SCOTUS scuttles any pretense of sports betting ‘integrity’
If you’re of a certain, quaint age you might find yourself occasionally missing those little slips of paper that your Uncle Bob passed down from his buddy the bookie every week during football season. The ones that maybe the rich kid in your Catholic grade school class always had a stack in his bag from which to dish out.
One football pool for $2, three for $5. Fill them out, then discuss with your friends. Just don’t let the nuns catch you, even though these things were as illegal as Tuesday night’s bingo cards were legal.
Barely counts.
Sports betting has come a long way since then, obviously with the internet helping to fuel its growth.
Now with a Supreme Court ruling announced Monday, it’s going ... on both to grow grow...
“We’ve opened up a real circus here,” Arnie Wexler, former executive director of the Council for Compulsive Gambling, told USA Today. “You’re going to have so many people addicted to gambling in the next couple of years, it’s going to be crazy. We’re going to have a volcano of gambling addiction in America.”
For years, sports betting in this country has been quite the political football, because for the most part gambling was still illegal, no matter how many casinos came and went and how many bingo cards went from cardboard to electronic.
But all bets are about to be off with the governing of sports betting now with Monday’s Supreme Court decision in the case of Christie (now Murphy) vs. the NCAA, which essentially overturns the 1992 Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act, which had essentially made such gambling illegal everywhere except Nevada, Montana, and grow and Oregon and little ol’ Delaware, the four states that had met a 1991 deadline to offer state-run betting.
Getting a whiff of its cross-river First State’s success, New Jersey pushed a challenge during Chris Christie’s administration that finally brought forth the ruling Monday. It’s been estimated that there might be as much as $60 billion in U.S. revenue moving through offshore sports betting sites annually. With the Supreme Court decision, any and every state will be able to implement a sports betting process and it’s been estimated that if all states got on board as much as $15 billion could be raised in state revenue via taxes and fees and other such niceties.
The NCAA, the annual torch-bearer for sports betting with its Division I men’s basketball tournament, is understandably sensitive to this matter, since their brand was all over the losing court case. In the name of integrity, which is what the NCAA has always been all about (nudge-nudge), college sports’ governing body has always had a public distaste for gambling.
Except when Barack Obama did his bracket, because that was cool.
Anyway, with this ruling, even the college presidents are off the hook.
“Today the United States Supreme Court a clear decision that PASPA is unconstitutional, reversing the lower courts that held otherwise,” Donald Remy, issued the NCAA’s chief legal officer, said via a statement Monday. “While we are still reviewing the decision to understand the overall implications to college sports, we will adjust sports wagering and championship policies to align with the direction from the court.”
Professional sports leagues reacted in largely the same fashion.
No. 1 when it comes to sports betting on the pro level, of course, would be the NFL. Everyone knows it’s always had a chummy relationship with gambling and its professional practitioners, no matter what the league’s public stance on sports betting might have been.
Consider this Supreme Court call to be an unlocking of any and every annoying legal shackle for Roger Goodell and the boys. The league has been planning for this decision for a long time, even though at the March owners’ meetings Goodell professed he didn’t know what the Supreme Court was going to decide. But, he made sure to add then, “we have to make sure we are operating in an environment where we can protect (the) integrity of the game.”
Certainly as a gate is raised on untold millions of dollars of additional revenue through gambling websites rights fees, fantasy sports league “integrity taxes” and the like, the NFL’s band of owners aren’t likely to worry about a government-sanctioned moneymaking operation’s impact on the sanctity of their sport.
After all, the fans will be 100 percent behind this. Those folks love to waste their money. Perfectly legal and dignified to do so, now.
“The NFL’s long-standing and unwavering commitment to protecting the integrity of our game remains absolute,” the league said through a statement released Monday. “Congress has long recognized the potential harms posed by sports betting to the integrity of sporting contests and the public confidence in these events.
“Given that history, we intend to call on Congress again, this time to enact a core regulatory framework for legalized sports betting. We also will work closely with our clubs to ensure that any state efforts that move forward in the meantime protect our fans and the integrity of our game.” Sure. Meanwhile, the pro sports leagues can all look into developing their own brands for wagering portals. The revenue-producing possibilities are endless for not only the NFL and NBA, but even the ever-so-slow-to-catchon Major League Baseball, and ... dare we say it ... the NHL? While commissioner Gary Bettman’s office issued a statement Monday that essentially said nothing, the NHL Players Association was quick to react to the news, making sure everyone knows the players want their piece of the pie, too.
“The Supreme Court’s decision today may well pave the way for increased, widespread, gambling on sports throughout the United States,” the NHLPA said in a statement. “While this has the potential to have a positive impact upon sports, fans, and players, it is very important that players’ rights are protected in any new legislative schemes, including rights of privacy and publicity. We look forward, along with the other Players’ Associations, to being a vital part of that discussion.”
Right. As if anybody here was worried about the players. They’re only the horses in this latest sports sweepstakes money grab. legalized