Sports,
professional in particular, are likely the most popular form of entertainment
in the world today. Sure, everybody
likes movies, music, and television but people are incredibly passionate about
sports; they live and die by results of their favorite team’s games. Professional sports today are more popular
than they have ever been. That being
said, two questions dominate the wide world for sports: should athletes really make as much money as
they do, and are these sports safe. But
another question lingers in the background: should we be able to gamble on
these sports?
Gambling is not as socially stigmatized
as it once was. Lottery jackpots reach
such astronomical heights because people purchase lottery tickets. More and more states are legalizing casinos
(my home state, Ohio, did so in 2009, with the first opening in Cleveland last
summer). These casinos are primarily
home to slot machines, craps tables, roulette tables, and the various card
tables. The most popular of these card
games, poker, has seen its popularity skyrocket in the past decade, helped in
some regard by the 2006 James Bond film Casino
Royale.
All
these forms of gambling differ drastically from sports betting due to the
central characteristics of the two forms of gambling. Casino gambling, along with the lottery, is
based nearly entirely on luck. Sure,
there is strategy to poker, but strategy can only take a pair of twos so
far. Sports gambling, however, is
betting money on the physical actions of other living beings. Betting on blackjack is betting on whether or
not one will get the right cards.
Betting on baseball is betting on whether or not Justin Masterson is
going to have control over his fastball, on how tightly the umpire is going to
call the strike zone, and if Miguel Cabrera is going to break out of his slump
on that given day.
The primary controversy surrounding
sports betting is apparent from the previous paragraph. It is
betting on the actions and choices of other people. The Tim Donaghy scandal, in which
Donaghy, an NBA referee, gambled on games he was officiating, left a huge
pockmark on the reputation of the NBA.
Pete Rose, the all-time MLB hit leader, is banned for life from baseball
because he gambled on MLB games while he was the manager of the Cincinnati Reds
in the 1990s. FIFA is attempting to deal
with the fallout of a recent revelation that hundreds of soccer matches around
the world—including a few World Cup qualifiers—were fixed by a vast gambling
syndicate run by Dan Tan out of Singapore.
The fear is that if the United States legalizes gambling nationwide, or
state-by-state, these scandals will only increase. The reality, however, is that a large portion
of Americans are already betting on sports.
Almost every sports fan at some
point or another has gambled on sports, whether they know it or not. The past three weeks are the central example
of this trend: March Madness.
Obsessively filling out brackets and watching them crumble in the first
weekend of the NCAA Division One Men’s Basketball Championship is as much of an
American tradition as the Fourth of July.
I would hazard a guess that most of these brackets were entered into
some pool which paid monetary prizes to the winners. That is gambling.
The second and third week of August
sees a frenzy of football activity, relatively speaking. These weeks, the third and fourth weeks of
the NFL preseason, are when the majority of fantasy football drafts occur. Adweek, an advertising trade publication,
estimates that twenty-seven million Americans participated in fantasy football
leagues in 2011. These Americans (yes, I
am one of them) spend money on draft preparation and league entry fees in the
hope that their team will be the last one standing, winning them a predetermined
sum. This is gambling.
There
is one sport on which gambling is legal: horse racing. While horse racing is dying a slow death
overall, its marquee events remain as strong as ever and provide a good example
of the curious nature of sports gambling.
The Kentucky Derby, the Preakness Stakes, and the Belmont
Stakes—collectively known as the Triple Crown—turn all eyes in America to horse
racing in the months of May and June.
NBC Sports, which owns the television rights to the three races, does
not even try to hide the gambling associated with the races; it even shows each
horse’s odds on handy little info-graphics.
Betting on sports—which I, of
course, have never done—is very fun and adds plenty of excitement to sports
fandom. Who cares about a Bobcats-Spurs
game in the middle of February? I’ll
tell you who, the person who took the Bobcats +2000. Sure, it can become addicting but so can
drinking and smoking; everything in moderation.
Why should those who live in Nevada or who use off-shore websites get to
have all the fun? New Jersey governor
Chris Christie is pushing for his state to legalize sports gambling. If it does, there is speculation that other
states will follow suit. I bet you they
do.
No comments:
Post a Comment