Offhand, this wouldn't be such a big problem because a) you can't stop people from placing friendly bets on NCAA basketball games and b) if it doesn't affect the outcome of the collegiate tournament, where's the harm?



Part b is where the problem starts because small-time gambling and big-time gambling organizations can take advantage of the NCAA Basketball live feed to influence the outcome of the NCAA tournament – another phenomenon called "game fixing." How does this work? It's like this: suppose you're a bookie and you know a lot of people are betting on a certain outcome of a game. Logically, you know that if all those people win because that one single outcome does become a reality, you – the bookie – are dead in the water because you have no funds to pay off all those winners. Even small bets translate to big winnings depending on the odds used per bet. For instance, if I pay $1 on a 20:1 outcome, that means if I win, I get $20 for my $1 bet. Now use your calculator – if 100 people bet $1 each on that one single outcome at 20:1 odds, then each of those people have to be paid $20 each in winnings. So that's $20 x 100 people = $2000 total payout. Ouch! Even a small-time bookie would baulk at that situation. But that's how gambling works. And a bookie that can't pay up may find himself facing a mob with baseball bats eager to break his legs.

Unfortunately, the bookie is also afraid of someone else who will definitely break his legs if he pays up – the organization funding his small-time gambling organization. Even legal gambling organizations like casinos operate on the rule that the house has to win most of the time. Otherwise, where would the profit be in the business? So, how to get out of such a quandary?

This is where game-fixing comes in. Basically, game-fixing works when an NCAA player (or maybe even a whole team) is paid big bucks by the gambling operators to throw a game – meaning, the NCAA player or team will skillfully orchestrate a masterful loss so that the outcome dreaded by the bookie will not happen. If the outcome is a loss, all those people betting on a win need not be paid any winnings – and the bookie goes laughing all the way to the bank, having made his profits. This is the usual scenario behind game-fixing. You don't usually see a bookie orchestrating game-fixing so the player or team will be able to win, because the odds for that happening are much harder to arrange.

Still, the value of NCAA Basketball live feed goes up in this situation anyway – because everyone can see how each and every player of each team performs. And when millions of eyes are scrutinizing your every move, it becomes rather hard to fake a losing shot convincingly.

Can game-fixing be eliminated by an NCAA Basketball live feed? Not totally. You would need to be able to prove equally convincingly that a player or team had really deliberately chosen to lose a certain game. Since that would be a very serious allegation, you don't find many situations where an official or even a member of the public going out of their way to raise such charges. Still, the live feed does its part to minimize game-fixing considerably.