Alabama-Birmingham, has played at least three other games this season that also produced irregular betting patterns… The Pennsylvania Gaming Control Commission confirmed Friday that a gambling monitoring service called US Integrity flagged Thursday’s game between Temple and UAB… The Owls (11-19) are scheduled to play in the American Athletic Conference tournament on Wednesday…
On February 8, Temple hosted Memphis. About four hours before kickoff, Memphis was ahead by 6.5 points… By game time, so much money was being bet on Temple that the odds had expanded to 10.5. Memphis won 84-77.
On February 28, Temple faced Rice. The game total opened at 144 and the betting went up to 145. Then, just hours before kickoff, the total dropped from 145 to 140.5, indicating that bettors suddenly had reason to believe that one or both teams would not score as much as the oddsmakers expected. Also, after opening at 68, the first half total dropped steadily to 66.5 throughout the day and quickly dropped from 66.5 to 64 two hours before kickoff. The score at halftime was 28-19 (47 points) and Temple won the game 65-43 (108 total points).
Then on March 2, Temple faced Tulsa. The game betting line for the total points dropped significantly from 144 to 136.5 in the two hours leading up to the game, again suggesting that bettors had reason to believe that one or both teams would score less than expected. The team’s first-half total points betting line also dropped from 68.5 to 62.5 during that period, and then dropped dramatically from 66.5 to 62.5 in about an hour. Tulsa went ahead 32-23 (55 points) at halftime and won the game 72-67 (139 points). . . .
Sometimes, injuries or suspensions of players can cause late movement on the betting lines, but in the other three games where The Athletic found unusual and rapid line movement in the hours before tipoff, there was no such information to cause a change.
It’s funny how people bet on a team with an 11-19 record. There are some real addicts out there.
Anyway, it’s interesting to see this kind of problem diagnosing a time series of betting probabilities. It reminds me of our discussion a few years ago about the martingale property of probabilistic forecasting.
P.s A few years ago in the university library I stumbled upon a fascinating book by Maxim (of gun fame) who broke down the Martingale betting system into chapters. When I was writing this I was curious about the literal meaning of the word. I looked it up:
Boom!
