Tanking in North America Sports

Tanking in North America Sports

Introduction

Tanking is one of the most pressing problems facing the North America leagues. Tanking refers to when sports teams lose games to secure some sort of future competitive advantage. Teams intend to do less than everything it can to win. It is a concentrated effort over several months or even seasons by a team to deliberately not be as good as it could be. It is the byproduct of a flawed system where a team can be rewarded for being bad and where intentionally losing is a strategic decision. Tanking is endemic to the sports culture and needs to be rallied against and discouraged by any means. It is a practice that is unfair to fans who pay to watch these sports expecting nothing but the best from their teams. It is a practice that tarnishes the dignity of North America leagues.

Tanking in North America Sports

Tanking, as it is known, which is a form of match-fixing, is common in North AMERICA American sports than it is recognized. Sadly, in many cases, it is not just the team’s status that is at stake, but that of the whole league. Back in the days, athletes who tanked in North America sports were not doing so in the name of securing high draft picks, but on behalf of general managers and owners seeking a shortcut for rebuilding. They were doing it in the name of the mob or cashing in on the avarice of bookmakers seeking a shortcut to short-term riches. Today tanking is also becoming a popular strategy used by teams to secure high draft picks. The arguments indicate that tanking is becoming more popular and indeed more accepted as a mainstream strategy in North America sports than people think.

The notion of tanking is not limited just to athletes and coaches in North America. However, as all too many fans of losing professional teams are continually urging their teams to purposely lose games to gain an advantage in the draft of new players. In fact, chatter about tanking – the unintended consequence of the draft system in many professional sports leagues, including the NBA, NFL, and WNBA – has become prevalent on-line in North America among fans of some losing NBA and NHL teams. While these “fans” might not question whether it’s unethical for professional teams to tank, they should. They are guilty of using the present team members as mere tools for the advantage of next year’s team. Everyone involved – fans as well as players and coaches – are exploited in these schemes. Losing on purpose cheats fans who attend sporting events believing they will see an actual game. Think of two teams playing each other, each trying to lose on purpose, presumably without being detected. Would anyone pay to see such an anti-game if they actually knew what was going on? How does presenting an event as a contest when it is no such thing differ from false advertising or knowingly presenting consumers with a defective product? Perhaps more important, if tanking became a regular practice in North America as it is already widespread, how could anyone tell that what was being played was a genuine contest rather than a counterfeit? The very integrity of the sport would be called into question, and that is why the widespread of tanking in major sports in North America, such as basketball, football, baseball, and wrestling, should be taken seriously. These sports are in danger of being corrupted and exploited. Some might argue that professional sports teams are businesses. If intentionally losing a few games now leads to much greater success in the future, why not do it? Isn’t the goal of running a business to make a profit? While it is true that professional sports are big businesses, businesses have moral obligations other than merely making a profit. They have moral obligations to provide safe working conditions for their employees, to refrain from knowingly selling defective products, and to not engage in false advertising. The idea of intentionally losing in North America sports calls all of these moral obligations into question. Thus, trading players to make room to pay better players more in the future is a legitimate way of building for the future. But would it be legitimate if a team were to deliberately limit playing time of its best players simply to insure losses? Teams at elite levels of play may well ignore this incentive and try to win. Players and coaches have strong incentives not to appear inept, which would lower their market value, and as a consequence, never actually tank. Fans, however, may suspect otherwise, and all too often root for their teams to lose. The integrity of the game is then called into question. Tanking, and those who call for it, threatens the very idea of genuine competition in North America sports. Those who call for their teams to tank need to understand that even the appearance of tanking can threaten the integrity of competition in North America sports. It undermines what is perhaps the central value underlying athletic competition, the tacit agreement among competitors to actually test one another to see who best meets the challenge of their sport. This is how much tanking is affecting North America as they are being conducted secretly, with some accepting it as a norm in sports.

Conclusion

It is clear that tanking is an unethical and illegal practice that needs to be discouraged. Tanking in North America is not a new thing. It has been there in various sports, with the major ones being basketball, baseball, football, and hockey. The practice is becoming more widespread, penetrating emerging sports in North America, such as World Wide Wrestling and tennis. As a result, tanking is becoming more threatening to the integrity of North American sports more than ever. The problem is that the practice is becoming more widespread than it is recognized, especially by the fans and supporters. For the few who have knowledge about the practice, either accept it or use it as a strategic plan. This further worsens the problem of tanking in North America.