The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 15 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 1 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Wertheim: Sports betting will be ubiquitous, mobile, and live in-game
“I mean, I think that pretty soon we're going to be at a place where sports gambling, in different iterations, is going to be legal everywhere, that we're not just betting on point spreads and Whether the Patriots are going to beat the Jets, but we're going to …”
Wertheim: Tennis is one of the most underleveraged assets in sports
“To me, it's one of the great, if we're going to stay in business terms, this is one of the great under leveraged assets. I mean, this sport to me has so much going for it.”
Wertheim: Tennis lags behind other sports in data analytics adoption
“Tennis does not do very well on the analytics front, and I don't know if that is just It hasn't thought creatively. I don't know if it's the fact that it's not like you can rig up an NBA arena and you're good for 40 days, right? I mean, this is a circuit, so i…”
Wertheim: Raw tennis metrics like serve percentage are often misleading without context
“If you serve 90% of your first serves, Well, that's an extraordinarily high number. Ted must have been having a tremendous serving day. Or was Ted playing too conservatively and hitting the ball into the middle of the box and not taking chances, and that 90% i…”
Wertheim: Sports and Investing Resist Acknowledging the Role of Luck
“Luck in some ways is, is really anathema to sports, right? We work hard and we game plan and we strategize and we compete and we sweat. We don't want to think that this is just in the hands of fate or coin flip. I mean, in some ways, luck is very much at odds …”
Sports executives often prioritize job preservation over maximizing team wins
“And so a lot of times in sports, you end up with decisions being made that actually don't maximize your chances of winning. But what they maximize is your chance of keeping a job.”
Loss aversion and omission bias drive suboptimal decisions in sports
“I think loss aversion and omission bias are two things that in investing and also in sports have us making some really suboptimal choices, but like shooting overhand free throws, at least we're on the right side of convention.”
Wertheim: Most sports bettors will lose; only quantitative models will win
“People that place bets based on emotion are going to get burned. I think we're going to have a lot of conspiracy theories. I think there are going to be very few winners, and I think like Investing in general. I think there are going to be winners that are goi…”
Wertheim: Athletes respect direct confrontation more than fawning media questions
“These athletes are I think at some level respect being confronted and having a real conversation and the athlete media relationship is very strange. It was when I started. It's probably more so today, but if you can just have a normal conversation, I think tha…”
Wertheim: Media companies now embrace journalist moonlighting across platforms
“When I started, if you wanted to do an NPR interview, you would have to jump through hoops and get signed approval from a manager's manager. And now I think there's much more of an acknowledgement and a reasonable policy that as long as something isn't directl…”
Wertheim: Very few pro tennis players come from country clubs
“It is known as this country club sport, but really, at least at the professional level, very few players come up that way”
Wertheim: Fierce rivals can compete intensely without becoming enemies
“Very early on, they recognized that rivalry ultimately benefits both of them, and Nadal may deprive me of a few titles, and Federer may deprive Deprive me of a few titles, but ultimately I'm better off for having this guy in my life. And they've shown that you…”
Wertheim: Studies show team wins increase fans' task confidence
“There are a number of studies that people have more confidence in their ability to do tasks when their team wins versus when they lose.”