Prior academic studies find that bets on underdogs persistently win more often than expected in National Football League (NFL) and National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) football gambling markets. We extend this stream of literature by examining this 'underdog bias' in the market for...

Betting market odds for Major League Baseball are used to examine the level of uncertainty of outcome, an ex-ante form of competitive balance. The efficient markets hypothesis cannot be rejected for the years 1990-2006 in Major League Baseball. Therefore, the odds provide an ex-ante measure of...

Wolfers (2006) suggests that NCAA basketball is marred by widespread gambling corruption. We examine totals wagers in a variety of sports betting markets to determine whether observed outcomes are symmetric around closing lines, an important assumption Wolfers makes in his analysis. Our results...

Attendance and wagering volume is examined at a greyhound racing track to determine if the distribution of transfer checks resulted in significant increases in these variables. Specifically, the impact of United States Social Security and federal assistance checks, which were released on the...

The “hot hand” hypothesis was first investigated in sports betting markets by Camerer (1989) and Brown and Sauer (1993), who examined if professional basketball teams truly could become “hot”, implying a change in their actual skill level, and if the betting market believes teams become...

This study examines the relationship between NFL game characteristics and the frequency of fan ratings on the NFL’s website (www.NFL.com). The margin of victory and overall total points scored in a game are shown to be significant determinants of the number of times individual games are rated;...

The betting markets for totals in college football and arena football provide additional evidence of bettor preference for scoring. The results for college football and arena football markets are similar to those found in the professional football and professional basketball totals market. In...