Watch Out For The Color Of Money

Painted all over the place and on the road leading to Las Vegas, Nevada, for the December 6, 2008 “Dream Match” between boxing greats Oscar dela Hoya and Manny Pacquiao will be the color of money. Watch out for it.

The first sign we saw how this fight promises to be a hit for business-minded folks came when 13,000 or so live tickets for the MGM Grand disappeared in two hours after it went on sale. In fact one can say that no tickets actually went out on sale: both co-promoters of the fight Top Rand and Golden Boy had already appropriated for each of them 5,000 tickets. The remaining 3,000 went to MGM’s box office.

Ticket hoarding like this does not happen everyday. It only happens when businessmen think they are in possession of an item whose price will zoom up in the foreseeable future. Real estate firms buy landholdings today (called land banking) in anticipation of an increase in their values in the future. Stock brokers also do lots of speculative investing.

Shaping up to be another frenetic front for money lovers is betting. We speculate that millions of dollars will go this route as fight night draws closer. And for one to make money in the betting game, he or she should not only place the right bet; the odds are equally important. For instance if the odds are even, a hundred dollars wager for Manny Pacquiao will win that same amount (less a few dollars for service fees) if Manny goes on to win the fight. But if the odds are against Manny—say a 100 wins 200—any bet amount will double if Manny wins the fight. There are variations to the betting game, such as betting on what round or in what manner (like KO or decision) a fighter one is betting on will win.

The whole point is the odds can either increase or reduce your winnings. This can be of little consequence for small bets, but they can be substantial when the amount of bets gets bigger. The current online betting odds at SBG Global put Manny at +180 and Oscar at -230. Thus if you bet 1,000 dollars on Manny and he wins, you will get 800 dollars more. If you bet 100,000 dollars, you get 80,000 dollars more.

Can the odds be manipulated? Certainly. Betting odds, like prices of commercial commodities, react to market forces (supply and demand). A greater amount of dollars chasing after a dela Hoya wager than on Pacquiao will push the odds up in Oscar’s favor, as it is the case now. So what do I do if I believe Oscar will win and I have a million bucks to bet on him? You guessed it right: I will tell the world that “no, contrary to what the boxing experts are thinking aloud, the dream match is not a mismatch after all.” I could even trick Freddie Roach to tell media that Manny will knock Oscar out in 9 rounds. The more credible your propaganda is, the better.

This is done with the end of view of enticing people to bet for Manny. Because when tons upon tons of money begin to pour for Manny at the betting portals in amounts that equal those that are intended for Oscar, the odds will eventually level off. That way, my 230 dollars will win 230 dollars, not a hundred. A million-dollar bet will win a million dollar, not 400,000 dollars or even less. One can be rich because he did his selling right.

So what’s this we hear that the Mexicans are rooting for Manny? That there is now an outpouring of support—and one that is fast shaping up to be a bandwagon—for Manny? If you ask me, could be one shade of a color of money.