The Journal of Gambling Business and Economics

Tennis Serve Clock Started Ticking and Betting Market Inefficiencies Followed

Todd McFall — 2026-05-28

In 2020, men’s professional tennis adopted the so-called “serve clock,” which limited players to taking 25 seconds between points. Prior to the rule change, players could take unlimited time between points, so the serve clock forced many players to play more quickly than they would prefer, a change that, at the time, was thought to give players who possessed an abundance of certain physical characteristics or tennis-specific skills a better chance to withstand the increased physical rigors that the updated game placed on players. We set out to accomplish two tasks in analyzing how professional tennis changed with the implementation of the serve clock. First, we want to update for the serve clock era findings from previous studies that found tennis players who could save or convert break points and win first serve points were relatively better than their competition were more likely to win matches. Second, we want to determine how efficiently betting markets reacted to the implementation of the serve clock.

With data from results and odds of 11000 matches from five seasons of professional tennis, we use logit modeling of match results to determine that there was no increase in the rate of return to tennis-specific skills in the serve clock era, that relatively younger and taller players have gained advantages since the rule change occurred, and that betting markets were slow to detect information that allowed for more accurate predictions of matches, leading to a window of time in which larger than normal returns to bettors were available. We believe our findings warrant further investigation of the efficiency of betting markets, especially in periods in which structural changes add to the uncertainty of predicting results.

How Bad Sports Betting Research Can Lead to Bad Sports Betting Regulations

Douglas M. Walker — 2026-05-28

Academic research can provide important evidence to inform policy debates. Such has been the case with the “gambling studies” academic field, which has largely developed since 1990, when the casino industry began expanding outside of Nevada and Atlantic City, NJ. Recently, sports betting legalization across the United States has been controversial. Despite a significant body of published research analyzing the socioeconomic effects of expanded gambling opportunities, much of the recent public discussion has focused on just three working papers circulated in 2024. These papers have been cited as authoritative in media reports and have been presented before policymakers at the state and federal level. We highlight serious methodological problems in these papers to suggest that flawed research can lead to bad policy, and that the current sports betting debate has parallels to the 1990s debate over the “social costs of gambling.”

From Juice to KPIs: Institutional Change and Occupational Identity in Las Vegas Casino Management

Björn Lantz — 2026-05-28

This study offers a historically grounded analysis of how Las Vegas table games managers constructed occupational identity and navigated institutional change during a period of significant transformation in the casino industry. Drawing on fifteen oral history interviews conducted between 2014 and 2016, the research examines how managers made sense of the shift from informal, relationship-driven management to corporatized, metrics-oriented systems. Thematic analysis reveals three interrelated themes: the transformation of occupational identity and loss of autonomy; the persistence and adaptation of informal power structures (“juice”); and generational tensions in the interpretation of managerial legitimacy. By foregrounding managers’ narratives as situated historical accounts, the study demonstrates that institutional change is experienced not only as a structural process but as a lived negotiation of meaning, authority, and professional identity. The findings contribute to scholarship on organizational change, occupational identity, and the culture of work, highlighting the value of retrospective, narrative approaches for understanding how frontline actors interpret and enact transformation in complex service organizations.

Using Scratch-Off Lottery Tickets to Teach Binomial Probabilities and Expected Value

Robert Scott — 2026-05-28

This paper demonstrates how to use state lottery scratch-off tickets as an interactive classroom exercise to explain the binomial distribution and expected value. Students often struggle to comprehend how theoretical probability distributions relate to empirical outcomes. One way to improve student engagement and understanding is by using relatable interactive classroom exercises. The exercise in this paper involves every student receiving a lottery ticket, calculating binomial probabilities and using this information to estimate expected value, average payout, standard deviation, and the number of winners. We then compare the empirical results with what we observe after all the tickets are scratched.