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It’s easy for the NFL to take action against a player who foolishly uses his phone to bet on football. It is far from easy for the NFL to properly control the potential misuse of insider information related to professional football.
As Todd Dewey of the Las Vegas Review-Journal explained, Westgate SuperBook vice president Jay Cornegay believes the significant bets made on the Buccaneers last week stemmed from inside information that Brady would not retire. And Kornegay wants the NFL to look into it.
On Thursday, a big player made a big bet that the Buccaneers would win the NFC 30-1 and the Super Bowl 60-1. After Tampa Bay’s chances of winning the Super Bowl dropped to 25-1, the same player bet the Bucks again.
“I have no doubt they knew he would be back when they placed their bets on Thursday,” Kornegay said. “And these were not random players. They can be classified as educated players. It wasn’t the guy in the Tom Brady shirt behind the counter. This was a player we would call sharp. With a game like this and an announcement we’ve heard [Sunday] that he is not retiring was information that was circulated prior to his official announcement.
“I have no doubt that the information was leaked somewhere in the middle of last week. It concerns. I don’t think I ever said the NFL really needs to investigate anything. But that’s something they need to study and understand how it came to be, because there are a lot of books that were heavily bet on in the middle of last week.”
According to Dewey, there was a similar incident in the South Point sportsbook on Thursday when someone bet “big money” on the Buccaneers to win the Super Bowl 50-1, 30-1 and 25-1.
The NFL declined to comment in the Review-Journal, but this is not something that can be ignored. Proper handling of insider information is one of the many chapters of Playmakers. This is the first time a major sportsbook has openly accused someone of providing security and acting on the unreported news of Brady’s return.
If only that poor bastard who paid over $518,000 for what was supposedly the last touchdown of Brady’s career had access to that information.