We develop evidence of bettors with sentiment bias in the betting market on National Basketball Association (NBA) games. We use novel measures of team popularity, arena capacity-utilization and team all star votes received, as proxies for the presence of biased investors. Analysis of point...

Previous research using attendance-based proxies for the number of investors with sentiment bias supported the presence of investor sentiment in sports betting markets. We use data from social media (Facebook \Likes") to proxy for participants with investor sentiment and analyze variation in...

Evidence of bettors’ belief in the “Hot Hand” -- bettors believing teams on winning streaks will continue winning -- exists in the NBA but not the NFL. Previous research assumed that book makers set point spreads to balance betting on games. Recent research shows imbalanced betting in most...

Previous research on point spread betting assumed that bookmakers attract an equal volume of bets on either side of games in order to maximize profits. This paper examines the viability of this assumption from a theoretical and empirical perspective. The model of bookmaker behavior developed...

The determinants of the total number of bets placed on games from three on-line sports books are analyzed for the 2008‐9 NCAA basketball season. Betting volume depends on television coverage, temporal factors, the quality of the teams, and the expected closeness of the contest. Our results...