Betting on it
Arecent piece by sports new website The Athletic led with vitriol received by Purdue basketball player Carson Barrett after a recent game. His crime? Making a basket that threw off some sports bettors’ wagers. As the NCAA basketball tournaments head to their heated conclusions today and tomorrow, the scourge of the betting frenzy will only get more pointed.
Gambling is fun for many and profitable for the state, but it is also destructive for some, the addicts, for whom it is not play, but a disease.
And it’s not only about sports, with a push for more online betting. If wagering on colleges and pros, why not on mobile blackjack or a simulated roulette table?
Yet, despite voices calling to open the door to all kinds of gambling statewide, this was not authorized by the voters.
That may be confusing to those who might vaguely remember a 2013 amendment to the New York State Constitution approving such gambling, but the language only did so under an incredibly strained legal reasoning. That amendment allowed “casino gambling at no more than seven facilities.” But Albany pols concluded that because the servers executing the betting contracts were physically at the casino, the voters had authorized a New Yorker to gamble idly from a subway platform.
If you are streaming a lecture that is being beamed to you from a college campus, would you say you’re at the campus? If you’re on a Zoom call with a friend hosting the call on his laptop, would you say you’re at his apartment? Of course not, yet this reasoning is apparently grounds to unleash an addictive multi-billion-dollar industry on the public.
The industry will come right back and say that it is generating hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenues for the state, and that much is undeniable; neighboring states like New Jersey have their own sports betting industries, and the practice is to some extent unavoidable.
But there are plenty of things we could do if we only wanted to raise revenues and not think about the consequences. Why not lower the drinking age to 18, or lower? We’re missing out on plenty of tax dollars from sales to eager college kids. Why not end limitations over marketing on tobacco products? Or free up gun sales? All these things could generate significant economic activity.
The reason we don’t do any of that is because we’ve determined, after due consideration, that they would be overall detriments to the public welfare and end up costing us much more in the long run, in social but also economic opportunity costs from people who’ll be left far worse off from the compulsive pull of these activities.
But casino gambling is fully legal in this state, as it should be. It’s constitutionally approved and we supported that 2013 amendment. People who want to make wagers on sports or table games can make their way to one of the authorized casinos (with perhaps up to three new ones coming to NYC) and engage in regulated betting.
However those casinos all obey the state Constitution and don’t ignore it. Economic growth and job creation from the gaming industry is crucial, but so is following the most important legal document in the state.