Point shaving? A novel experiment and new insights

In light of the exponential growth in sports betting since 2018, a deeper understanding of the prevalence and nuances of corruption is needed. We demonstrate that in the venues and leagues where the likelihood of game fixing is high (among home teams and in NCAA basketball) point shaving markers are more pronounced, and where it is low (among visiting teams and in NCAA football) such indicators are muted. We explore this suspicious pattern via a natural experiment designed to exploit a positive exogenous shock in media scrutiny. Employing an exceptionally deep and broad dataset we show that corruption markers do not attenuate under social pressure and provide robust evidence that innocuous behaviors explain suspect game and wager outcomes. Our study establishes that a high degree of competitive integrity exists in the NCAA, NBA, and NFL.