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Cited by 9Sports Analytics and PerformanceDoping in SportsBenford’s Law and Fraud Detection

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 16 of the 16 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Failing to Cover: Point Shaving or Statistical Abnormality?

Diemer, George, Leeds, Michael A.·2013·International Journal of Sport Finance

Abstract

The possibility that coaches, players, or referees might be involved in point shaving has been a subject of debate since Wolfers's (2006) controversial finding that favorites in NCAA college basketball games fail to cover point spreads with disturbing frequency. We reconcile Wolfers's finding with evidence provided by Borghesi (2008) , Borghesi and Dare (2009) , and others that heavy favorites are not, on average, less likely to cover the point spread. We find that the distribution of game outcomes is bimodal, with one peak on one side of the “no corruption” outcome and one peak on the other side. This finding is consistent with point shaving by favorites, who lose by too little, and underdogs who lose by too much. On average, however, the outcome is consistent with the no-point shaving hypothesis. We compare regular-season and post-season results and find that this effect disappears in the more closely observed NCAA tournament games.

Overview

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1177/155862351300800301

Cites

16 of 16 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Recomputing p-values needs the paper’s full text.

Verification

Claims the paper makes

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Citations

Cites

Show all 16 references

Research works printed but not linked: 2

  1. LeedsM. A. & von AllmenP. (2010). The economics of sports. Boston, MA: Pearson.
  2. SeymourH. (1960). Baseball: The early years. London: Oxford University Press.

Cited by

See all 9

Metadata

Authors
Diemer, G., & Leeds, M. A.
Affiliations
  • Chestnut Hill College (US)
  • Temple University (US)
Venue
International Journal of Sport Finance
Published
2013-08
Volume
8
Issue
3
Pages
175-191
ISSN
  • 1558-6235 (ISSN-L)
  • 1930-076X
OpenAlex
W280374461
Cited by
9
References
16
Citations by year
2026: 1 · 2024: 1 · 2023: 1 · 2022: 1 · 2019: 2 · 2018: 1 · 2016: 1 · 2015: 1
FWCI
1.32
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed
Licence
journals.sagepub.com/page/policies/text-and-data-mining-license (tdm)
Locations
  • International Journal of Sport Finance (publishedVersion)
  • International Journal of Sport Finance (submittedVersion)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Economics and Econometrics › Sports Analytics and Performance
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Doping in Sports
  • Physical Sciences › Mathematics › Statistics and Probability › Benford’s Law and Fraud Detection
Keywords
college basketball, NCAA tournament, sports corruption, betting markets

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Data sources

Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.

Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.