Title: Seeds, spreads, and synchronicity in the Big Dance betting market

Authors: Ira Horowitz

Addresses: Information Systems and Operations Management, Warrington College of Business Administration, 345 Stuzin Hall, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611-7169, USA

Abstract: The betting lines on games played in the 14 NCAA Men|s Basketball Tournaments from 1996 through 2009 are consistent with an efficient betting market that is fuelled by information flows. The issue addressed here is whether synchronicity in that market, which is a measure of the extent to which game outcomes are in synch with the betting lines, can be attributed to the acuity of the tournament selection committees that seeded the teams, or to the disciplining impact of the informed bettors that ultimately determine those lines: that is, whether the betting market is simply verifying the judgements of the committee members, or whether those judgements are only one of many informational elements that bettors process. It is shown that it is a lot of the former and a non-negligible amount of the latter as well.

Keywords: efficient betting markets; synchronicity; Big Dance; National Collegiate Athletic Association; NCAA; USA; United States; basketball; sports tournaments; betting lines; synchronicity; information flows; betting spreads; game outcomes; selection committees; teams; seeding; seeds; gambling; gamblers; informed bettors; applied decision sciences.

DOI: 10.1504/IJADS.2010.032237

International Journal of Applied Decision Sciences, 2010 Vol.3 No.1, pp.1 - 14

Published online: 17 Mar 2010 *

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