Another rigged game in the book!!! Nicely done, gsw!!

"I recently attended the Western Economics Association conference in Seattle. I heard a fantastic talk on a type of analytics, that I’ll confess, is out of my wheelhouse – sports law analytics. And while listening, I heard something that floored me: it may be legal, via federal laws, for the NBA to change the outcome of games.

Some background: Ryan Rodenberg, is a professor in just that subject at Florida State University. He also has an impressive resume that includes Nike, Octagon Sports Marketing, and the ATP tour. In his paper “Master of Puppets: Legally Preserving Uncertainty of Outcomes in Sports”, Ryan discusses the legality of fixing games in the NBA. His killer line is here:

"Working in concert with affiliated referees, coaches, players, facility personnel, commercial sponsors, or broadcast partners, a sports league cognizant of such demand function can, in theory and practice, manipulate their own contests to artificially inflate consumer interest and revenue potential. So long as such manipulation has no nexus to gambling, the rigging of game outcomes or individual events therein is legal. No federal law definitely prohibits it."

Wow! Read that a few times. Ryan brings up the “quiz show scandal” statute that was passed in 1960. However, he notes that this doesn’t explicitly include sports and, in fact, has had a commentator exclude sports as they are not of an intellectual nature.

As I understand it: Adam Silver/David Stern can not bribe his referees ala Ed Rush. Nor can Adam Silver or anyone else in the NBA have any money on the line via gambling, ala Tim Donaghy.  However, the commissioner can inform his refs that as part of their job to keep the sport compelling they need to keep the games close. This is nothing more than an employer telling an employee what to do, something which happens all the time in companies every day."