According to media reports, NBA athletes and coaches have allegedly engaged in illegal gambling on their sport. That’s extremely hard for me to believe. The next thing you’re gonna tell me is that the mafia is involved with said illegal gambling! Apparently, wise guys don’t need to sell narcotics; rigging poker is less hazardous and more profitable. Games of chance these days have more intrigue than Game of Thrones!
I’m not much of a gambler. It’s not that I’m morally offended by it; it’s that I work too hard and am too fearful to put my money at such obvious risk. I do much safer things, like gamble, or play in the stock market.
Sarcasm aside, gambling is a serious problem in our country. That is precisely why it is such a bad idea for our professional sports organizations, including the NCAA, to actively encourage wagering. Unfortunately, our judiciary aided and, um, abetted this state of affairs. In 2016, the Supreme Court struck down a law that prohibited states from sanctioning sports betting. Today, 39 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico all allow it.
We’re talking big business here. According to the serendipitously named Victor Matheson, professor of Economics at College of the Holy Cross, legal wagers on sports grew to $160 billion last year in America, which is substantially more than the $100 billion or so that we splurged on lottery tickets. Also, according to the American Gaming Association, total gambling profits (i.e., the amount wagered less the amount paid out on winning bets) was $13.7 billion. That’s a 23% increase from 2023.
But wait, there’s more!
Gaming companies’ sponsorship deals have inexorably become a substantial source of revenue for the sports industry. Every major league – and most of their respective teams – have inked such deals. A few have even placed betting shops in their arenas or stadiums. Of course, in the Internet Age, most of the wagering takes place in cyberspace rather than in physical ones.
Then there is the awkward situation that happened last week with a 24-hour sports network. Last week, while ESPN commentators opined about the betting scandal, an ad for ESPN Bet, their gambling site, was onscreen in real time. It was hastily removed during the commentary, presumably after some network executive nearly choked on the irony.
The sad fact is that gambling comes at a steep price both for individuals and for our society in general. For example, studies show that sports betting is more addictive than other forms of gambling, and the effects of gaming can be devastating.
According to the American Psychiatric Association, “Gambling disorder has been shown to carry the highest suicide risk out of any other substance use or addictive disorder. Studies show that roughly one in two gamblers will think about suicide and one in five gamblers will attempt suicide.”
In addition to negative health outcomes, sports gambling can have severe economic repercussions. A study from earlier this year titled “The Financial Consequences of Legalized Sports Gambling” found the following:
“Access to legal sports betting is associated with a modest decrease in consumer financial health and, in particular, causes an increase in signs of excessive debt, such as consolidation loans, debt sent to collections agencies, auto loan delinquencies, and bankruptcies.”
Further, it’s clear that the Internet has changed the game in the sense that it has made gambling problems easier to conceal. At casinos and racetracks, it’s often easy to spot people who lingered a bit too long. Who placed one bet too many. Who looked like they had lost everything – because they probably had. Fortunately, a healthy sense of shame kept many people from going too far in public.
By contrast, today’s addicts can simply sit at home, clicking away their lives and livelihood in anonymity. Thus, there is no shame in their game.
It is nearly impossible to imagine that there will be any meaningful way to eradicate illegal sports betting in the future. Too much money is at stake. Sports leagues will simply have to police illegal activity as best they can. Will they be able to do so effectively?
If I were a betting man…
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