ToGoGo

Greed. And lack of regulation How long into the start-up of the company before the founders said "Hey, we can keep making 13% per tournament, or we can use the data we have to keep even more of the winnings and nobody will ever know". It was a matter of time.

I don't have all the answers. We're all here because our gut is telling us something stinks. All I'm telling you is that there is precedent. Should we discuss the hundreds of high level soccer matches that are fixed every year in major leagues around the world? Or how nearly every FIFA executive was just raided and arrested a couple months ago. FIFA is bigger than the NFL.

What I suspect is that the usage rates run deeper than what the reports are telling us. Once I read a thread on the Roto board from a guy complaining that every single guaranteed tournament he enters into, no matter how short they are of players, ends up full at the last minute. There were a lot of posters saying "you're a noob, that's because everybody waits til the last second because they think they're smart". Now I wonder if those posters were DK and FD shills. Perhaps DK and FD have an algorithm that takes the lineups of 4000 or so real players and calculates according to usage rates and other calculations another 6000 dummy lineups that will more than likely prevent the real players from winning the top prizes. By doing this, DK and FD can avoid paying out over 50% of the winnings and keep it for themselves.

History has all the answers. http://www.chicagonow.com/chicago-sports-guru/2011/06/tim-donaghy-details-how-nba-officials-league-allegedly-fix-games-exclusive-interview-part-3/

Like Donaghy in the NBA. Nope, not feasible at all.

Fantastic. I've been trying to figure out "Why the Seahawks" for a while now, since Seattle isn't that big a market. I figured it had something to do with making up for the NBA moving the Sonics. But Paul Allen makes a lot of sense. He's only one of the 10-15 richest men in the world. My theory has been that's it's just about revenue share. Simple economics that the Patriots or Cowboys being good creates better TV ratings, merchandise sales, etc than the Bills or Browns being good. Since the owners share the revenue, they don't care if their team wins as long as they maximize revenue. But maybe your theory is better.

To be honest, I think we are the recipients of favorable calls sometimes. Miami had their day in the sun with Lebron James, and if the inter-league theory is true, the Dolphins don't have to be good right away. I think we're going to be given some games this season too. The NFL doesn't gain much with the Titans beating the Bills. I think we make the playoffs this year because of Rex Ryan. He has charisma and people will watch if we're in primetime or in the playoffs. He can pull more viewers than the Chiefs or Bengals IMO. But I think that's where it stops. We're just not important enough to the NFL to beat the Broncos or Patriots. They make more money with Peyton or Brady in the Super Bowl. On that note, I think we split with the Jets this year. They're a playoff contender and casual fans like to see Rex as a villain. They won't let us knock a NYC team out of the playoffs. I'm beginning to speculate on the NFL playoff picture in the same way a WWE fan would. Not who's better, but who would the league want to win?

I think about that sometimes. Are players/coaches willing to throw the game? I'm open-minded to what you are saying, but do you really think Rex was trying to lose? I believe in refs calling penalties (or not calling penalties) at just the right times to influence games, but I feel like too many people would need to conspire for players and coaches to throw games. Explain a bit more about how you think this would go down.

If you were a fan of the Bachelor for 20 years and believe it was real, then slowly started realizing it was fixed, it would take you a little while until you lost the emotional attachment. That's what's going on here. It took me several months before I lost my love of college basketball after repeated shadiness by the NCAA.

Feels like a Hegelian Dialectic. States wanted a cut and needed an excuse to enforce regulation. I mean, some employee accidentally posts something on a message board and one day later the NYT is all over it? Then ESPN drops sponsorship? Too fast over something too small. Little shady stuff like this goes on everywhere and the NYT doesn't give a hoot.

This is assuming they were valid penalties, and not just minor penalties called on us because of our reputation.

I pointed this out in the locked thread. Any conspiracy whatsoever, no matter how small, is grouped in with UFOs/lizard people/etc. It's been turned into a slur. The bolded above is a great example. They never argue the point, they just ad hominem attack you.

Amen. You're better off going outside and being angry at squirrels.

Adam Silver has been talking about legalizing gambling for a while now. The DK and FD marketing blitz has been so strong you have to wonder where this money is coming from. It's just not something I've ever seen venture capital money do. I think the major sports leagues are giving them discounts to promote themselves during commercials. NHL is going to expand to Vegas soon. Like I said earlier, I think they're just priming us for full-scale legalization. Too much money not to.

Gotcha. Didn't know that.

Beerball should at least have the balls to explain why he closes those threads, instead of using automatic messages that don't apply. I think we were contributing more positively than 90% of threads on here. The only place we weren't contributing positively was the NFL's (and Buffalo Bill's) bottom line.

Perhaps, but the TOP TOP player like maxdalury use custom algorithms based on usage rates, touches, past history, etc. He knows that on average he finishes in the top 20 percentile so he bets on every single game he can. 8 out of 10 times you'll lose to him in a head to head. I doubt he does any research on new sites, he just plugs numbers into his algorithms.

I used to do affiliate marketing and I know Draftkings was all over it. What that means is they allow approved publishers to promote their business and for everybody that signs up, the publisher is paid a fee. My guess is they are outsourcing their advertising to everybody on Earth to saturate the market. A more sinister theory is that the major sports leagues are using fantasy betting to prime the public to more readily accept straight-forward sports betting in a few years when it becomes legal. Which is on par with everybody else. Most people aren't losing thousands of dollars. They just lose a bit more than they win. Only the top percent makes a nice profit.

A ha! That makes a lot of sense. Big advantage. Nobody monitors these guys anyways, who busted them?

Regardless, every game with meaningful money you're playing against sharps that use computer algorithms to predict winners. They're going to beat you 8 out of 10 times. Something like 1% of all players stay in the green over the course of the year.

There's a lot of talk in the article about "data" and "insider information". What data and inside information do the employees have? Does this mean they take the lineups of the must successful bettors and use them on the competing site? For all the details in the articles, this was really vague. Don't be. Draftkings is partnered with MLB and Fanduel is partnered with the NBA. They're quietly trying to legalize sports gambling.

I think it's a very obvious thing to do. Right now the most vulnerable area to fixing games is calling penalties on crucial plays. Whether you agree that it's done or not, I think people should acknowledge THAT is the way it would be done IF it's done. They should implement reviews for that reason alone.

To answer this, I always think about the ESPN report where the owners knew Goodell was covering up Spygate but went with it to protect the "shield". Billionaires don't like to lose money. Teams make a large percentage of their money from revenue sharing. The more revenue there is, the more revenue there is to share. And if there is more revenue when the Cowboys or Giants or Patriots are good, then the owners would go along with it. Pegula came out of absolutely nowhere. I never heard of the guy before he bought the Sabres and I don't know anybody else who did. Who knows what his motives truly are.

Inter-league makes way too much sense. Explains how Cutler feel into their laps. NHL might be the most rigged with the LA and Chicago turning into powerhouses, and now the Rangers in the finals. Boston a couple years ago, etc. Don't forget Bettman is a Stern crony, and despite the forward-thinking, so is Adam Silver.

Good insight. But in my experience you can spot the outsourced Indian reps by their overly formal way of typing. I haven't seen that on here. Unless they have scripts.