BetFair angel investor Sean Park says that Jed Christiansen’s anti-sport comment to the CFTC stinks like rotten dead fish under the Egyptian sun.
Chris F. Masse August 11th, 2008
Sean Park (of Park Paradigm):
Re question 15.
Your assertion that “contracts on the outcome of a sporting event should be prohibited as they are too akin to gambling“ basically undermines most of your other arguments, in the sense that it is absolutely arbitrary and entirely subjective. Irrespective of your personal views on the subject it also smacks of pandering (making an assumption - probably correct - that the CFTC will shrink from anything that might include sports) throwing into question the basis of the logic of the rest of your arguments. Unfortunate indeed.
As to your suggestion wrt contracts with terrible outcomes, I sympathize with your intent but also think your somewhat arbitrary exclusion weakens the overall argument in favor of these markets. Life insurance is not illegal. Deliberately murdering someone to collect said insurance is…
Don’t get me wrong, it’s not always easy to come up with a set of rules that can handle even a limited number of potentially awkward contingencies well. An [assassination] contract on the President might well serve a useful and legitimate purpose (and an equally important challenge to ‘follow the money’ so that no nefarious insiders collect…) while a market on Joe your next-door neighbour would be superfluous and potentially dangerous.
One of the reasons I think America gets so squirmy when it comes to markets in general and event markets (betting) in particular as it forces them (collectively, the culture) to face the reality that the home of the free (market) is actually a bit of a myth, and that information arbitrage, power-brokers and the apocryphal smoke-filled room still dominate every aspect of American political and business life. Very few people who have power are happy to see it seep away…especially to the crowd!
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[...] Jed Christiansen will never be a cheerleader for the prediction market industry as long as he holds those wrong views about betting on sports. [...]