Chris Christie upset with decision on sports betting in New Jersey - Los Angeles Times

Chris Christie New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (Kathy Johnson / Associated Press)


If you want to bet on the Super Bowl or the World Series or the Indianapolis 500, don't go to New Jersey.


On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Michael Shipp upheld a law prohibiting sports betting in all but four states, dealing a setback to New Jersey's attempts to revive its struggling casino industry by allowing gambling on sports. The ruling drew an unhappy reaction from Gov. Chris Christie.


“We believe firmly in the principles of our position on sports betting and that the federal ban is inequitable, violates New Jersey's rights as a state and is unconstitutional,” Christie said in a statement. “Even the trial judge has noted that he was not likely the final arbiter in the matter. We are confident that the federal court of appeals will conclude that New Jersey should be treated equally with other states.”


State Sen. Ray Lesniak, the prime sponsor of the sports-betting bill, said New Jersey would appeal.


“This is a huge disappointment for all of us who continue to believe that New Jersey should have the right to allow sports betting,” Lesniak said. “Along with online gaming, sports betting would allow New Jersey to be in the forefront of the modern gaming industry, creating jobs and providing both immediate and long-term economic benefits.”


New Jersey voters passed a sports-betting ballot measure in 2011, in which bets wouldn't be taken on games involving New Jersey colleges or college games played in the state. Christie said at the time that he hoped to grant sports-betting licenses by early this year, but those plans have been put on hold.


Nevada, Montana, Delaware and Oregon are the only four states that currently allow betting on sports.


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NFL: Stance on sports betting has nothing to do with money - SportingNews.com

Follow The Linemakers on Twitter NFL commissioner Roger Goodell

There’s a belief among the gambling community that the NFL’s disdain for sports betting is more about money than protecting the integrity of the game.


Skeptics believe the NFL and the other leagues fighting to stop the expansion of legal sports betting in the U.S. ultimately want a piece of the profits and will continue to oppose it until they secure a share.


It’s a notion the NFL adamantly denies. When it comes to sports wagering, the NFL — with revenue of $9.7 billion in 2012, according to SportsBusiness Journal — is not interested in the money.


“(Revenue) has nothing to do with it and never has,” NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy told The Linemakers on Sporting News.


Still, ideas have been floated in Washington, D.C. about how to share revenue from legal sports betting with the leagues. There’s been talk of licensing fees and sponsorships.


Lobbyist Joe Brennan, Director of Interactive Media Entertainment and Gaming Association (IMEGA), said one discussed plan was to use sports betting revenue to create a fund for retired NFL players.


Or how about using the revenue to study head injuries?


During a 2011 sports law conference in D.C., Brennan spoke about the revenue that could be generated from expanded legal sports betting and ways the NFL could benefit.


Jay Moyer, a Fordham law professor and former Executive Vice President and General Counsel of the NFL, was in the audience and took umbrage with the suggestion that the league is or ought to be interested in revenue from sports betting.


“Getting the leagues revenue is not the issue,” Brennan said in a recent interview with The Linemakers. “They do not want people betting on their games.”


McCarthy echoed those sentiments in a Tuesday phone interview and emphasized that the popularity of the NFL is directly attributed to the unpredictability of the outcomes.


“The pillar of the success of the National Football League has been in part because fans don’t know what’s going to happen on any given Sunday,” McCarthy said. “To be able to watch unscripted, unfiltered drama play out on a football field is what keeps people coming back.”


Sports betting proponents argue that the increased regulation that would come from legalization would help protect the games’ integrity. And really, with the amount of scrutiny an NFL game receives and Nevada sports books on the constant lookout for suspicious betting patterns, it’s very unlikely any unscrupulous parties would choose an NFL game to fix.


“That’s a good thing,” McCarthy acknowledged.


Integrity of the game


The integrity-of-the-game argument has been attacked in the courtroom and by mainstream media, including some of the NFL’s broadcast partners.


In November deposition testimony, lawyers for the state of New Jersey pressed NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell about the league’s willingness to play games at Wembley Stadium in London, where sports betting is legal.


McCarthy says the league closes the on-site betting windows at Wembley Stadium.


But there are more than 30 gambling parlors in the Wembley Park area, where the stadium is located. According to prominent UK sports book William Hill, six times more money, up to £300,000 (about $450,000), is bet on the NFL games played at Wembley Stadium compared to how much is wagered on a regular-season televised game played in the U.S.


“We try to shut down what we can,” McCarthy said.


Opponents also point to the NFL embracing fantasy football and stress that fantasy sports are just a different way of betting on the game, wagering on the statistical performances of individual players instead of the final score.


In a recent column, ESPN gambling columnist Chad Millman questioned how much “irreparable harm” the sports leagues really faced from legal sports betting.


Millman cited an academic paper from two St. Louis University law students that showed the value of NBA franchises had increased by 44 percent since the Tim Donaghy gambling scandal was revealed in 2007.


McCarthy declined to comment on anything regarding the NBA.


Size of the pie


Even if the sports leagues were interested in revenues generated from legalized sports betting, there simply might not be enough money to go around. According to the Nevada Gaming Commission, the state’s sports books won $68.4 million on football wagers (both college and pro) in 2012, 4.37 percent of the total money bet last year.


That’s a slim profit margin that gets even tighter if, for example, books were forced to pay licensing fees to the leagues in order to offer wagering on their games.


And the licensing fee or “rake” that could be generated from those figures amounts to a pittance compared to the NFL’s $9 billion-plus in revenues.


But the NFL says it isn’t interested in any of that and is fighting for only one thing.


“Protecting the integrity of our games is as important as many of our other priorities, like player health and safety,” stressed McCarthy. “It’s a major thing, not just the only thing.”


While the NFL’s not interested in the revenue, cash-strapped states are.


A study by veteran Nevada gaming company Cal Neva projected New Jersey sports books could take nearly $9 billion in bets annually. With an eight percent gross gaming revenue tax rate, the state’s annual windfall could be as high as $220 million, according to the study.


Despite New Jersey’s recent defeat in a U.S. District Court, Brennan doesn’t believe the sports betting issue is going away.


“Things aren’t getting any cheaper for the states, and they don’t want to raise taxes on their citizens, so the next thing out there is gambling,” Brennan said. “And sports betting is the most under-leveraged form of gambling.”


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Advancing the Debate: Why Legalize Sports Betting in New Jersey? - Governing (blog)

People -- one dressed in a horse outfit -- wait for betting windows to open at a race track in Louisville, Ky. (Photo: AP/Patti Longmire)

If it’s legal in other states, it should be legal here. And besides, if it remains illegal, it's still going to happen.

That, in a nutshell, is New Jersey’s argument for allowing sports betting at the state’s casinos and four horse race tracks. Last week, a U.S. District Court Judge blocked a law passed by the state legislature, signed by Gov. Chris Christie and supported by a majority of voters in November 2011. The governor said he will take the case to the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia.

The case pits the state against the U.S. Department of Justice, the National Football League, National Hockey League, Major League Baseball, National Basketball Association and the National Collegiate Athletic Association. The plaintiffs argue that allowing sports betting in New Jersey would harm the integrity of sports, spur cynicism among fans and violate federal law.

As Governing's Ryan Holeywell noted last October, although the sports leagues warn of disaffected fans, "that doesn’t seem to have happened so far, despite an estimated $2.76 billion wagered on sports in Nevada in 2010, according to the American Gaming Association -- not to mention countless office pools on college hoops."

Part of what rankles legalization supporters is the fact that sports betting is already legal in four states: Delaware, Montana, Nevada and Oregon. Those states were grandfathered in when Congress passed the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act in 1992, which prohibited sports wagering in all other states. A provision in the law gave New Jersey a one-year window to legalize sports betting, but the state let that window close before taking action.

“There is no reason why Nevada can have sports gaming and we shouldn't,” Christie said in his response to his state’s loss in federal court last week.

Aside from the fairness issue, what’s at stake in legalizing sports betting? “Proponents of sports betting have said New Jersey is losing millions of dollars in potential revenue to offshore operations [and] organized crime,” reports The Newark Star-Ledger.

“Perhaps it is this dire financial portrait that has reframed the debate about legalizing new forms of gambling in New Jersey,” writes Tara Nurin of WNYC, an NPR affiliate in New York. “No longer do lawmakers bother to challenge them on the grounds of moral ambiguity, their addictive allure, or their potential threat to the financial well-being of families. Now the arguments begin and end with economics.”

The Newark Star-Ledger’s Steve Politi offers just that kind of economic rationale for why the state should leverage sports betting to raise new money. “Legalized sports betting has never made more sense than in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy,” Politi writes. “Atlantic City was among the hardest hit areas, with a chunk of its iconic boardwalk washing away in the storm. Sports betting is not only a way to tap into new revenue for the rebuilding efforts -- it is expected to generate $150 million a year in taxes and fees -- but could also help fill casino hotels during the biggest sports weekends.”

But The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Patrick Kerkstra puts that potential revenue gain into context, arguing it isn’t all that much in the grand scheme of all things gambling and revenue related.

“Potential profits from sports betting are small compared with the industry's problems,” Kerkstra writes. “Atlantic City casinos are netting about $2 billion less in annual gaming revenue today than in 2006. Sports betting would generate only about $200 million, or a tenth of the gaming business Atlantic City has lost in the last five years to competitors and the lousy economy. Adjusting for inflation, casino gaming profits are at their lowest levels since the 1980s. On its own, legal wagering on Eagles games won't begin to reverse the trend.”

Two other reporters at The Philadelphia Inquirer, Suzette Parmley and George Anastasia, also emphasized the relatively small gains possible from sports betting, using Las Vegas and Nevada as reference points.

“Proceeds from sports wagering make up a small fraction of total gaming revenue in Las Vegas, representing only 1.2 percent of the $5.8 billion produced by the 42 casinos on the Strip in 2010,” Parmley and Anastasia write. “The ratio was similar statewide, with sports-betting revenue accounting for less than 2 percent of the total $10.4 billion wagered in Nevada.”

But even if the money isn’t all that much, is it fair to deny New Jersey that extra boost?

“London -- which has at least one betting parlor on every major street -- managed to hold an entire Olympics without any problems, while offering bets on everything from Usain Bolt winning the 100 to Michael Phelps getting seven golds,” writes Tim Dahlberg, a columnist for The Associated Press. “The NFL, meanwhile, hosts a game in London every year and hasn't complained yet about fans being able to bet their favorite on their way to the stadium.”

Realists in the pro-sports betting camp have tried to persuade the opposition with a different argument: It’s going to happen anyway, so it might as well be regulated by the state.

“The reality is that people want to bet on games and will do so whether it's legal or not,” Dahlberg writes.

Reporting by the Inquirer seems to back him up. “Bookmakers don't see Atlantic City as a threat,” Parmley and Anastasia write. “If anything, they say, legalized sports betting could bring them new customers. Most illegal bookmakers allow customers to gamble on credit, something legal sports-betting operations cannot do.”


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Business is booming in Las Vegas, as sports books enhance betting experience - SportingNews.com

Follow The Linemakers on Twitter Legendary bookmaker Jimmy Vaccaro

LAS VEGAS -- Here in Las Vegas, the weather is so good it feels like you’re taking plus-7 when the game is actually a pick 'em. The college hoops schedule is enticing, and the Lakers are fighting for their playoff lives like every game is a Game 7. Conference tournaments have started, there's a very competitive slate of major conference games next week, and then we’ll waltz right into the Big Dance. There are no complaints at the sports books, as business is brisk.


According to figures released by the Nevada Gaming Commission, betting in the state took about a 10 percent leap from the previous year. Those are big numbers, and everyone associated with sports betting in Nevada has his own opinion why. Here’s mine:


Checking the figures every day at the William Hill hub, you could sense that football was going to be on a record pace this season, even back in August. There was never a day when there wasn’t some decent futures action on the NFL and college football. Season win totals were at a peak I had not seen in years. The industry is getting better at posting wagering options earlier and making them more accessible to its base customer. And props that have some bite are being offered for long stretches.


Example: I talked about the Lakers fighting to stay in the playoff race, and we at William Hill and other properties have been offering odds on whether or not they will make the playoffs. The prop has been up for weeks, money shows up every day, and it’s no surprise that it’s drawing two-way action. This grind-out prop and others like it add a very methodical way of increasing yearly handle. The young, on-the-go bettor runs to the nearest kiosk on his lunch break. They are used to this way of doing business.


In years past we have missed this type of transaction, but it has now become a major part of our business. And yes, even older clientele have come around to the 21st century way of getting a bet down.


This is all well and good, but the major difference today, in my opinion, is in-game wagering. We once waited around after the game started until halftime, but that is now archaic. Nicky Bogdanovich and the crew at William Hill now post numerous numbers as major events are in progress. I am staggered by the amount bet during the course of the game.


Look for more ways to wager coming soon to a book near you. The betting culture in which we live, coupled with new technology and easier accessibility, means handle will increase steadily over the next few years. Books must change with the times or be left at the gate.


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Sportsbet 'Boxed Out' of the Retail Market – the Betbox Case – Tabcorp's ... - Mondaq News Alerts (registration)

Overview

On 12 October 2012, the Full Court of the Federal Court of Australia reversed the decision of Gordon J at first instance in the Betbox case.1

The effect of the Full Court's decision is that Sportsbet (and any other interstate betting operator) is restricted from installing and operating Betboxes (described further below) in hotels and clubs across Victoria. In effect, this appears to reinforce the offcourse retail wagering exclusivity enjoyed by Tabcorp by virtue of its statutory monopoly under Victorian law.2

From a legal standpoint, the decision also adds to the growing jurisprudence on s 92 of the Constitution (the constitutional protection relating to the freedom of interstate trade and commerce) in the context of conditions imposed, at a State level, on wagering operators.

We review the decision below and note some of its potentially broader implications.

What is a 'Betbox'?

Justice Emmett provided a useful description of a 'Betbox' and its operation:

"The Betbox is a computer terminal that allows a punter, by means of a touch screen, to communicate with Sportsbet's computer servers...for the purposes of placing bets. On approaching a Betbox..., a punter accesses information on the website maintained by Sportsbet and selects a race on which to place a bet. The punter then selects the wager that the customer wishes to make and sends that as a request, which is received by Sportsbet on its server...

A bet placed by means of the Betbox... is received... and is accepted or rejected by means of an automatic computer system... The server automatically communicates Sportsbet's acceptance of the wager, in a manner that is capable of being shown on the Betbox..."3

The Facts

A Betbox was installed in the Eureka Stockade Hotel in East Ballarat, Victoria.

In July 2010, the Victorian gambling regulator (the Victorian Commission for Gambling Regulation or 'VCGR') seized the Betbox, asserting that the installation and operation of the Betbox gave rise to offences under provisions of the Gambling Regulation Act 2003 (Vic) and the Liquor Control Reform Act 1998 (Vic).

Sportsbet challenged the seizure and sought declarations from the Federal Court to the effect that the statutory provisions relied upon by the VCGR were invalid insofar as they related to the installation and use of the Betbox. Sportsbet's argument was to the effect that the provisions were unconstitutional on the basis that they were contrary to the principle in the Australian Constitution that guarantees the freedom of interstate trade and commerce.

The Initial Decision

The Court agreed with Sportsbet that the provisions were invalid due to their inconsistency with section 49 of the Northern Territory (Self Government) Act 1978 (Cth) (Self Government Act). Section 49 uses similar language to section 92 of the Constitution and the interpretation of that section of the Constitution was relevant in causing the Court to reach its decision.4

Justice Gordon reached her conclusions for the following reasons:

Sportsbet was engaged in interstate trade or commerce (or in this case, trade between a State and a Territory). This occurred as the Betbox customer is located in Victoria while Sportsbet is licensed and has its principal place of business in the Northern Territory.The provisions were burdensome (prevented Sportsbet from operating the Betbox) in a discriminatory manner (they did not apply to Tabcorp).The burdens were protectionist because they entrenched Tabcorp's position as the sole supplier in Victoria of betting facilities of a kind which Sportsbet seeks to supply and impose a competitive disadvantage on Sportsbet (as an interstate trader).The State of Victoria and Tabcorp did not demonstrate that the provisions were appropriate and adapted to achieving objectives which were consistent with section 92 of the Constitution (i.e. securing the funding or integrity of the Victorian racing industry).5

The Appeal Decision

As foreshadowed shortly after the decision, the State of Victoria and Tabcorp appealed the decision of Gordon J.

The Full Court was asked to consider whether the provisions offended section 49 of the Self Government Act.

The Full Court was unanimous in allowing the appeal; however the Court was slightly divided in its reasoning, with Justice Emmett giving separate reasons.

A significant point of difference between the decision of Emmett J and the joint decision of Kenny and Middleton JJ related to the question of whether Sportsbet had, in fact, engaged in interstate trade or commerce (i.e. trade or commerce between Victoria and the Northern Territory). Emmett J was of the view that Sportsbet had not engaged in trade or commerce of an interstate nature on the basis that all of the relevant aspects of a betting transaction through a Betbox took place in Victoria (i.e. the punter, the Betbox and Sportsbet's senior management are all located in Victoria).6 The majority did not agree with this point.7

However, this point proved to be rather inconsequential as the Court was unanimous in concluding that the provisions do not impose a discriminatory burden of a protectionist kind.

The majority (Kenny and Middleton JJ) held that the provisions were not discriminatory towards interstate operators, nor were they protectionist. As to whether the provisions were discriminatory, their Honours observed that the differential treatment that Tabcorp receives when compared with Sportsbet (i.e. retail exclusivity) is based on its unique commercial arrangements dating back to the privatisation of the TAB in Victoria. Moreover, their Honours noted that neither Tabcorp nor Sportsbet is a reliable representative of the intrastate and interstate markets respectively for the purposes of assessing whether there is a discriminatory burden on interstate trade.

Justice Emmett held that the provisions do not impose a discriminatory burden of a protectionist kind on the basis that, with the exception of Tabcorp, registered bookmakers in Victoria are subject to the same prohibitions as interstate bookmakers.8

As to whether the provisions were protectionist, Kenny and Middleton JJ held that the objective intent behind the provisions was non-protectionist.9 That is, the introduction of those provisions was not motivated by protectionism. Their Honours had regard to the historical context surrounding the provisions, including the establishment of the TAB in the 1960's and its subsequent acquisition by Tabcorp in 1994, which had the primary objectives of securing funding for, and preserving the integrity of, the Victorian racing industry.10

In reaching this conclusion, each of the judges confirmed the entitlement of interstate bookmakers to provide and promote bookmaking services conducted under their licence throughout Australia.

Broader Implications

One of the interesting points to emerge from the decision was the Court's comments regarding monopolies. Justices Kenny and Middleton noted that statutory monopolies do not offend necessarily against the freedom of interstate trade or commerce. This is because they might disadvantage intrastate and interstate operators equally (as was the case here).

This suggests that it would be difficult to challenge, on constitutional grounds, exclusive licensing regimes (in respect of any service, whether online or not) established under State legislation. This, however, may depend upon a number of factors, including the nature of the exclusivity.

What Does This Mean for the Wagering Sector?

With Sportsbet evidently electing not to appeal the decision of the Full Court, and Sportsbet's recent abandonment of similar proceedings in New South Wales, the decision will stand. It will be interpreted as confirming that the retail exclusivity conferred under State and Territory wagering laws on the locally licensed totalisator is valid and not vulnerable to challenge on constitutional grounds. The Betbox case confirms the protection given to monopoly operators granted retail exclusivity in respect of their ability to conduct wagering from premises located in the relevant jurisdiction.

This is enhanced in New South Wales with the 2011 amendment to the Unlawful Gambling Act 1998 (NSW) which preserves further the TAB's off-course retail wagering exclusivity by prohibiting the provision of "remote access betting facilities" in public places (which are defined to include registered clubs and licensed premises).11

Although the decision of the Full Court confirms the entitlement of interstate licensed wagering operators to provide and promote services conducted in accordance with the relevant licence throughout Australia, there still remains room for argument about the scope of the exclusive rights conferred on the various totalisators and the ability of interstate wagering operators to take steps which conflict with that exclusivity. Accordingly, we anticipate that further disputes regarding the scope of these rights will occur from time to time, with consequential legal challenges.

The Legal Context

Where considering similar issues in the future, it is worth keeping in mind Justice Emmett's comments on the present Australian legislative regime relating to gambling regulation, which will be quoted in years to come by advocates of harmonisation:

"It is a blight on our nationhood and a travesty of sensible administration and good government that there are eight different regulatory regimes concerning lawful gambling in Australia, with an overlay of federal intervention, both actual and threatened."12

From our last count, this is an understatement – there are not only 10 different legislative regimes, but at least 20 regulators of gambling in Australia.

The assistance of Nicholas Rozenberg, Solicitor, of Addisons in the preparation of this article is noted and greatly appreciated.

Footnotes

1 Sportsbet Pty Ltd v The State of Victoria [2001] FCA 961, a decision published on 22 August 2011.

2 Tabcorp entered into a new 12-year exclusive wagering licence in early 2012.

3 The State of Victoria v Sportsbet Pty Ltd [2012] FCAFC 143 at [50].

4 Section 49 of the Self Government Act confers benefits on the Northern Territory which are similar to those conferred on the States under section 92 of the Constitution (namely, that trade between the Territory and the States should be free). A state law which is inconsistent with the Self Government Act is invalid by virtue of section 109 of the Constitution (which ensures the supremacy of Federal law over State law).

5 For further information, see our earlier paper on the first instance decision: " Federal Court Rules in Favour of Betbox: The End of Retail Exclusivity?"
See also The State of Victoria v Sportsbet Pty Ltd [2012] FCAFC 143 at [124] per Kenny and Middleton JJ, discussing the findings of Gordon J at first instance.

6 His Honour held that Sportsbet's computer systems (which are located in the Northern Territory) are "no more than incidental to the particular transactions in question": at [93].

7 Per Kenny and Middleton JJ at [250]ff. Their Honours refer to the fact that, inter alia, the bets made with the Betbox are processed and accepted in Darwin.

8 At [110].

9 At [299].

10 At [293].

11 Unlawful Gambling Act 1998 (NSW), s 11A.

12 Per Emmett J at [1].

The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.

Specific Questions relating to this article should be addressed directly to the author. Other Information about Addisons
View Popular Related Articles on Media, Telecoms, IT and Entertainment from Australia

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Meet the world's top NBA gambler - ESPN (blog)

video This story appears in ESPN The Magazine's March 4 Analytics issue. Subscribe today!

Bob Voulgaris had become one of the most successful sports gamblers in the world when, in 2004, he started to lose. It wasn’t just a streak of bad luck, a series of randomly unfavorable outcomes that could last only so long. His edge, he realized, was gone.

He had begun betting on sports in the late 1990s, and within five years, before he had reached his 30th birthday, Voulgaris had accumulated a fortune. He says he routinely wagered a million dollars in a single day of NBA games. He considered his mean to be an unholy winning percentage that approached 70 percent. A man of no fixed address, he dated models and traveled the world. He was also an accomplished poker player, buying his way into high-stakes games from Las Vegas to Macau. He was essentially leading the fantasy life of your basic under-35 North American male.

A specialist in the NBA, his sports gambling success was almost completely the result of a kind of studied perspicacity, born of a talent for pattern recognition and the stamina to watch uncountable hours of televised basketball. In betting parlance, the man could suss out an edge -- and in 2002, he discovered one that would line his pockets for years. It all had to do with how most bookmakers set their halftime totals, the predicted number of points scored in each half of the game. Each half, of course, is its own discrete period of play, and the fourth quarters of close games can end in elongated foul-clogged stretches of free throws, timeouts, fast play and, hence, a burst of scoring. But incredibly, bookmakers at the time didn’t account for this fact; they simply arrived at a total for the full game and cut that figure roughly down the middle, assigning some 50 percent of the points to the first half and 50 percent to the second.

BLACK BOX: Any secret and proprietary computer model used by a gambler to make smarter decisions.

EWING THEORY: Phenomenon, first described by Bill Simmons, in which a team gets better when its overrated superstar leaves. Named after Patrick Ewing.

QUANT: An expert in using data and analytics to make decisions.

SUBJECTIVE BETTOR: Any gambler who does not use rigorous quantitative analysis to find an edge.

TILT: To act or bet irrationally out of frustration over a loss.

DEFENSE-ADJUSTED VALUE OVER AVERAGE (DVOA): Measure of a QB's efficiency compared to a league average QB, adjusted for situation and opponent.

EXPECTED POINTS ADDED: Measure of how many "expected points" -- points a team can expect to score on average, given the down and distance -- that a QB has added through his play, adjusted for clutch situations.

FIRST-DOWN RATE: Percentage of plays in which a QB gained a first down on running plays, not counting kneel-downs.

For years, Voulgaris exploited this edge, playing both sides of it repeatedly. It is possible to say that it alone made him millions, combined with some keen observations regarding the game-management tendencies of three head coaches: Eddie Jordan, Jerry Sloan and Byron Scott. “Those were three coaches I had nailed perfectly,” Voulgaris, now 37, says. “I knew exactly what they were going to do. I mean, it was a joke, it was so easy.”

In retrospect, he regrets only not having bet more aggressively during this halcyon period. “I thought it would last forever,” he tells me
when I visit him at the house he was then renting in the Hollywood Hills for $12,500 a month. “But it didn’t.” Eventually, the bookmakers did finally catch on. Responding specifically to the money they saw Voulgaris minting -- though, for the most part, they didn’t yet know the identity of the gambler winning with such consistency -- they forever altered the method by which they set their NBA halftime totals.

And that’s when Voulgaris started to lose. And lose big. He lost a third of his bankroll in the final month of the 2003-04 season alone. Exasperated, his patience gone, he started to “tilt,” boosting the volume of his wagers in an effort to win back what he’d already lost. He won’t quantify exactly how much he gave back to the bookmakers all told except to describe it as a catastrophic time. He took the second part of the 2004-05 NBA season off. Mulling things over, he realized he needed a new approach. In essence, he decided he could no longer rely on his ability to suss out edges by his wits alone. He needed the help of a new machine.

Like baseball after sabermetrics, like Wall Street in the 1970s, sports gambling over the past decade has undergone a quantitative revolution. Nearly every successful sports bettor in the world now uses some form of computer model to assist in the handicapping of sporting events. Like their brethren inside hedge funds, these gamblers are known as quants. Like the advanced trading systems operating on Wall Street, the models used by this technologically adroit breed of sports bettor are sometimes called black boxes. Their models (and their identities) are shrouded in secrecy. Their algorithms are proprietary. And with each passing year, their sophistication mounts. One veteran Las Vegas handicapper, who goes by the pseudonym Steve Fezzik, laments, “They’ve left me, and others like me, in the dark ages.” Bayesian methods, Monte Carlo methods, Markov chains, k-nearest neighbor algorithms, Chapman-Kolmogorov equations -- the key advances in statistical analysis, probability theory and predictive modeling have been marshaled toward the object of beating the bookies out of a dime. Their goal is nothing less than a sustainable edge.

It is a paradoxical quest. The history of sports betting is littered with the corpses of gamblers who have enjoyed spectacular runs only to flame out just as quickly when their edges die. When they see a gambler winning big, bookmakers correct their mistakes. Rival gamblers spot the same edges -- or copy them -- and bet the line back to plumb.

Indeed, while the wide availability of information in the Internet age and exponential increase in computer processing power have given rise to the sports gambling quant, those very same factors have made the pursuit of a sustainable edge that much more quixotic. The marketplace evolves. The betting public, square though it may be, is better informed than ever before: Reams of team and player statistics reside in the cloud, awaiting download. The bookmakers, meanwhile, have joined the quantitative battle. Some who formulate the opening lines (only a few still do so; all the others simply copycat) have engineered their own sophisticated models. Cantor Fitzgerald, the Wall Street trading firm, started a division called Cantor Gaming in 2008 to operate a sportsbook business in Las Vegas, then acquired the consulting firm that had been the oddsmaker of record for the gambling world. Cantor’s computer model is named Midas. Andrew Garrood, a former high-finance quant whose previous experience included developing pricing models for interest rate derivatives at a London bank, designed it. “It’s hubristic to believe that the edge you have today will be yours forever,” he says. “The marketplace will always catch up.”

None of this, of course, has stopped the world’s sharpest quant bettors from trying.

A slim six-footer with dark hair and dark eyes, Voulgaris talks fast. His eyes flit. He has the canny, quick-minded air of a merchant in a bazaar in the Eastern Mediterranean. Since birth, he seems never to have lacked for self-confidence. He likes to say that he had no mentors when it comes to his gambling career, but in reality, he did.

When Voulgaris was 18, he took a gap year between high school and college. First he traveled to Greece, visiting the hardscrabble villages -- Argos, Tripoli -- where his parents were born and raised before they immigrated, in their 20s, to Canada. (Voulgaris’ legal first name is Haralabos.) Then he and his father made a trip to Las Vegas, where they lived for most of the next two months at Caesars Palace. The elder Voulgaris had risen from poverty to become a successful Winnipeg entrepreneur. He developed commercial real estate; he owned and operated a Greek restaurant called Hermes -- the patron god of (among other things) games, sports and sudden enrichment. His net worth grew into the millions; he also happened to be an avid gambler. Voulgaris’ father bet on horses, sports of all kinds, card games, dice games, penny stocks. He was also, his son now suggests, the consummate square. “He would just hold up a newspaper and get a feel for what he wanted to bet. There was no rhyme or reason to it. He was very, very superstitious. He would have dreams, with, like, numbers and colors in them, and that would influence him.” Voulgaris says his father went broke twice, both times sending the family into near destitution. “Don’t write ‘degenerate,’ ” Voulgaris tells me. “He was an ‘unsuccessful’ gambler.”

Nevertheless, Voulgaris remembers those Vegas days fondly. He couldn’t join his father on the casino floor for his blackjack sessions; he was 18 and underage. So he spent most of his time in the Caesars sportsbook. Because it was basketball season, he watched a lot of NBA, but with a purpose. He paid attention to adjustments, the ebb and flow of the pace of play. He took notes on what he saw. He eavesdropped on his fellow gamblers. Even then, as a pup bettor, he had a dim view of this group: “Most people who are in a sportsbook in Las Vegas spouting their opinions are morons.” His father would join him at night. At times they wagered together. The younger Voulgaris recalls that his biggest bet the whole trip came on an Atlanta-Golden State game, $100 on the spread, “which I lost.” These were formative times. His two months in Vegas -- and, really, the whole of his childhood -- were an education by counterexample. But while many people, if faced with Voulgaris’ early experiences, might have renounced the gambling life with the fervor of a prohibitionist, Voulgaris seems to have gleaned a kind of edge from it. “I learned at a young age that it’s tough to beat the house,” he says. “Unless you know what you’re doing.” By the time the younger Voulgaris was enrolled at the University of Manitoba, working as a skycap at the airport and betting small amounts on the NBA and CFL, he and his brother -- two of four siblings in all -- were paying their parents’ rent.

The first computer model put into the service of sports gambling dates to the late 1970s, when Michael Kent, a former nuclear submarine engineer for a Pentagon contractor, wrote a program that predicted NFL, college football and college basketball scores. Kent fed his algorithms, inscribed on punch cards, into a rented mainframe that had less processing speed than today’s high-end laptops. At the time, though, he was going up against green-eyeshade bookmakers armed with nothing more than adding machines and intuition. It was hardly a fair fight. Kent eventually moved to Las Vegas, where a betting syndicate -- the legendary Computer Group -- formed around his work, winning untold millions for its members well into the 1990s. Kent continued to develop models and bet on sports up until seven years ago. He is now retired, according to his lawyer, his whereabouts closely guarded. “He’s very reclusive,” the lawyer, Steven Brooks, says.

Billy Walters, a core member of the Computer Group, has, however, stayed in the game; he now has a staff of consulting mathematicians who have built advanced predictive models to project scores. Walters, Kent and their syndicates stood basically alone until the late 1990s, when PCs became powerful enough to do the computation work required by predictive models, and more data became available to feed them.

Voulgaris was well aware of these predecessors. Analytics and predictive modeling had “always fascinated me,” he says. “I’d always wanted to have a model of sorts.” Throughout his career, Voulgaris had been what is known as a subjective bettor, albeit one so astute that he became a whale. Two huge bets -- both for the Lakers to win the title in 1999 and 2000 -- had turned about $80,000 in savings into more than $1 million, his first fat bankroll. As a purely subjective bettor, Voulgaris had been placing perhaps 350 individual wagers each season. But after the disastrous end to the 2004 season, with his edge gone, he decided that he should increase his betting frequency by an order of magnitude but decrease the sums he was putting at risk on each wager. It only made probabilistic sense. If his return on investment (ROI) fell from 20 percent to, say, 5 percent, that was okay. Five percent of $50 million is better than 20 percent of $5 million (all figures are hypothetical; Voulgaris is as cagey as any gambler about the true size of his bankroll). This new approach would require an enormous amount of research and analysis. It would require projecting a score for each and every game in an NBA regular season -- all 1,230. A single human mind would be overwhelmed by the workload; only a computer program could handle it.

“If you think about it,” he says, “you’d be a slave to the game of basketball otherwise.”

Voulgaris chose the right moment to start building a predictive model for NBA games. Four years earlier, in the 2002-03 season, the league had for the first time made play-by-play information available to the public, whereas before only box scores were published. This trove of fresh information had no immediate practical value, except perhaps to assuage fan curiosity. But by 2006, a large enough sample of data had accumulated to employ it with scientific rigor.

To help him build his model, Voulgaris required a specialist in the field, a mind trained in the codes of statistics, mathematics and computer science. He started the search in 2005. It took him two years and six individual tryouts -- most of those interviewees were found online, Voulgaris says, and two of them landed in NBA front offices -- to find the right person. The right person was a literal math prodigy. As a preteen, he had won national math contests; he had been the subject of awestruck articles in major newspapers. He had scored a perfect 800 on the math portion of the SAT when he was in seventh grade. At the time of his interview with Voulgaris, he had just quit a high-paying job designing algorithms for an East Coast hedge fund with a roster of Nobel-grade quant talent. Voulgaris does not wish to have the name of this math whiz appear in print, presumably out of fear that some rival will attempt to find the whiz -- let’s call him the Whiz -- and poach him. When I visit Voulgaris at his rental in the Hollywood Hills, he tells me that he’s recently made the Whiz his partner. “50-50?” I ask.

“No.”

The relationship got off to a rocky start. In 2007 the Whiz basically spun his wheels striving to build a model on his own during his first offseason in Voulgaris’ employ. “He was optimistic that he’d be able to come up with something by the time basketball season started,” Voulgaris says, “and he just flailed away.” Voulgaris decided to shorten the leash, and together the two determined that what they needed was a program that could simulate a game of basketball between any two teams at any point in a season and spit out a projected score. To do so, they would have to break the game down into its basic unit, the possession. Each simulation would therefore be a series of mini-simulations. First, the program would have to predict the number of possessions each matchup would likely produce. Then it would need to judge the likeliest outcome of each possession: Score or no score; one point, two points or three; micro-forecasts ascertained from historical performance data. It would also have to take into account a vast number of potential occurrences, each missed shot or successful rebound creating the possibility of still other occurrences -- a garden of explosively forking paths, as if in parallel universes. The program would run tens of thousands of simulations for each matchup, discarding the most outlandish or improbable results. It would be a black box -- prophecy as output.

Between the statistical analysis, the algorithms and the programming, it took two years to create their first model, version 1.0. Voulgaris continued to bet subjectively, marking time until the model was ready. When they finished, they called it Ewing. (It wasn’t named after Patrick, per se, but after the “Ewing Theory,” a purported phenomenon famously described by Bill Simmons under which a team improves whenever its overrated superstar leaves the franchise.) At some point in the process of breaking the game down into its component parts, they realized that Ewing would also require a kind of feeder model, one that could forecast the lineups a team would most likely use each game and the minutes each player was likely to see on the court. They called that model Van Gundy. Van Gundy, in turn, required its own feeder tool, one that would track the overall roster patterns for each team, the trades, the draft picks, the midseason player-acquisition tendencies. That database, less intricate than the other two, they at times jokingly referred to as Morey, as in Daryl Morey, the quant-minded GM of the Rockets. Ewing, Van Gundy, Morey. Player, coach, GM. The names of each corresponding, of course, to the job of each tool.

In the summer of 2007, Voulgaris and the Whiz took Ewing on a dry run, testing the simulator against games from the previous season to see how accurately it could retroactively “predict.” But something funky was happening. Every score the model spit out was higher than the average lines produced by the bookmakers -- the standard by which they would be judging themselves. The model, in other words, was recommending that Voulgaris bet the over in every single game. After weeks spent poring through code, Voulgaris finally caught the flaw. When assigning variables in the model, the Whiz had somehow assumed that the league-average free throw percentage was 88 percent, when in fact it’s around 75 percent -- an absurd mistake on the part of the Whiz, whose basketball knowledge at the time was practically nil. In more advanced versions of Ewing, they would jettison this primitive free throw method. Now, says Voulgaris, they’ve adjusted Ewing so that it predicts the player most likely to be fouled on any given individual possession, then uses that player’s specific free throw percentage to run its simulation.

If Ewing has a secret sauce, it’s just this sort of thing: Finding scraps of information, sliced and diced ever more finely, that reveal something about how a system -- in this case, a game of pro basketball -- will operate in the future. The key is to find those scraps that are more predictive than others. Case in point: One of Ewing’s most important functions is to assign values to players. Each player has two values -- on offense and as a defender -- and those values are constantly changing. Ewing will also automatically adjust the value depending on who’s guarding whom. Oklahoma City’s Kendrick Perkins “is more valuable guarding Dwight Howard than he is guarding Shane Battier,” Voulgaris says. Why? “Because Howard is a unique player, and you need a big to defend him.” Likewise, according to Voulgaris, Celtics seven-footer Jason Collins is “useless every game, except when he’s guarding Howard, which he does really, really well.” Player values also change across a season and a career. So Voulgaris and the Whiz created, for Ewing, an aging component. Further number-crunching revealed that different types of players, based on position and size, will reach their zeniths at different ages and on trajectories that are possible to predict. Ewing now grasps the curve of the lifespan of the point guard, the shooting guard, the forwards, the center -- and predicts the downslope and expiration date of every NBA career.

When Ewing went live with actual betting for the first time toward the end of the 2008 season, Voulgaris was not yet sold on its powers. For one thing, his subjective-gambler side wasn’t ready to surrender control to a machine. For another, the model was performing unremarkably with their money on the line -- right above the break-even line. But Voulgaris had something in mind, “a long project, like a six-month-long project, to model a certain part of the game of basketball.” He and the Whiz spent the offseason pursuing this mysterious project, the precise nature of which Voulgaris will not discuss. “I don’t even want to allude to what it might be,” he says when I press him, “because I don’t think anyone else is doing anything like it.”

By 2009, once they’d added this mysterious additional model to Ewing’s inner workings -- version 2.0 -- they started making bets based on the scores it produced after the All-Star break. “We just, like, crushed the second half of the season,” Voulgaris says. Since then, as each subsequent season has passed, Voulgaris’ confidence in Ewing has increased. So too has the frequency of his wagering. In a season, he now regularly puts down well over 1,000 individual bets. “I mean, I don’t want to sit here and brag,” he says. “But this is literally, like, the greatest thing ever when it comes to sports betting.”

Despite believing himself to be in possession of the world’s most lethal gambling device, Voulgaris, in the middle of Ewing’s second season on the job, nearly walked away from it all. It might come as little surprise to learn that Voulgaris has intermittently dreamed of becoming the general manager of an NBA franchise. “This is going to sound really arrogant,” he says. “But the whole process” -- of studying the game of basketball with the end of beating the books -- “has led me to believe that I’d be able to put together a better team than almost any general manager in the league. If not maybe all.”

In pursuit of this, in 2010 Voulgaris broke one of the cardinal rules of the sharp sports bettor: He sought publicity, conducting interviews with gambling and NBA-centric blogs. As with everything Voulgaris does, it was a calculated move. He wanted to burnish his bona fides as a quantitative basketball expert. And it worked. Despite the fact that he was giving up a yearly income that he says would dwarf all but the highest-paid executive in the NBA -- who is Jerry West of Golden State, Voulgaris is quick to point out -- he stopped gambling and signed a contract during the 2009-10 season with one of the co-owners of an NBA franchise to consult on matters of player acquisition and roster assembly. The owner, according to Voulgaris, made certain alluring pledges. “He was like, ‘You could be my GM someday; we can do this together.’ It was this whole spiel.”

Voulgaris won’t name names, nor will he say how he first met this particular owner. He has had contact with other NBA executives; he has met, for example, Daryl Morey. (Voulgaris has assured me that it wasn’t the Rockets he consulted for.) As his move to the NBA suggests, there is today much common currency between the analytical work of the sports gambler and that of an increasing number of professional teams’ front offices; one of the chief goals of both, after all, is to value players. The quant revolution in sports at large has brought these two worlds closer together than ever before, at least intellectually. Every winter at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, members of the gambling community openly intermingle with GMs and their staffs of wonkish analysts.

“If I were the general manager of a team,” says Voulgaris, who will be attending the Sloan conference for the second time, in early March, “and I had someone building models and doing quantitative work -- if that person could not beat the Las Vegas line, his model wouldn’t be worth anything to me.” The reason? The way he sees it, the best and perhaps the only way to test one’s theories about player value is to take those theories to market. And the only market that’s liquid with money flows in the billions is the betting line, where opinions have a daily price. “Over thousands of samples of games, our model is constantly being tested on whether it’s right or wrong,” Voulgaris says. “If we’re wrong, we lose money. If we’re right, we make money.”

Voulgaris spent five months working for the NBA franchise. He says he advised his co-owner client on several trades. But he also felt excluded, held at arm’s length. “It was like if someone put a puzzle in front of you and said, ‘Solve this.’ But then, in order to solve it, you needed this special key that they weren’t going to give you.” He feels now that for all the momentum of the quant revolution in the NBA, there may be a glass ceiling for its true practitioners. “There’s a real disconnect between the basketball people, the business people and the -- for lack of a better word -- stats nerds. The stats nerds have no chance of ever becoming general managers. They’re just being used as a resource to mine.” At the end of the contract’s term, in the summer of 2010, Voulgaris decided to end his NBA flirtation and go back to being a gambler.

In truth, though, what Voulgaris says he missed most during his five-month hiatus from gambling was the gamble itself: “I was bored out of my tree.” Little wonder, given the frisson of his betting sessions. During the NBA regular season, which he splits between any number of North American and international ports of call, he watches as many games as he can, clocking more than 80 hours a week. No matter where he is -- LA or, say, Monaco, where he rents a flat -- his normal position during his game-day gambling shifts is supine on a couch, feet up on an ottoman, body nearly horizontal, a MacBook Pro resting between his lap and his knees, Ewing’s interface on the laptop’s screen, his dog (a Jack Russell named Coltrane) lying under his feet. He typically faces a wall against which rises a rack of Samsung flat-screens: a 65-inch central TV flanked on both sides by vertical ranks of three 40-inch screens, each showing a game. From here, he orchestrates his wagering: Ewing spits out a projected score and a number representing its level of confidence for each potential wager. Any projection above a certain threshold on that confidence scale Voulgaris will bet, though he sometimes overrides Ewing’s recommendations. He shows no emotion while watching the games on which he’s laid tens and perhaps hundreds of thousands, though he does very much sweat it on the inside, he says. In his words, “You’d have no chance of telling whether I was winning or losing.” During the season, he will bet, watch games, eat and sleep -- in that order of importance -- and do little else. To stay in shape, he doesn’t consume food after nightfall. This is a lifestyle not exactly conducive to relationships: He partly attributes his recent breakup with a girlfriend of five years to his odd hours during the season.

Despite it all, Voulgaris faces the same issue that all sharps face: the sustainability of his edge, no matter how sophisticated the model that produces it. When he returned to gambling for the 2010-11 season, Voulgaris says Ewing clocked an ROI of more than 6 percent. By 2011-12, it had fallen to 5.14 percent. Of course, the lockout-shortened season made for a bizarre outlier year, and Voulgaris and the Whiz had to adjust. Basically they subtracted a varying amount from the scores Ewing gave them, trying to account for the rust that kept scoring low at the start of the season, and the compressed number of games that later fatigued players -- and also kept scoring low -- toward the end of the season. But the limits of Ewing were apparent to Voulgaris. Already he sensed the inevitable. “We’re probably already at the point where my capability to make money is decreasing every year,” he says. “Every time you make a bet, you’re educating the people taking the bets. They’re learning the right way to make a line. They figure s -- out based on what you’ve already figured out.”

If, year after year, his margins are deteriorating, Voulgaris must increase the number of bets he makes in order to account for that slippage, just as he did when he moved from a subjective to a quant approach. He and the Whiz tweak Ewing in a ceaseless effort to incrementally improve its ability to spit out projections that carry high-enough confidence readings. “You’re not even improving it so much as trying to stop it from getting worse.” Like a fund manager, he must cope with the fine line between ROI, the number of bets he makes and the natural volatility caused by the random. The more he wagers, the more he courts ruin. In one unguarded moment, he tells me, “You can’t do this forever.”

When I visit him in LA over the summer, he and the Whiz are working to finish several potential alterations to Ewing, incorporating offseason player movements and adjusting the model to account for the weird data produced by the 2011-12 campaign. The predictive tool will end up responding in a very predictable way: Its margins will continue to narrow. By the middle of the 2012-13 season, Voulgaris will only say, “This has been one of the more difficult years.”

Voulgaris has only a blurry eye on his own future; Ewing’s simulations can’t help with that sort of prediction. Maybe, he muses at one point, it will be that sports gambling is someday legalized throughout the U.S., which will unleash a thundering flood of square money from casual bettors, exponentially increasing the liquidity in the market. The limits that bookmakers place on bets would increase and so would Ewing’s edge. The prospect makes Voulgaris as giddy as it’s possible for him to be. “That would literally be, like, the best thing ever,” he says. He wonders whether he could become a gambler akin to the Brit Tony Bloom, whose predictive soccer model won him enough quid to acquire the recently promoted Brighton FC. “It’s good to have goals in life, no matter how unrealistic,” Voulgaris says with a wry grin. And with enough gambling winnings, he says he would have only one goal.

“I would buy a basketball team.”


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New Jersey Puts Up a Fight on Legalizing Sports Gambling - Fox Business

Gamblers might have a new state to visit to place legal bets on sports games: New Jersey.


A debate over the constitutionality of a 21-year-old federal law prohibiting sports betting in all but four states is underway in the Garden State.


New Jersey and the Department of Justice are sparring in court over the legality of single-sports event betting, which experts say is a multibillion-dollar industry.


The state is arguing that the 1992 Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PAPSA) is unconstitutional because certain states are allowed to bet on sports in some form— including Nevada, Delaware, Oregon and Montana—while others are not. Sporting leagues, including the NCAA, filed suit last year to stop New Jersey from allowing sports betting. The NCAA did not respond to requests for comment on the case.


Experts say that if New Jersey is successful at legalizing single-game sports, it would have a ripple effect throughout the country. David Purdum, a senior writer at The Sporting News, says similar bills have already been crafted in California, Illinois, Iowa and Minnesota.


Legalization would bring with it a bevy of regulatory statutes for gamblers and leagues, he says. 


“Now betting takes place in offshore casinos with underground bookies,” he says.  Increased regulation would benefit both parties because it would make the sports leagues more transparent and allow problem gambling to be more easily tracked.


He adds it would also eliminate concerns of game-fixing for the league.


If legalized, sports gambling would bring much-needed revenue cash-strapped N.J., as well as a revival of its casino and horse-racing industries. 


Club Cal Neva in Reno, Nevada, released a study on the potential revenue New Jersey could take in with legalized internet betting and found it could “increases the ability to generate tax revenues by more than 500%” taking projected total tax collections to $166.2 million from $30.6 million.


The potential revenue stream for the state is huge, according to Todd Fuhrman, market analyst for sports information site DonBest.com, and a former odds maker at Caesars Palace in  Vegas. For example, in Nevada, single-sports betting for this year’s Super Bowl alone generated $99 million in bets.


“People will find a way to gamble regardless,” he says. “The best historical comparison I can give is Prohibition. I don’t know how much government can do besides take a stance and say it can’t go on.”


The real problem for the NFL and the sports leagues is profit, according to Purdum.  He says professional leagues wouldn’t lose money if single-game betting was legalized, however it would be hard for them to profit without criticism.


“The popularity of the leagues would only grow,” Purdum says. “But once it is legalized, all of the conspiracy theorists will come out and every call will be scrutinized. In my opinion, they know they can’t benefit from any revenue from bets without people looking at everything under a microscope.”


Fantasy Football, for example, has hyped up the NFL’s popularity to astronomical levels, Purdum points out. It is getting even those typically disinterested in the sport tuning in to games. The NFL even has its own fantasy league on its site, and allows people to track the fees associated with betting and playing. Fantasy leagues are legal under the PAPSA because the results are based on an entire season of games, he says.


“Leagues argue it affects the integrity of the sporting events, and the NFL is the No.1 league pushing against this,” Fuhrman says. “It’s hypocritical though because what makes sports and the NFL in particular so popular is fantasy football.”


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Christie Says NJ Will Appeal Sports Betting Ruling - ABC News

By DAVID PORTER Associated Press NEWARK, N.J. March 1, 2013 (AP)

Gov. Chris Christie indicated Friday he would appeal a judge's decision upholding a ban on sports gambling in New Jersey, a ruling that dealt a setback to the state's efforts to save its struggling casino industry by tapping into a multibillion-dollar market.

In a ruling published late Thursday night, U.S. District Judge Michael Shipp sided with the four major pro sports leagues and the NCAA in rejecting the state's constitutional challenge to the 1992 Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act, a law that prohibits legal sports gambling in all but Nevada and three other states.

In December, Shipp denied New Jersey's claim that the leagues and NCAA didn't have standing to sue the state because they couldn't demonstrate tangible harm to their products if New Jersey were to allow sports betting.

"We believe firmly in the principles of our position on sports betting and that the federal ban is inequitable, violates New Jersey's rights as a state and is unconstitutional," Christie said through a spokesman Friday. "Even the trial judge has noted that he was not likely the final arbiter in the matter. We are confident that the federal court of appeals will conclude that New Jersey should be treated equally with other states."

New Jersey's casino industry has seen revenues decline steadily over the last several years in the face of competition from neighboring states. Atlantic City's newest casino, Revel, announced last week that it will file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection this month, about a year after it opened. Earlier in February, the Trump Plaza casino was sold for $20 million, the lowest price ever paid for an Atlantic City casino.

The industry could get a lift from legislation signed by Christie this week that made New Jersey the third in the nation to allow gambling over the Internet.

Billions of dollars are bet legally each year on sports in Nevada, and experts estimate tens or even hundreds of billions are wagered illegally through bookmakers. In oral arguments before Shipp last month, former U.S. Solicitor General Theodore Olson, arguing for New Jersey, decried the loss of sports gambling revenue to Nevada's "permanent monopoly."

State Sen. Ray Lesniak, the prime sponsor of the sports betting bill, called Shipp's ruling a "patent misinterpretation of the Constitution" and said sports betting would provide immediate and long-term economic benefits.

New Jersey voters passed a sports betting referendum in 2011, and last year the Legislature enacted a law that limited bets to the Atlantic City casinos and the state's horse racing tracks. Bets wouldn't be taken on games involving New Jersey colleges or college games played in the state. Christie said at the time that he hoped to grant sports betting licenses by early this year, but those plans were put on hold.

The NFL, NBA, NHL, Major League Baseball and the NCAA sued the state last year, and the NCAA has moved several of its championship events out of New Jersey because of the sports betting law. In a court deposition, MLB commissioner Bud Selig said he was "appalled" by Christie's actions.

In a statement Friday, the NCAA said "the spread of legalized sports wagering is a threat to the integrity of athletic competition and student-athlete well-being. We hope the decision in this case is a step in the direction of preventing that from happening."

NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy said the ruling "speaks for itself."


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Top Picks : Showtime's special on Dick Cheney, Slate's Hang Up and Listen podcast, and more

Acrobatic opera

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“Great Performances at the Met,” on PBS, brings The Tempest, written and conducted by Thomas Adès, widely considered the new Benjamin Britten. This version is conjured up by Robert Lepage, who made his name with his extravagant production of Wagner’s “Ring Cycle.” With Ariel imagined as an acrobatic coloratura soprano and vivid staging effects, this English-language production, based on Shakespeare’s final, magical play, is equally engaging to watch as listen to. It airs on March 17 at noon; check local listings.

Cheney profile

Just how much influence did Vice President Dick Cheney actually have in the White House? Speculate no more. Showtime’s The World According to Dick Cheney, which airs March 15 at 9 p.m., follows his four-decade rise to his time as the most powerful nonpresidential figure in US history, framed with interviews and commentary. This is part of Showtime’s new documentary series highlighting provocative public figures.

Short and sweet

If you haven’t seen Paperman, which won the 2013 Oscar for Best Animated Short, head over to Hulu.com. The six-minute video tells a charming tale of love and missed connections in midcentury New York. Disney created the animation with 3-D models, but you’d never know it. Through skilled use of penlike lines and paperesque filters, the characters look hand-drawn. Check it out at http://bit.ly/papermandisney.

Cruise control

Going on a cruise? Travel writer Paul Allen recommends books, movies, and music relating to your destination on Cruisereader.com. Groove to hits from Swedish pop band ABBA before you float through the Baltic Sea. Graze a literary anthology about Denali National Park as you embark on an Alaskan cruise. Watch “The King and I” before traveling around Southeast Asia. Whichever corner of the world you are heading to, Cruisereader.com will get you there faster.

Sports fix

Slate’s Hang Up and Listen podcast takes an intelligent and often funny look at the week’s sports news, without the bluster and bombast that often spoil sports radio shows. Make sure to listen to the “Afterball” segment that concludes each episode, in which each host presents a short and fascinating peek at an overlooked corner of the sports universe. It’s available on iTunes or at slate.com/podcast.

Maestro Bell

Violin virtuoso Joshua Bell’s first recording as music director of the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields was described as dazzling and mesmerizing by foreign press outlets. He is the first director since it was founded by violinist-conductor Neville Marinner in 1958. ASMF chose Beethoven’s Symphonies No. 4 and 7, which pack a great punch. Mr. Bell is not new to the orchestra: His first concerto recording occurred under Marinner’s baton when he was 21.


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Cat Fancy picks S.A.'s Gorgeous for August

Anne Morris is one proud pet owner these days.


She's beaming because her cat, Gorgeous, was chosen as one of the cats featured in the 365 Cats 2013 calendar published by Cat Fancy Magazine. Gorgeous' photo is displayed on the page for Aug. 31 and Sept. 1 in the year-in-a-box calendar.


“I was very happy when we got the notice that he was chosen,” Morris said. “He can't help it, he's pretty. All he has to do is be, he has that regal way about him. He thinks the world will adore him — that's my cat!”


Susan Logan, editor of Cat Fancy Magazine, said her staff enjoys interacting with readers and contest participants. Logan said they receive a wide variety of snapshots and artwork for contests open to children and adults. She said they get regular feedback from respondents who have shown a range of emotions after they've received word their pets' picture will be published.


“I know someone who actually screamed,” Logan said. “That scream of excitement is a testimonial that says it all. People love to get their pets' pictures in the magazine; it's a big exciting thing for them.”


She said they've also learned a lot about their readers, such as how long their cats are living and how far people will go to provide their pets a good quality of life.


“It's a long commitment to take care of a cat as part of your family,” Logan said. “But you get a lot of years of joy.”


Gorgeous is Morris' second cat to be included in a calendar. She had another cat, named Oreo, featured in a page-a-day calendar three years ago. Oreo died earlier this year.


Her friend, Pete Romero, took the photo of Gorgeous with green eyes, looking away from the camera.


Gorgeous, one of Morris' five cats, is polydactyl, meaning many digits; he has six toes on each front paw. They're also called Hemingway cats, after a ship captain stopped in Key West, Fla. where Ernest Hemingway lived and gave the famous writer a polydactyl as a gift. Hemingway's house, now a museum, still has a colony of six-toed cats.


Morris calls her photo-winning cat and her other felines her foundlings because they all found their way to her home.


She said Gorgeous showed up under a low-hanging loquat tree three years ago. After eating the food she'd left out for him, he joined the family.


“It means a lot to me to have them and enjoy them,” Morris said. “They bring me great pleasure.”



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Veteran picks the right day to be superman

Morgan Foster turned back time and joined a pantheon of legendary lifeguards at the State New Zealand surf lifesaving nationals in Mt Maunganui yesterday.


The 37-year-old Hamilton fireman picked up his 10th national beach flags crown on a scorching Main Beach, edging Midway's Connor O'Loughlin in the final.


Foster (South Brighton) won his first title in 1995 and had nine by 2006 but has lived largely in the shadows of Fitzroy's five-time winner Paul Cracroft-Wilson since.


Cracroft-Wilson had knee surgery six weeks ago, however, and stumbled when it came down to the final four, letting third-placed Toby Harris (Wainui) sneak through. The crowd, sensing Foster's relentless pursuit of history, then got behind the ageing warrior.


"This is as big as my first one in 1995 when I was 18," a jubilant Foster said. "You take a few for granted when you're at your peak and you don't remember how much they mean to you until they become harder to get."


Foster's 10th title ranks him among the likes of Cory Hutchings, who collected 11 national ironman crowns, and John Creighton's eight ski race titles.


"There's a lot of guys who've trained just as hard as me and been just as competitive who haven't been lucky enough to win and I can really appreciate that now," Foster said. "The thing about being 37 is I wake up some days and I'm superman. I wake up other days and I'm not - luckily today was on."


Mt Maunganui beach sprinter Holly Moczydlowski is also eyeing a similar slice of history tomorrow - her club has won the last nine open women's beach relay titles, and the 2006 world champion has been involved in every one.


With heavy 2.5m surf rolling into the Main Beach, the water events were switched to the relatively sheltered Shark Alley along the coast, where Australian Eliza Smith grabbed her second gold of the carnival, pairing with Danielle O'Connor to win the open women's tube rescue.


Red Beach ironman Chris Moors, fresh from a season on the lucrative Australian professional circuit, grabbed the men's gold with AJ Maney, heading off St Clair's Olympic swimmer Andy McMillan and Adam Simpson.


Piha's Kirsty Wannan displayed outstanding versatility, finishing third in the tube rescue with clubmate Lisa Blakemore and then going out and winning the open women's 2km beach run. Her clubmate Nick Berry won the men's title, while Mt Maunganui's Andrew Newton and Julien Lalanne won the board rescue final.


Today's finals will feature Olympians Lisa Carrington, Darryl Fitzgerald and Steve Ferguson in the ski finals, while Moors, Cory Taylor and defending champion Max Beattie will be chasing ironman glory.


 


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2 Winning Picks in Oil & Gas

Bill is a member of The Motley Fool Blog Network -- entries represent the personal opinion of the blogger and are not formally edited.

When it comes to commodity companies, I try to be very picky. These companies are price takers, and unlike so many firms that peddle differentiated products, they are often subject to the whims of commodity markets. Worse yet, many of these companies spend heavily on new refineries or new oil field prospects.

Fortunately, investors have many attractively-priced stocks to choose from. Phillips 66 (NYSE: PSX) and Chevron (NYSE: CVX) are particularly attractive based on price multiples.

Investment Projects

ConocoPhillips (NYSE: COP) expects to utilize cash, asset and debt sales to fund its spending and dividends while waiting for production to increase. From 2013 to 2017, the company is expected to spend about $16 billion a year. The company spent over $3 billion during the last year over its dividend and it is planning to increase dividends. The company’s spending may outstrip its cash flow. In 2012, COP ended its year with a total cash of $4.4 billion. The company is expected to generate $9.6 billion from the sale of assets.

Management intends to exploit balance sheet strength to fund its growth program. According to Jeff Sheets, the CFO of the company, “We got cash from operations, we got asset sales proceeds, we got cash on the balance sheet already, and we got debt capacity. So there really shouldn’t be any doubt that through a series of price environments that we can fund the capital and fund the dividend.” He also said that assets would be a part of the continuing operations and will generate approximately $15 billion in cash flow. The company’s investment would generate $6 billion to $7 billion of cash flow in future. By 2017, the cash flow would be about $22 billion if energy prices are similar to the previous year.

ConocoPhillips is looking for annual production and margin growth of 3-5% in next few years. In 2017, the company’s output may increase up to 1.9 million barrels of oil equivalent a day as compared to 1.5 million barrels a day from continuing operations during the previous year. Post the spinoff of the refining, pipeline and chemical business to form a separate company, Phillips 66, the company became an independent producer. According to Ryan Lance, the Chairman and CEO of the company, “We have a compelling dividend, and the growth in production and margin is coming and we’re focused on returns.” The company is focusing on reducing its stake in the Australia Pacific liquefied natural gas project and in Canadian oil-sands holdings as they increased their cost estimates by 7% in AUD.

The company, which was planning to sell its stake in Canada’s oil sands, said that it is more difficult for certain buyers as Ottawa has restricted foreign investment in Canada’s resources. The changes were introduced after the contentious takeovers of Nexen and Progress Energy Resources, energy producers in Canada, by Chinese and Malaysian state-owned companies.

The Houston-based oil manufacturer is making special efforts to find the right partner based on the complexity and size of ConocoPhillips' oil sands projects in Western Canada. The country’s new rules have changed the background for investment. Certain types of decisions and deals in the country have a more difficult time due to an investment decision that progressed as they came through the Progress deal with Petronas and through the CNOOC deal with Nexen.

The company has a 50% interest in various oil-sands projects across Alberta. These projects include Surmont, Foster Creek and Christina Lake. According to Lance, planned sale of the oil sands stake is part of the company’s strategy to decrease exposure to high cost projects to create idle funds for shale development. The company is spending a huge sum of funds to increase crude oil output from basins that are of low-cost across North America and the rest of the world. The company has also promised that its cash flow, dividend, margins and production will increase over five years, which is assisted by the high output of crude from places such as the Eagle Ford formation in South Texas.

Of course, there are expenditures in energy projects outside of North America. Chevron and Genel Energy are looking for new oil fields across Morocco. According to Citigroup, the oil companies are planning approximately 10 wells in Moroccan waters through 2014. This represents the quickest pace at which wells would be established since 2000, and it is twice what has been drilled in the past. Cairn Energy has planned to start drilling the Foum Draa prospect during the fourth quarter. According to Laura Loppacher, an analyst at Jefferies Group, “Morocco has seen a huge explosion of interest in the last six months. It’s an area with several plays for people to target, but it’s still frontier and risky.”

Valuation

The good news is that many oil and gas companies are trading at low valuations:

Phillips 66 is particularly cheap on a price-to-sales basis. It is also cash flow positive. Similarly, Chevron is attractive based on its low price-to-sales multiple and is also cash flow positive. Both firms have solid balance sheets.

Conclusion

Value investors should make some time to look at large energy companies in today’s markets because they are trading at attractive price multiples. Phillips 66 and Chevron should top their lists for further research.

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Movies inspire Oscar- winning hors d'oeuvres

Let's face it. Theme parties are fun.


And Sunday's 85th Academy Awards show gives us good reason to indulge -- it's the Super Bowl of show business.


For a food presentation your guests won't forget, we have the perfect cast of award-winning snacks. Our food party picks will keep your guests satisfied as they watch all the glitz and glamour of the Oscars.


For inspiration, we took a cue from some of this year's film nominees.


"Silver Linings Playbook," a best picture nominee, is set in Philadelphia so we opted for a version of the iconic Philly cheese steak sandwich. The main character of the sandwich is thinly sliced and lightly seasoned beef, typically rib-eye, which is chopped using two metal spatulas while cooking. Grilled onions and a mess of cheese are added, all served on a roll. Our adaptation is a slider that features sweet caramelized onions and peppers, topped with provolone served on slider buns.


Two other recipes were developed with "Les Mis?rables" in mind. This film is set in France, where pastries, baguettes and Brie are popular. In our Brie Bites recipe, Brie is tucked in buttery puff pastry and topped with candied walnuts. Our crostini selection is simply lightly toasted French baguette slices topped with seasoned ricotta and crunchy apple with a drizzle of honey and chopped walnuts.


So go ahead and let our recipes set the stage for a memorable evening -- on the sofa, enjoying Oscar-worthy fare.


 


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CODER Crew's Picks of the Week: Little Freaky Things, Iggy Azealia and More

CODER Crew's Picks of the Week: Little Freaky Things, Iggy Azealia and More | Billboard var _comscore = _comscore || []; _comscore.push({ c1: "2", c2: "7395269" }); (function() { var s = document.createElement("script"), el = document.getElementsByTagName("script")[0]; s.async = true; s.src = (document.location.protocol == "https:" ? "https://sb" : "http://b") + ".scorecardresearch.com/beacon.js"; el.parentNode.insertBefore(s, el); })(); Billboard Billboard biz Follow @twitter !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); VideosPhotosArticlesArtists Search form Search Subscribe Hot 100Billboard 200GenresPopBreaking and EnteringRockR&B/Hip-HopCountryLatinDance/ElectronicChristian/GospelAdditional GenresInternationalCanadian Hot 100Canadian AlbumsFrance SongsGermany AlbumsGermany SongsJapan Hot 100K-Pop Hot 100All Charts
CODER Crew's Picks of the Week: Little Freaky Things, Iggy Azealia and More ArticlesColumnsCode

By Billboard Staff | March 08, 2013 1:33 PM EST

CODER Crew's Picks of the Week: Little Freaky Things, Iggy Azealia and More Courtesy of 11 Heads Records

Little Freaky Things

0 23 0 0 Each Friday, the CODE crew will review their favorite dance tracks of the week. Listen to the cuts below, and see what Kerri, Zel, Jacob, Lauren and Elissa have to say. Today CODE premieres an exclusive stream from Little Freaky Things.

Little Freaky Things, “Nightfall” (Donovan's Remix) (11Heads Records)


Parisian duo Little Freaky Things delivers a proper house tune that looks forward while respecting the roots of its culture. On this remix from their forthcoming debut EP, LFT's own Donovans bring pulses ready to have you rinsed and a hypnotic bass line that sneaks up on you. When it drops (and there is a drop), it's so smooth and deep you won't know what just happened. Complementing all these dirty house tricks is an emotional vocal by Maï-Lan Chapiron that should find equal footing in sets by everyone from A-Trak to Annie Mac. The original tune was far more electro and deserves a listen, especially for Chapiron's assuredly diaphanous performance, but it's this pounding re-work that will get the peak-hour spins. Get your little freaky things on! Pre-order their EP here. -Zel



Iggy Azealia, "Work” (Jacob Plant Mix) (Mercury)


Australian bombshell Iggy Azealia proved her EDM chops with her utterly badass verses on Steve Aoki's "Beatdown," but it looks like she's back for more bass. By recruiting Jacob Plant to add a hard-hitting, dubstep-meets-trap (are we saying "trapstep" yet?") backbone to the track, Azealia chose wisely: her rhymes have even more weight when paired with the heavy beat and screeching synths. Now, it's an eminently danceable tune that will have ladies flocking to the dance floor to imitate Azealia's famed ponytail flip. -Lauren



Bones & Money, "Black Diamond” (Chrissy Murderbot Remix) (Tuff Wax)
In 2009 and 2010, Chicago producer and Loose Squares label boss Murderbot created a handful of jungle sets as part of a project that involved uploading a new mixtape to his blog every week. His offering for this Bones & Money remix EP translates that extensive knowledge of and love for jungle into beatmaking chops. Murderbot cradles the original's chunky hip-hop sample in a dry, clattering breakbeat and sinkholes of low end that soon burst into a dangerously catchy and energetic bassline. -Elissa



Various Artists, “Springbreakers: Music From The Motion Picture” (Big Beat/Atlantic)


Hitting at just the right cultural moment, soundtracks can capture the zeitgeist in a bottle. “Singles,” “Trainspotting,” even “Spawn” and “Reality Bites” are time capsules now, containing more than just the music.


“Springbreakers” is one such collection, a soundtrack-score combination dotted with Skrillex songs we all know already and love, completely redefined by their usage in the film. Will viewers of this Harmony Korine polemic against amoral consumer culture ever be able to listen to the aggressive smudge-bass of Grammy-winning “Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites” without thinking of the film’s half-naked, beer-soaked, slow-mo' opening beach sequence? In a way, it captures what the world did with the strange laptop creations a sincere kid named Sonny released into it.


There are also tracks from Waka Flocka Flame and Gucci Mane, showing the shrinking delta between electronic and hip-hop; and great pieces of scoring from Skrillex and Cliff Martinez (Drive, Contagion), all with the half-stoned, all-neon feel of the film. Instant classic. -Kerri


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Women's Lacrosse picks up second win, 23-7, over Old Dominion - The Collegian — University of Richmond

Despite the cold weather and rain, the University of Richmond women’s lacrosse team picked up its second win of the season against Old Dominion University, 23-7, Tuesday in Robins Stadium.


After ODU scored two goals in the first five minutes of the game, the Spiders responded with a 9-0 run. At the end of the half, Richmond was winning, 13-5.


The temperature dropped and it started to rain at the beginning of the second half, but that did not stop the Spiders from scoring 10 more points and winning the game. The Spiders were one goal shy of tying the school record for most points scored in a game.


Head coach Allison Evans said that before the start of the game, the team had talked about staying disciplined, consistent and focused.


The way the team responded to ODU’s first two goals and continued on to a 9-0 run stood out in the game, Evans said.  The offense took advantage of the fast breaks and second breaks, she said.


Senior Kara Moschetti led the team with five goals and four assists.


“Both the offense and defense came out strong,” Moschetti said. “We were connecting on both sides.”


The offense executed on every play and many different players scored, Moschetti said.


Seniors Sam Stevenson and Jennifer Zoltoski were also lead scorers with four goals each. Overall, 10 Richmond players scored at least one goal against ODU.


The game was supposed to be played Wednesday, but was rescheduled earlier to avoid the expected inclement weather, leaving the Spiders with one less day to practice and prepare.


Although the change came as a surprise to both the coaches and the team, they were able to adapt and focus on the game, Evans said.


“It was great to win at home and protect our turf,” Evans said.


The women’s lacrosse team will play James Madison University at the Robins Stadium next Wednesday.


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Softball Picks Up Two Wins at FGCU Tournament - Michigan State Athletics

Feb. 23, 2013

Final Stats

FORT MYERS, Fla. – Michigan State softball extended its winning streak to six games after defeating Albany, 3-1, and St. Bonaventure, 8-0, in its second day of the Florida Gulf Coast Tournament on Saturday. 

In the opener against Albany, junior Kelly Smith (6-1) earned the win by pitching a complete game, allowed only one run on three hits to the Great Danes.

Down 1-0 after four and a half innings, the Spartans scored all three of their runs in the bottom of the fifth. Jenny Ramsaier led off with a single and eventually scored on a Sarah Bowling RBI fielder’s choice, while Jayme O’Bryant hit a double to left centerfield that scored Bowling and Kylene Hopkins. O’Bryant led the Spartans with six RBIs in Saturday’s two games.

Later in the day, Michigan State (8-4) took on St. Bonaventure (1-11) for the second time in the tournament.  MSU blanked the Bonnies in the rematch, 8-0 in five innings, after winning 12-0 Friday night.

Freshman Dani Goranson picked up the win, pitching a complete game with six strikeouts. 

The Spartans started the game off strong as they tallied a run in the first inning.  Hopkins crossed the plate as O’Bryant picked up an RBI with a groundout to second base.  In a similar fashion, O’Bryant singled to center field to send Hopkins home at the top of the third to give MSU a 2-0 lead.

Michigan State recorded six runs on just two hits in the top of the fourth inning to secure control of the game.  The Spartans took advantage of three St. Bonaventure errors and also walked three times in the inning. O’Bryant hit a two-run single in the frame to send Hopkins and Ramsaier home, while Stephanie Sanders had a pinch-hit, two-run single for the Spartans.



The Spartans will finish up their action in Fort Myers tomorrow as they take on Villanova at 11:15 a.m. and Florida Gulf Coast at 1:30 p.m.

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