Fees may be used to lure teams

Now that the federal ban on sports gambling has been lifted by the Supreme Court, the same billionaires who introduced publicly financed stadiums and exorbitant PSLs are expected to line up at the trough for a piece of the money pie sports betting is expected to rake in.

Sports leagues, which have opposed legal sports betting because of perceived threats to the integrity of their games, are now touting a so-called “integrity tax” for states that legalize sports betting. It is essentially a payment for the rights to bet on a specific sport.

While gambling insiders are opposed to the fees (they do not exist in Nevada, where sports betting has been legal), it is not outside the realm of possibility that states use them as a way to lure professional franchises.

For example, if the state of Oregon wants to lure a Major League Baseball team, lawmakers there could easily sweeten the deal to make Portland a more attractive option than another city. Or perhaps Seattle, which has long coveted an NHL team, lobbies state lawmakers to jack up the fees attached to betting on hockey games to make that state a more attractive option than, say, Kansas City.

“It’s really not far-fetched at all,” Marc Edelman, a sports gaming attorney and law professor, told the Daily News.

In attempting to legalize sports betting in New Jersey, there was always fear that leagues like the NFL and NHL could pull their teams out of the state in an act of revenge by those anti-gaming leagues. Now, with legalization, the roles are reversed, and instead of threatening to pull a team, a league could theoretically also leverage the placement of teams to places with more favorable integrity fees.

“The idea of a state turning around and saying, ‘Fine, we’ll give you money for a right that we know you don’t have but in return, we want you to do something for us that you don’t have to do, give us a professional team,’ is really quite plausible. That’s the problem with lobbying. Lobbying is about a state wanting something and reaching some type of agreement. As long as what’s being provided, the sports team is for the benefit of the state and not the private coffers of a lobbyist or someone representing the state, I don’t see anything illegal in that.”

Integrity fees are just another money grab for pro sports leagues that have gotten very good at grabbing money.

“One would think the concerns around integrity should be less now in a legal and regulated market than they have been all this time this illegal market has been going on,” Joe Asher, the CEO of the William Hill sports book, said. “This is just a cut of the action. That’s all this is.”

And perhaps a massive political bargaining chip, too.