Sports betting has never been more visible in our society than it is today.
And if DFS is allowed because it is a game of skill, then sports betting should be as well. Sports betting is not the same as pulling the arm on a slot machine or buying a lottery scratch card. When you bet on sports, there are things that you can do to improve your chances of winning.
Major sports media outlets like ESPN and CBS have sections on their websites dedicated to coverage of gambling and handicapping. Al Michaels seems to allude to the point spread or over/under in almost any game he broadcasts, and recently-retired announcer Brent Musburger now heads up a sports betting information network based out of Vegas. And the Supreme Court is currently in the middle of hearing a case from the state of New Jersey, which could lead to sports betting becoming legal across the United States soon.
Reasons Why Gambling Should Not Be Legalized In Texas
Here’s the thing: It should have been legal a long time ago. With all forms of online gambling continuing to explode in popularity, it makes no sense that sports betting in particular is singled out as if it is an especially immoral activity.
Here are 7 reasons why it’s silly that sports betting isn’t legal.
1. Everybody Does it Already
And I’m not even talking about March Madness brackets, NFL survivor pools, fantasy leagues, and Super Bowl squares, all of which are forms of sports betting as well.
According to a UMass Lowell-Washington post poll that was released in September 2017, approximately 20% of sports fans have placed a bet on a game. Meanwhile, the American Gaming Association claims that approximately $4.2 billion was wagered on Super Bowl XLIX between the Seahawks and Patriots, and that 97% of those wagers were placed illegally.
Listen, I understand the argument that just because everybody does something doesn’t mean it should be legal. If that were the case, we could all pirate movies and software to our heart’s content, or drive as fast as we want down the highway.
While downloading creative works without paying for them is stealing, and driving 100 miles per hour on the freeway puts everyone in danger, sports betting doesn’t hurt anybody (as long as it’s done responsibly and recreationally, at least). If governments are concerned about protecting gamblers from themselves, why do they allow casinos (where the house has an insurmountable mathematical edge on games like craps, roulette, blackjack, and slots) while prohibiting sports betting (where a player’s skill at least gives them a chance to win)?
If everyone’s already doing it and everyone wants to continue doing it, governments might as well legalize it and make it a safer past-time for everybody involved.
2. It’s Already Legal in Certain States
New Jersey’s ongoing attempt to have the Supreme Court repeal PASPA (the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act) highlights the absurdity that sports betting is legal in Nevada, Delaware, Montana and Oregon, but prohibited everywhere else in the country.
Ironically, PASPA was first sponsored twenty-five years ago by a New Jersey senator (Bill Bradley), who was looking to stop the spread of sports betting across the country. The four states that currently offer sports betting (in some form or another, though Nevada is the only state that permits single-game sports wagering) were grandfathered into the act because of their past laws allowing it.
A lot of things have changed since PASPA was passed. Almost all states currently have lotteries, gambling in general is a lot more accepted in our culture, and the internet has enabled all of us to gamble without borders, making the Wire Act of 1961 (prohibiting gambling across state lines) obsolete as well.
The biggest issue with PASPA, however, is that it appears to be unconstitutional. According to lawyer Daniel Wallach, at least five Supreme Court justices have indicated they agree that PASPA, “Violates the 10th Amendment’s anti-commandeering principle, which forbids the federal government from commanding the states to implement federal laws or policies that would interfere with state sovereignty.”
Boiled down, it’s not fair that some states can offer legalized sports betting while others can’t.
3. Sports Betting is a Game of Skill, Similar to DFS
Earlier this decade, when daily fantasy sports were first introduced into the mainstream, organizers had managed to find a loophole in anti-gambling laws. Since DFS was termed to be a “game of skill,” it wasn’t subjected to the same restrictions that sports betting faced under the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act.
I can agree that DFS is a game of skill (in which the knowledge and expertise of a player gives them a better chance of winning, similar to poker), but that doesn’t mean it’s not gambling. And if DFS is allowed because it is a game of skill, then sports betting should be as well.
Sports betting is not the same as pulling the arm on a slot machine or buying a lottery scratch card. When you bet on sports, there are things that you can do to improve your chances of winning. Breaking down each team’s statistics and looking at recent performance to assess their probability of winning the next game is a skill. So is understanding odds, and so is knowing how to read the sports betting market in order to get the best possible number on your wager.
There’s still a lot of luck that goes into winning or losing a sports bet, but you can say the same thing about DFS, where an injury to a key player or a flukey interception can win or lose you your contest. If DFS is permitted in most states because it is a game of skill, sports betting should be treated no differently.
4. Betting is a Big Reason People Watch Sports
Sports are the toy department of life. They’re a vice, a diversion, a way for us to escape our jobs, our stresses, and our problems for a few hours. Otherwise, investing all of this time and emotion into supporting guys we don’t know scoring more points than other guys that we don’t know doesn’t really make that much sense.
Betting on games actually makes more people watch more sports. According to the American Gaming Association, people who bet on NFL games watch 19 more games per season than people who don’t bet. And not only is watching sports a healthy past-time in my opinion, it also boosts the ratings of the TV providers, which boosts advertising revenue, which boosts the economy.
Okay, so maybe I’m getting a little bit carried away here on this point. But if we’re going to invest time and emotion into watching sports, why not get everything out of it that we can? If our favorite teams or players aren’t playing tonight, let us have some other reason to watch the games. If point spreads and over/unders didn’t exist, I can’t see many people staying tuned in for a Patriots/Browns blowout in the fourth quarter.
5. Game Fixing Isn’t Going to Happen
The biggest reason that professional and college leagues oppose sports betting (publicly, at least, which is a point I’ll get into next) is the concern about game fixing.
Seriously? Maybe in 1970, when the average salary of a baseball player was around $30,000 per year. But now that even the most marginal of professional athletes is making close to 7 figures, I don’t see many taking a phone call from Fat Tony and agreeing to throw a game.
College is a different scenario in that respect, since the athletes don’t get paid (though I’d still sign up for a full ride scholarship), but that’s all the more reason to legalize sports betting. Having regulation in place brings sports betting out of the shadows and into the sunlight, providing a transparency that would make it easier for authorities to identify and investigate suspicious betting patterns.
You don’t hear much about match fixing in the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Australia, jurisdictions where sports betting is legalized, regulated, and monitored closely. Meanwhile, over the past fifteen years in the United States, we’ve seen Toledo university football players admit to point shaving, and former NBA referee Tim Donaghy plead guilty to allegations that he manipulated the point spread outcomes of games through his calls.
6. Leagues Want Legalized Sports Betting
The National Football League can pretend all it wants that it’s against gambling. We all know what the injury report is for, and why the NFL monitors teams’ adherence to it so closely. Let’s just say it’s not so that Tom Brady’s aunt knows if her nephew has a boo-boo.
I do believe there was a time when other sports leagues were genuine in their anti-sports betting stance, but that time is now over. Leading the charge is the NBA, with former commissioner David Stern and current commissioner Adam Silver both recently going on record with their pro-betting regulation views.
“Let’s go all the way and have betting on sports. It’s okay. It’s going to be properly regulated… that gives a way for states to make more money, for leagues to be compensated for their intellectual property and for the federal government to take (away) illegally bet money and put it through the federal coffers,” Stern said in a public statement in 2015.
Silver went one step further by writing a column for the New York Times, concluding it by saying, “I believe that sports betting should be brought out of the underground and into the sunlight where it can be appropriately monitored and regulated.”
The NHL granted an expansion team in 2017-18 to Las Vegas, where it has held its annual end-of-season awards show for years. The NFL’s Oakland Raiders will be moving to Vegas as early as 2019. Major League Baseball maintains that they’re anti-gambling, yet have partnered with DFS sites in the past.
Let’s drop the charade. Sports leagues know it’s in their best interest to have regulated and legalized betting on their games. Their only hesitation is that they haven’t yet figured out the best way to capitalize financially on it themselves.
Reasons Why Gambling Should Not Be Legalized In The United States
7. Regulation Would Generate Lots of Tax Dollars
Nevada was one of the states hit hardest by the subprime mortgage crisis in 2008, when many people suddenly found their home worth significantly less than the amount they still owed on their mortgage. But residents of the state might have been much worse off had the Nevada government not been benefiting from sports betting-related income for decades.
Reasons Why Gambling Should Not Be Legalized In The World
Even though Nevada charges its casinos just 6.75% tax on gross gaming win (the total profit after paying customers’ winnings), gambling continues to line the pockets of the Silver State. According to a Nevada Resort Association estimate, gaming revenue collected by the tourism and hospitality industries accounted for about 46% of the state’s general fund in 2010.
Other states have already turned to lotteries and casinos as a way to raise money for education, public safety, transportation, and other needs of their residents. But by keeping sports betting illegal, they’re missing out on a massive cash cow.
Why Gambling Should Be Legal
According to Forbes contributor Darren Heitner, the legalization of sports betting across the United States could generate more than $6 billion annually in tax revenues by the year 2023. The states would need to sell an awful lot of scratch tickets to come up with that sort of revenue.