Sports betting is here, leagues should stay away
They’ve been taking action for two weeks now in New Jersey, where basketball great Julius Erving helped kick things off with a $5 bet on the Philadelphia Eagles to repeat as Super Bowl champions.
Sports betting is here, and it’s not going anywhere soon. States are embracing their newly won right to offer wagers, and fans are responding by lining up at the betting windows to throw a few bucks on their favorite teams.
And, surprisingly enough to some, the major sports leagues have — so far at least — somehow managed to survive.
No one has tried to fix anything, as the NFL for years claimed would happen if sports betting was legalized. No one has cried foul over some shenanigans going on in a game.
And, best of all, no greedy sports league has managed to dip its fingers into the pie.
That may change if New York eventually passes a sports betting bill that didn’t make the cut with legislators this year. Proposed legislation there calls for a 0.2 percent cut of betting revenue for the sports leagues, which claim they need it to pay for extra expenses associated with legal sports betting.
It’s a bad idea, nothing more than a money grab by leagues that for years decried sports betting as immoral and a threat to their games — until they figured out there might be some money to be made on it.
But if the anecdotal evidence of two weeks of legal betting in
a few states is any indication, there’s a ton of money to be made.
A report released Wednesday by Gambling-Compliance, a Washingtonbased research firm, predicted sports betting will be legal in 25 to 37 states within five years. Billions of dollars will be wagered, with gross gaming win expected to top $5 billion by 2023 alone.
That translates into total wagering of some $100 billion a year alone, a staggering figure 20 times what was bet legally in Nevada last year.
Bookies will get their cut, and so will the states taxing the winnings. The report predicts New Jersey and Pennsylvania will surpass Nevada in sports betting revenue within five years, with just over $300 million in win each, and New York will likely end up being the biggest sports betting market in the nation once legislation is passed there to legalize it — especially if it includes online betting.
“Online sports betting in New York is single biggest opportunity we see emerging in next few years,” said James Kilsby, managing director of Gambling-Compliance.
So far, at least, it appears the sports betting market will be robust. Bettors in New Jersey have already embraced the limited rollout there, and five other states are on track to offer betting by the upcoming NFL season.