SPORTS LEAGUES HIT THE JACKPOT,
High court’s ruling blamed
ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. — For sports leagues and gambling industries, the imminent expansion of legalized sports betting promises a bonanza. For the experts and organizations already concerned about pervasive problem gambling, it promises a whole new roster of worries.
Much of the apprehension relates to the prospect of myriad forms of online sports betting — accessible to gamblers at any time and location via their mobile phones. There’s particular alarm over the anticipated explosion of so-called “in-game wager- ing” in which gamblers bet, often at a rapid pace, on play-by-play developments — for example, will the next football play be a run or a pass.
“You lose track of time,” said Les Bernal, national director of Stop Predatory Gambling. “The goal of the operators is to get you into a zone where you lose your financial reasoning and think of nothing except betting.”
Prior to the U.S. Supreme
Court ruling this week, only four states were allowed to offer sports betting and only Nevada offered betting on single games. Now that the court has lifted those bans, there are expectations that most states will offer sports betting within a few years in a play to raise tax revenue.
“We think this is the biggest expansion of gambling in our nation’s history, in one fell swoop,” said Keith Whyte, executive director of the National Council on Problem Gambling. “Absolutely, categorically, there will be more risk factors for addiction — we’ve never had that much high-speed, high-stakes interactive access to any sort of betting.”
The council wants any company, sports league or government that benefits from sports betting to devote at least 1 percent of the revenue to fund programs preventing and treating compulsive gambling. It also wants betting operators to train staff about problem gambling, set and enforce a minimum age limit, and enable gamblers to set limits on how much time and money they spend betting.
Nationwide, the generally accepted figure for gambling addiction is 2 to 3 percent of the U.S. population, according to Neva Pryor, who runs New Jersey’s Council on Compulsive Gambling. But in New Jersey, which until recently had the nation’s second-largest casino market, that figure is over 6 percent.
And that’s without legal sports betting just a click or call away.
“We’re going to be adding fuel to the fire of an already serious problem,” Pryor said.
Bernal worries about the impact of the changes on children
‘The goal of the operators is to get you into a zone where you lose your financial reasoning and think of nothing except betting.’ — LES BERNAL, director of Stop Predator Gambling
— whether or not they’re placing bets themselves.
He cites research from Australia, where sports betting is legal, showing that many children view sports and gambling as a unified institution, and consider it normal that gambling ads are shown on sports telecasts.
“This is going to be sanctioned and promoted by state governments who are supposed to be in the business of improving people’s lives,” Bernal said. “Instead they’re going to get an entire generation of young people hooked on gambling and in the process fleece them.”