A this point, little may be gained by continuing to warn about the inherent and obvious dangers in making gambling a close and legal partner with America’s sports obsession, other than to persuade states not to join the list of those that allow sports betting. Now that the Supreme Court has given its approval and the NBA has signed a deal with MGM, the focus must shift.
Widespread legal sports gambling is about to become a reality in the United States. That means integrity and anti-fraud enforcement should take center stage.
It also may require action by Congress. Independent and aggressive federal oversight, as well as strict rules about transparency, may be the only way to assure all parties are honest.
Proponents of legalized sports gambling, including NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, have argued that it would be easier to control, monitor and regulate than the unofficial, unregulated and offshore online gambling that is growing in popularity.
But regulating and monitoring this bold new venture will be largely up to the sports leagues themselves, manned by humans who are, and always have been, vulnerable to temptations.
As virtually every aspect of the game, from injury reports to new coaching strategies, potentially becomes the subject of a wager, information and insider knowledge will become increasingly valuable. That means all such information must be made public immediately.
The NBA’s deal with MGM, announced Tuesday, allows the gambling operation exclusive access to information about players. In return, MGM will share “anonymized real-time data” with the league. The idea is to provide more realistic betting lines and to quickly detect any suspicious statistical deviations, such as the kind exhibited several years ago by a referee who was found to have made calls specifically to affect point spreads.
But sharing information between the league and a gambling organization isn’t enough. Unless the information is made public, it will be impossible to know whether odds are legitimate.
Only a fool would discount the many ways in which games, or the elements of games, might be compromised for illicit profits with big money on the line. History is filled with such examples, and even those who believe legalized betting will reduce the chances of games being fixed acknowledge that scandals are likely to happen from time to time.
Servers may be hacked. Insiders may provide information for cash. As Sports Illustrated noted, this has happened before, such as when the names of four baseball players who tested positive for illegal substances were leaked in 2003, despite assurances of anonymity.
We hesitate to advocate for any expansion of the vast federal bureaucracy, but as more leagues enter into agreements and as gambling takes a bigger role in American sports, that may be necessary.
For traditional sports fans, the most troubling part of this may be how the relationship between the public and sports is about to change. An in-depth series on the subject two years ago by ESPN examined what happened when Australia entered this path in the early 2000s.
Talk of gambling worked its way into sportscasts. Bookies became guests in the broadcast booth.
“All of a sudden, it was like you couldn’t talk about sports without making reference to what the odds were, what the prices were, whether they thought this bet was value or this bet was value,” EPSN quoted Christopher Hunt, a clinical psychologist at the University of Sydney Gambling Treatment Clinic, as saying.
Back in 1992, when Congress outlawed sports gambling, then-Sen. Bill Bradley, a former NBA player, said, “Athletes are not roulette chips, but sports gambling treats them as such.”
We regret that, less than 100 years after gamblers fixed the World Series, pro sports has begun to embrace organized betting, thus changing the nature of the entertainment they provide. Strict oversight and enforcement is the next logical step.