During a recent appearance on the "One Night With Steiny" podcast, Brooklyn Nets forward Michael Porter Jr. offered a candid assessment of the negative impact that legalized gambling has had on the NBA specifically and sports in general: "The enjoyment of the game isn't for the game anymore. It's so that people can make money. In reality, way more people are losing money than making money."
Porter Jr. mentioned a specific problematic scenario: "Think about it, if you could get all your homies rich by telling them, 'Yo, bet $10,000 on my under this one game. I'm going to act like I've got an injury, and I'm going to sit out. I'm going to come out after three minutes.' And they all get a little bag because you did it one game. That is so not OK, but some people probably think like that. They come from nothing, and all their homies have nothing." This scenario is not only plausible; it has already happened: Porter Jr.'s brother Jontay was banned for life from the NBA for violating the league's gambling policies because he feigned an injury so that his co-conspirators could win an "under" bet based on his statistics for a specific game.
Porter Jr. suggested that sports betting should be restricted to in-person wagering in Las Vegas, and he concluded, "The whole sports gambling entity...it's bad and it's only going to get worse."
The issue it not merely that legalized sports betting opens up a Pandora's Box of cheating possibilities; the way that sports betting is being marketed is also problematic: the leagues, their betting provider partners, and the media outlets that cover sports are all relentlessly promoting not just sports betting but the riskiest, least favorable types of sports betting. It is challenging enough to correctly handicap the outcome of a game, but the prop bets and the parlay bets are structured in a way that favors the house significantly. Think about it this way: these betting providers did not become big, highly successful businesses by paying out a lot of winners on prop bets and parlay bets--and the reason for that is that the odds of the bettor winning such bets do not match up with the payouts provided, which means that in the long run even if a few bettors get lucky these bets are sucker bets that are lining the pockets of the betting providers.
It does not take a genius to figure out that widespread, legalized sports betting will lead to a host of problems, including but not limited to (1) an increase in the number of families ruined by compulsive gamblers betting way beyond their means, (2) an increase in the number of games that are fixed or that at least have some kind of point shaving/stat shaving, (3) an increase in hostility directed by losing bettors toward athletes whose play caused the bettors to lose, and (4) decreased confidence in the legitimacy of sports results because of the assumption that players and/or officials either bet on the games or were bought by people who bet on the games. You used to have to actively seek out opportunities to wager on sports; now, legalized sports betting is advertised and promoted throughout sports broadcasts, and is readily available on your mobile device.
For the above reasons and more, U.S. professional sports leagues consistently opposed the legalization of sports betting, but the leagues changed their tune when they realized how much money they could make by partnering with betting providers; the leagues went from actively lobbying against the legalization of sports betting to actively lobbying for sports betting to be legalized. NBA Commissioner Adam Silver went from opposing legalized sports betting to writing Op-Ed pieces supporting legalized sports betting--and he made that transformation not because he has the best interest of society or individual bettors on his mind but because he heard the cash register ringing.
In 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court paved the way for widespread legalization of sports betting by ruling that the federal ban on sports betting was unconstitutional; therefore each state can determine whether to ban sports betting within that state. Sports betting is now legal in 38 states.
Gambling should be made difficult for the average man. It should be something he budgets to do once or twice a year. Vegas was best when it was hardest to reach.
You see, it isn't the two or three percent, the house edge, that beats you. Otherwise, people would only lose two or three percent, and so what? It's the psychology. A guy goes to a casino. He wins $500, he's ecstatic. He goes home, buys his wife a present, springs for a night out. Fine. Now he goes back. This time he loses $500. O.K., altogether he's even. But does he quit $500 down the way he did $500 up? No. He takes another $500 out of the bank. And now he's pressing, so he blows that and borrows $500. Now he's out $1,500, and this is a guy who only makes 20 to 25 grand a year. He goes home, gets into his wife's checking account.
This is what happens when gambling is too accessible. Everybody gets hurt but the casino. The guy can't buy the new summer suit or the new shoes for his wife. He lets the tune-up go. The stores are hurt, the restaurant, the gas station. This is the kind of stuff you'll start to see soon at Atlantic City.
And if they legalized sports betting, the little guy would be just as dead. We'd find a way to beat you. Right now, if we—me, anybody—tried to bet more than $50,000 on any game, we'd have a hard time. And when you only got $50 riding, you can't pay enough to fix a game. Put a pencil to it. But with legalized gambling, there'd be so much money bet you could get down a million or more on one game. So now it's worth it to pay for a fix, isn't it? And that's easy. You don't need the quarterback. Just gimme the center. Gimme the referee. All I'd need is one offside at the right time. You don't even need to get a guy to throw it for you. Suppose we just pay a big star $50,000 to stay home with the flu? Nobody ever thought of that before, did they?
The leagues and the betting providers would push back by arguing that they closely monitor suspicious wagering activity and that if sports betting were illegal it would still take place but it would be unregulated--and it is in their interest to push back, because they are making tons of money: they are the "casino" now and, as Snyder noted, "Everybody gets hurt but the casino."
It may sound like a great idea to legalize vices and then regulate/tax them. We are running a nearly nationwide experiment of this concept not only with sports betting but also with marijuana (which could be the topic of a separate article). The problem is that the damage caused by vices ripples out, and impacts innocent people who did not partake in the vice but are now suffering the consequences, ranging from games being rigged to being injured or killed by a marijuana-impaired driver. It is true that too much regulation or regulation that is too strict can backfire; we learned that with Prohibition. It is also true that too little regulation can lead to negative consequences for society as a whole.
Legalized sports betting is just one aspect of a larger societal shift; we are reshaping society to value instant gratification, instant wealth, and instant fame. This is not healthy or sustainable collectively or individually. It may be 15-20 years before the impact of widespread legalization of sports betting is fully evident and better understood, but Snyder's concerns were correct, have already been validated to some extent, and will be validated to a much greater extent in the future.
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