DraftKings Inc. DKNG stocks are trading lower on Tuesday after the NCAA president Charlie Baker damn college bets before the NCAA men’s championship game between UConn and Purdue.
Parent company of FanDuel Flutter entertainment PLC FLOODhowever, at last check it is trading up 3.24%.
What happened: According to the Associated Press, Baker — who has been increasingly vocal about his ban on gambling on the individual performances of college athletes — criticized cable TV partners for belittling the University of Iowa player, Caitlin Clarkwith prop betting analysis.
“Have any of you noticed how much time is spent on cable TV talking about Caitlin Clark’s performance in the first game and the second game?” Baker reportedly said Monday. “Is this really what we should be talking about in the middle of the Women’s Final Four? My answer is no.”
Clark and his team, the Iowa Hawkeyes, are credited with helping increase the popularity of women’s college basketball over the past four years.
Sunday’s NCAA Tournament national title game between South Carolina and the Hawkeyes broke records, averaging 18.7 million viewers and peaking at 24 million, according to Nielsen data.
The fact that the focus was on prop betting bothered Baker. Prop betting for college athletes, he argues, is “enormously problematic.”
See also: Caitlin Clark helps ESPN, sports betting: How Iowa’s success in the NCAA tournament could help women’s sports
Because matterProp (proposition) bets allow spectators to bet on a player’s performance. For example, DraftKings offered bets on whether Clark would break the all-time three-point record.
Critics say the betting craze, accentuated during high-profile events like March Madness and the Super Bowl, is a further driver of sports disgust.
Baker also highlighted the problem of student-athletes being trolled by so-called fans who lose at bets. For example, angry bettors harassed the North Carolina Tar Heels Armando Bacot on social media earlier this year.
“I thought I played pretty well last game, but I looked at my DMs [direct messages]and I got over 100 messages from people telling me I sucked and stuff because I wasn’t getting enough rebounds,” he said.
North Carolina legalized online sports betting on March 11, joining 37 other states where it is legal.
Baker said the NCAA has hired a firm to conduct social media surveillance work to crack down on bullying.
“And if they see things that really concern them, they let the authorities know,” Baker said. “And that has happened in some cases.”
There is also the added stress that a prop bet could be correct and compromise the integrity of the game.
However, companies like DraftKings and FanDuel continue to cash in. DraftKings in February posted quarterly results that missed Wall Street estimates. However, the company increased its revenue to $1.23 billion, up 44%.
And Flutter, which acquired FanDuel in 2018, has become the world’s largest online gambling group with a market capitalization exceeding $27 billion.
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