Twice weekly, we’ll comb through as many articles, tweets and podcasts as we can find related to the world of sports betting and daily fantasy sports, and publish the good stuff here.
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The leader of an illegal sports betting operation will not face any prison time.
The leader of an illegal sports betting operation has been ordered to pay $12.6 million to the federal government but will not be going to prison.
Instead, Bartice “Luke” King will spend five years on probation, with the first five months in detention at his home in south Texas. He also must complete 312 hours of community service.
King was the last of 28 defendants associated with the now-closed Legendz Sports to be sentenced in the 2013 case. None were ordered to prison.
An Oklahoma City federal judge chose all the punishments — probation or, in one instance, time served in jail.
Under sentencing guidelines, King, 46, had faced up to 41 months in federal prison.
Key to the judge was a consideration of whether the conduct harmed society. More than once, the judge quoted from a letter sent by a jury foreman who suggested probation for two participants.
“With all the ‘legal’ sports gambling that goes on in the U.S., coupled with the fact that no one was physically harmed and nobody was forced to place bets, I see no threat to society by allowing both … to avoid prison time,” the foreman from the last jury trial in the case wrote.
After President Donald Trump fired FBI Director James Comey last week, Paddy Power adjusted the president’s impeachment odds.
“In the past 24 hours alone we’ve seen money for Trump to be impeached in his first term, resulting in us cutting the odds from 10/11 into 4/6,” Irish bookmaking firm Paddy Power said in The Independent on Thursday. “We can attribute this to the news of Comey’s sacking. [That] is the shortest we’ve been for Trump to be impeached in his first term.”
Those odds put the possibility of a Trump impeachment at about 60 percent.
The Dallas Cowboys season win total was set at 9.5 games for the 2017 season.
One year after they won 13 games, the Cowboys’ win total for this season was set at 9.5 at the Westgate SuperBook, which on Sunday opened an array of betting options on the NFL season.
The New England Patriots topped the SuperBook’s win totals at 12.5. The Green Bay Packers (10.5), Pittsburgh Steelers (10.5) and Seattle Seahawks (10.5) are the only other teams with double-digit win totals.
The New England Patriots have the highest over/under (12.5) at the Westgate Las Vegas SuperBook, which released season win totals for all 32 NFL teams on Sunday.
The Cowboys are a notch behind, despite last year’s 13-3 mark that was bolstered by a pair of breakout rookie stars in quarterback Dak Prescott and running back Ezekiel Elliott.
“[The Cowboys] went from playing a last-place schedule to this year playing the first-place schedule,” Ed Salmons, the Westgate’s head football oddsmaker, said. “They’re due for regression. It’s just the natural ebbs and flows of the NFL.”
A new start-up is set to launch a sports betting investment fund this summer (paywall).
Investors weary of stocks and bonds will soon be able to try their luck on a new sports betting fund that hopes to profit by using algorithms to predict the outcome of matches.
The new fund, to be launched this summer by tech start-up Stratagem, aims to exploit advances in artificial intelligence to analyse football, basketball and tennis matches using algorithms to place bets before and during games.
The company’s chief executive officer, former Goldman Sachs trader Charles McGarraugh, said its “ultimate goal” was to establish betting on sports as an asset class.
Among the techniques it uses, the company has developed technology to map football pitches spatially in real time, tracking balls and players, allowing its computers to “watch” a football match. Betting both before and during games, the company also employs sports experts in a monitoring role.
A new sports betting app that lets users make free live bets on sports just raised $12 million in funding.
For Tom Rogers, the former TiVo chief executive who became WinView’s chairman last year, the company’s business offers a new way for sports fans to engage with games in real time. He also suggested that the company could offer solace for broadcasters like ESPN, whose business has been decimated by a drop in viewers.
“The entire sports television world, I think, it’s still the last bastion of live TV and simultaneous live audiences,” he said. “The viewing experience has to be changed, and it has to become more interactive and social. The only way to counter that is to coordinate the mobile device so that is part of the marketing message.”
The service has about 130,000 users, Mr. Rogers said, even though it spends little on marketing, in contrast to the daily fantasy sports operators’ enormous ad spending. WinView mostly relied on social media spots on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram.