Tanking in sports refers to the practice of intentionally fielding non-competitive teams to take advantage of league rules that benefit losing teams. Tanking teams are usually seeking top picks in the next draft, since league rules generally give the highest draft picks to the teams with the worst records in the previous season. Teams that decide to start tanking often do so by trading away star players in order to reduce payroll and bring in younger prospects. While the terms tanking and rebuilding are sometimes used interchangeably, there are differences between the two concepts. In rebuilding, losses may result from trading veterans for assets such as young talent, salary cap space, and draft picks. In tanking, losses are deliberately pursued as the primary strategy for draft positioning.
Tanking is a much more common practice in American sports that utilize closed leagues than open sports leagues in other nations, which typically penalize poor performers using a promotion and relegation system, in which the worst teams after each season are sent to a lower-tiered league and replaced with that league's best teams. Relegation costs teams revenue and makes it more difficult for them to attract top talent, making tanking unfeasible.
Tanking is differentiated from actions taken to achieve a pre-determined result in a specific contest, usually for the purposes of sports betting, thus violating the rules of the game, along with laws, which is more specifically deemed as match fixing.
Examples One of the first teams to tank was the 1983–84 Houston Rockets, who considered the season lost after starting 20–26 and decided to give more playing time to their lesser talented players in an effort to finish with the worst record in the Western Conference, which would ensure that they would advance to a coin toss with whoever finished with the worst record in the Eastern Conference for the first overall pick in the 1984 draft; the Rockets went 9–27 the rest of the way and finished with a 29–53 record to take the worst record in the Western Conference. The Rockets won the coin toss and used their top pick to draft Hakeem Olajuwon of the University of Houston. Olajuwon would go on to become one of the greatest basketball centers of all time, eventually winning two NBA championships as a member of the Rockets, and the Rockets' tactics played a significant role in the NBA’s decision to adopt a lottery system to determine the first overall pick starting in 1985.
In the 1983–84 NHL season, the Pittsburgh Penguins and New Jersey Devils admitted they wanted to lose in order to get the number one pick in the draft and select Mario Lemieux. The Penguins finished with the worst record and drafted Lemieux; however, the NHL did not immediately institute a draft lottery as the NBA had and continued to have the team with the worst record pick first until 1995.
Tanking did not become prevalent until the 2010s, when teams in all four major American leagues (MLB, NFL, NBA, and NHL) were engaged in various forms of the practice.
The Chicago Cubs and Houston Astros pioneered the practice in MLB in the 2010s, with the Astros finishing with the worst record in baseball by 6 games or more for 3 consecutive years. Both teams used their subsequent draft picks to select star players who led them to championships, as the Cubs won the 2016 World Series and the Astros won in and . Other teams like the Miami Marlins, Baltimore Orioles, Kansas City Royals, and Detroit Tigers have sought to emulate the strategy by trading away their best players, with the twin goals of drafting and developing younger stars and cutting costs in order to become competitive again several years later. However, tanking is much less effective in baseball because top MLB draft picks are far less likely to succeed than their counterparts in the NBA or NFL.
In 2014, the Australian Football League's Melbourne Football Club were fined $500,000 for their involvement in a 2009 tanking scandal.
One of the most notable examples of tanking in the modern era of professional sports is "The Process", a plan by Sam Hinkie, the GM of the NBA's Philadelphia 76ers, to rebuild the team by intentionally tanking in order to gain draft position. In the three seasons from 2013 to 2016, Philadelphia recorded a total of 47 wins, never surpassing 20 in any year. This included an NBA record 28 game losing streak between the end of the 2014–15 and 15–16 seasons. This poor on-court performance led to a three-year struggle within the organization, which culminated in Hinkie leaving the organization in April 2016. However, as the team lost, they collected valuable assets in the form of draft picks. In the five drafts from 2014 to 2018, the 76ers drafted six times in the top 10 and selected cornerstones Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons in two of those drafts. From 2017 to 2023, Philadelphia won more than 40 games in every season and reached the playoffs each year. However, the team has struggled in the playoffs and has not advanced past the Conference Semifinals since the tanking ended.
When Jon Gruden retook control of the Oakland Raiders prior to the 2018 NFL season he liquidated most of the Raiders' talent, most notably trading five-time Pro Bowler Khalil Mack to the Chicago Bears for two first round draft picks (one of which was used to select Josh Jacobs), leading to accusations that he was intentionally tanking the team in hopes of fielding a competitive team when the Raiders moved to Las Vegas in 2020. The Raiders, who had finished 12–4 and qualified for the playoffs two seasons prior, finished the 2018 season with only four wins, but saw significant improvement in 2019 thanks to strong play from the team's rookies.
The Miami Dolphins were accused of tanking during the 2019 NFL season when new head coach Brian Flores oversaw a similar liquidation of the team's established talent. In September, tackle Laremy Tunsil and safety Minkah Fitzpatrick were sent to contending football teams in exchange for future draft picks; both would subsequently be named to the Pro Bowl. After starting the season 0–7, however, the 2019 Dolphins won 5 of their last 9 games. The victories denied Miami the first overall pick of the 2020 NFL draft, although the team was able to select Alabama quarterback Tua Tagovailoa, who they were rumored to have been deliberately losing games for. The next season, the 2020 Dolphins went 10–6 and missed the playoffs by one game, while the trade of Tunsil allowed them to obtain the third overall pick of the 2021 NFL draft, due to the Texans' bad record. Flores later alleged in a 2022 lawsuit that Dolphins owner Stephen M. Ross offered to pay him $100,000 for each game he lost.
Philadelphia Eagles head coach Doug Pederson faced allegations of deliberately losing the final game of the 2020 NFL season after he replaced starting quarterback Jalen Hurts with backup Nate Sudfeld. When Sudfeld relieved Hurts early in the fourth quarter, the Eagles were facing only a three-point deficit against the Washington Football Team, but Sudfeld committed two consecutive turnovers that helped Washington win 20–14. As a result, the 4–11–1 Eagles moved up from ninth overall to sixth overall in the 2021 NFL draft, while Washington clinched the NFC East, which would have been clinched by the New York Giants if Philadelphia won. Pederson denied the allegations, stating he intended to give Sudfeld the opportunity to play, although he was fired a week after the game.
The Oakland Athletics were accused of tanking when they traded away most of their talented players like Matt Olson, Matt Chapman, Chris Bassitt, and Sean Manaea prior to the 2022 MLB season. This came after a new collective bargaining agreement was agreed to in order to end the lockout that introduced the draft lottery to discourage tanking for top draft picks. However, this was financially motivated by team owner John J. Fisher as the Athletics fielded a team with the second-lowest opening day payroll in the majors at $48 million, down from their payroll from last season at $83 million. Despite finishing the season last in attendance and the second-worst record in the majors at 60-102, the team turned in a profit of $62.2 million in 2022 due to the increased revenue sharing combined with the low payroll, which is fifth among all teams. In addition, this tanking campaign was believed to be designed in order to discourage fan attendance in Oakland for Fisher to use as justification to MLB for moving the team to Las Vegas. This method of tanking is illegal in the NFL, NBA, and NHL since those leagues have a salary floor that require teams to spend a minimum amount on player contracts to prevent owners from profiting by cutting payroll, but the MLB does not have a salary floor and critics argue that the league needs it to truly end tanking.
The Dallas Mavericks were accused of tanking during the final few games of the 2023 NBA season. The Mavericks entered the season with high aspirations, but following a slide by the team to 11th place in the Western Conference and out of the NBA play-in tournament, in their penultimate game of the season against the Chicago Bulls, the Mavericks rested star players Luka Dončić and Kyrie Irving along with many starters. The Mavericks lost the game, knocking them out of playoff contention. The Mavericks owed their draft pick to the New York Knicks, but it was top-10 protected – the loss made them more likely to keep it in the 2023 NBA draft. Head coach Jason Kidd admitted after the game that the decision to rest players was made by team owner Mark Cuban and general manager Nico Harrison. After the season, they were fined $750,000 for their actions.
Encouragement by fans As the NFL does not have a draft lottery, coverage of some NFL drafts has been dominated by the presence of a highly touted player who is widely expected to be among the first picked, portraying them as a "sweepstakes" prize for the league's worst team. The 2009 NFL draft was nicknamed "The Matthew Stafford Sweepstakes" as Georgia quarterback Matthew Stafford was widely expected to be the first player drafted regardless of which team held the first overall pick. Stafford was indeed drafted first overall, by the Detroit Lions, who had gone winless during the previous season. This has led to public campaigns where fans of poor performing teams actively encourage losing in order to improve the team's draft position when such a player is expected to be in the next draft.
The first widely known example of such a campaign was "Suck for Luck" during the 2011 NFL season, in which fans of mediocre teams encouraged losing in hopes of drafting Stanford quarterback Andrew Luck, who was considered one of the NFL's best quarterback prospects. The campaign was widely criticized by sports writers, who noted that it is not in the nature of professional athletes to intentionally lose games and that poor performance should bring punishment, not encouragement. The campaign was denounced by Hall of Fame quarterback Dan Marino when fans of his former team, the Miami Dolphins, began participating in it and Luck himself, who called it "stupid". Nonetheless, a similar "Tank for Tua" campaign emerged in the 2019 NFL season, with fans of poor performing teams encouraging losing in hopes of drafting Alabama quarterback Tua Tagovailoa. However, when Tagovailoa suffered a season ending hip injury that put his chances of declaring for the 2020 NFL draft in question, the campaign turned to LSU quarterback Joe Burrow and Ohio State defensive end Chase Young, respectively becoming "Bungle for Burrow" and "Choke for Chase".