| dilanesp |
12-31-2021 12:52 PM |
It'll get dismissed. Bettors' suits always do.
There was one recently in poker. Mike Postle was accused of using technology to see the hole cards on livestreamed poker telecasts from Sacramento, allowing him to win hundreds of thousands of dollars. The lawsuits lost.
The basic problem is that all sorts of unfair stuff goes down in events that are bet on, and it is impossible to draw lines as to when people can sue and when they can't. E.g., imagine if a football team puts out false information about an injury to their quarterback. That could surely cause people to make bad bets. Can they sue? And if they can't, why can bettors sue here?
A lesser issue- but still an issue- is that bettors actually take these things into account when handicapping. In other words, one reason Baffert's horses go off at short prices is because of his winning percentage (especially in big stakes), and if that winning percentage is influenced by drugs, the bettors are incorporating the information and aren't really being defrauded.
There's various legal doctrines that make these suits impossible- I could get into them in detail- but these are the basic motivators for why courts don't want to get into this business.
The solution to racing's problems is not going to come in a courtroom. At the end of the day we need regulators who don't come from the world of horse racing and don't give a hoot about offending powerful people within the sport or banning practices that have been tolerated in the sport for a long time.
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