Abstract
This thesis examines how the platform landscape of online sports betting influences both sports betting communities and the sports bettor themselves. I use a mixed-methods approach, combining a walkthrough of the sportsbook platform DraftKings with digital ethnographic work within the platformized communities and cultures of online sports betting. The thesis begins by tracking how the imagined idealized subject of neoliberal capitalism, homo economicus, has been transformed as a result of neoliberal capitalism giving way to platform capitalism. In this analysis, I focus on the role played by quantification in the process of subjectification, claiming that the 2008 financial crisis shattered the institutional foundations of the form of objective and quantified economic rationality the neoliberal subject relied on. As a result, I argue that this imagined subject is no longer the ideal subject of contemporary capitalism, but has been replaced by a datafied and fragmented subject that is modulated by the platforms they engage with. I then define one form this subjectivity takes as it flows through the platforms that make up the world of online sports betting, dubbing this overwhelmingly male subject homo degener. I explore how social media platforms like Twitter and sportsbook platforms like DraftKings use datafication and algorithmic governance to appeal to and isolate elements of neoliberal subjectivity, such as agency, responsibilization, and an attachment to the quantified, that are most profitable for them. I identify the collusion and network effects between these platforms as part of what I dub the multi-level market, with an asymmetrical access to information providing the breeding grounds for scammish behavior. Within the sportsbook platform, I argue that the primary strategy of the sportsbook is to push the parlay, and explore how both the sportsbook platform and the multi-level market at large work to impel homo degener to bet parlays and implicate him in pushing the parlay to others. I then examine the forms of sociality that emerge from this experience, finding that some social practices of sports bettors are more concerned with a desire for community than a desire to win while others maintain an attachment to the forms of rationality that defined the neoliberal subject. From this, I examine two distinct forms of betting expertise that I identify as primarily algorithmic, exploring how each form commodifies different aspects of the multi-platform environment that makes up the online sports betting sphere. I conclude with thoughts on other online communities where homo degener may emerge and the potential consequences of this development in light of the advent of prediction markets.
