[Vladimir_Kyrilytch]

The WWE is obviously rigged (scripted) to the maximum, but get this everyone: you can bet on WWE. And quite a bit of money, too, although not as much as the main sports. I remember a while back, there was a scandal within the WWE because someone, on their own personal blog with an anonymous name, was making predictions that were coming out exactly accurate. It was an insider that was giving out the scripts ahead of time. Big time drama in the sports betting world, and it didn't last all that long.

But here's what I really wanted to post about. Beyond a thing not being predictable just because it has a script: there are far more variables, competing interests and motivations, behind how games go than the average 'it's rigged' guy even realizes, and this is why 'it's rigged' guy will struggle to make accurate predictions. My source on this is Tim Donaghy's book.

In one game, you might have a ref that just hates one of the players on the other team for personal reasons. And you might have another ref on that same crew that loves that guy for personal reasons, and each might go hard on / easy on that guy / his team in the same game.

There was an example in Donaghy's book where Dick Bavetta (NBA ref) called too many fouls on Lamar Odom of the Heat one game, and it looked bad cause they were in large part bad calls. An astute observer of the ref's influence on sports games might study that game and conclude that Bavetta had a Vendetta (lol) against Odom, and bet against the Heat. But Bavetta knew that people were saying and thinking that, Odom himself amongst them - Bavetta told Donaghy "I'm gonna go very easy on Odom next game. I can't have him thinking I'm after him".

In that example, the refs were very biased and were not calling the game as they saw it, except it benefited the Heat, not their opponents, in that game. That's hard to predict, because it very well could have been the case that Bavetta was after Odom overall, cause that happens too.

This is getting too long, but here's my conclusion. You can't simply decide 'yeah, the games are very shadily called' and then start raking in money by betting the shadiness, because the shadiness is very hard to see through the noise, and it isn't cleanly organized. You have all of these factors, in play to various degrees, or not at all, in any given game:

-personal biases against and for individual players held by each individual ref
-league preference/directive, and the degree that pressure is put on in various games
-various levels of autonomy/seniority of different ref / ref crews to be able to act of their own volition vs. following orders
-the influence of external (gambling) money. If one official is effectively paid off to do one thing, all other scripting in that game is now rendered moot.
-the game is legit hard to officiate, so real human error will obfuscate things
-unpredictability and an eye on Vegas is built into their scheme.

Ultimately though I think too many people get caught up with semantics. Is it "rigged", "scripted", "steered", "influenced", etc? Bottom line is they do NOT call the games as they see them, as Tim Donaghy found out, and said he was shocked. From there, just watch the Bucs/Chiefs Super Bowl and this past Bengal game, amongst countless examples, and decide for yourselves which term best fits. At different times, all do.