Sports Betting and Open-Source Intelligence
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The government was resistant, but slowly U.S. intelligence agencies are now embracing Open-Source intelligence (OSINT).
There are some real parallels in how sports organizations see secret versus publicly available data and how the government treated it for years.
In sports, OSINT can be used in the gambling context for pricing markets but also for integrity investigations, scouting, fan security, and more.
It seems to be an untapped market that teams, leagues, and more can leverage to help their bottom line, sport integrity, and improve fan safety.
Keep reading below for the full story.
I often like to draw parallels between what is going on in the sports or sports gambling world and the government security world. I think it makes sense to compare the major sports leagues and the major online betting platforms to the large members of the U.S. Intelligence community. Some are incredibly well resourced, have tons of information on their customers’ spending and other habits and can use that data for any number of reasons to benefit their own businesses. There are smaller, more niche members of the intelligence community as well, and in this comparison, in the sports world they could be smaller sportsbooks, smaller leagues, or integrity monitors like IC360 or SportRadar.
Over the last 5 years or so, experts inside and outside of government have been looking beyond government held intelligence secrets and shining a light on Open-Source Intelligence, or OSINT. For the purposes of this article, I define OSINT as more than just the data, but as OSINT expert David Reese defines it— the collection, exploitation, analysis, and dissemination of information derived from publicly available sources. As more and more information resides on the public internet and people increasingly live their lives in the digital space, troves of useful information sit in the public domain. To be sure, the U.S. Government gleans helpful intelligence from human spies and eavesdropping on phone calls or emails of terrorists and autocrats, but they shouldn’t (and don’t) limit themselves to that. To put it succinctly, if the Cuban Missile Crisis were happening today, JFK wouldn’t have to solely rely on U2 flights taking pictures. There are civilian satellites that take pictures of Earth constantly day and night and publish them for anyone to purchase in addition to countless other options.
When it comes to maintaining the integrity of sports—in the major leagues, but also in college and smaller sports leagues like the MLS, ATP/WTA, or PGA/LPGA—OSINT should also be put to use. Between social networks like Twitter, Facebook, Reddit and TikTok, apps that show public financial information like Venmo or blockchain transactions, and metadata stored in documents and other online files, troves of data exist that can be put to use to protect sports from rogue gamblers or criminals who want to distort betting markets for their own personal or financial gain.
Many in the government’s intelligence community thought for too long that their data was superior because it was protected by laws that kept national security information secret. It was stamped with the words Top Secret, so it must be better than anything Joe Public could find with a Google search. That just simply isn’t true anymore and has not been for a while. It’s taken the government too long to appreciate that realization and probably hasn’t fully come to the realization as much as it should yet.
The same is true in the world of sports. Nearly each team has its own analytics shop, likely using proprietary tools and data. Many surely assume their tools are better than others. Sportsbooks and prediction markets all generate their own data that surely stays in-house or maybe is only shared with integrity monitors— if that. But what of all the information out there on social media and other public-facing parts of the internet. There are potential impacts for betting (and prediction markets), game planning, scouting and recruiting, sports integrity investigations, and event safety.
So what to do with this broader trove of data? I’ve come across one startup—Sports Capital—that is trying to fill the void. They build data pipelines that ingest open source “intelligence” and provide it as a structured data feed for a variety of use cases. I reached out to CEO Aaron Riccio who explained that they “collect a range of data through [their] news classification model [which] predicts the likelihood of content being associated with various types of news, including pregame lineups and live player injuries.” This is exactly the sort of embrace of OSINT that teams and leagues should embrace. I can even see uses beyond the gambling context. This is another great example of dual use technology that can be deployed for core business purposes but also to protect spectators.
It's human nature to think that secret data is better than data that is out in the open. Reese, the OSINT expert, refers to the tendency to think of information as valuable only when it has been classified as Top Secret as “James Bond Syndrome” and it would be naïve to think that this affliction would only plague those roaming the halls of the CIA, FBI, or NSA or 15 other members of the U.S. Intelligence Community. If any part of the sports ecosystem were to truly embrace the use of OSINT it not only holds the potential for them to improve their business operations and their play on the field, but also their financial bottom line and the safety and security of one of their most important assets—their fans.
If you are looking for help understanding emerging threats related to gambling or other industries, how the government (especially Congress) works, writing content or more I have a consultancy and I’d love to help you. I work with clients in a variety of sectors and look forward to working with you. Please reach out to discuss any of your issues at WeinStrategyLab@pm.me.