Theses and Dissertations

In 2021-2022, MLB underwent a labor stoppage due to a failure between the league and union to sign a new collective bargaining agreement (CBA) for the 2022 season until mid-March of 2022. This failure led to a contentious debate between owners and players over economic, competitive balance, and gameplay issues. To evaluate how MLB has reached this point in labor relations and make predictions for the future, it is first important to look at the history of sports and collective bargaining and, more specifically, this history in baseball. Next, one should evaluate the history of the antitrust exemption and its impact on labor relations in MLB. It is then important to analyze the main tenets of the 2022 CBA and their implications. Following this historical and current analysis, one can make hypotheses about where baseball labor relations and antitrust laws are heading and what will be key issues to look toward in the future.

This thesis discusses the implications of sports gambling from a perspective of addiction and promotions offered by sportsbooks. It discusses the background behind the recent legalization of sports gambling in the U.S., the potential result of gambling addiction, the different types of promotions commonly offered by sportsbooks, how these promotions relate to psychological phenomena related to gambling addiction, and how an ideal bettor could use these promotions to their advantage in order to best avoid addiction and losing excessive money. The data on the promotions used for analysis was collected primarily from DraftKings and manipulated in order to find expected returns, implied probabilities, and other relevant information. There is a discussion of how an ideal bettor could utilize the promotions commonly offered to consumers in order to make money on new platforms and theoretically avoid losing as much money by continuously betting in a strategic way.