Sports betting bill a bad bet
Few Floridians find themselves far from a lottery terminal, a racetrack, a jai alai fronton, a card room or a casino crammed with electronic slot machines, of which there are now an estimated 25,000 in the state.
As if that weren’t enough, now comes a scheme that would make sports betting kiosks as commonplace as Florida’s lottery terminals and allow instantaneous wagering on smartphones. The legislation would permit online bets not only on the game’s outcome, but also on individual statistics such as whether a quarterback’s next call will be for a run or a pass. Only high school and youth sports would be exempt.
Eleven states have legalized sports betting since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a federal law against it, but Florida shouldn’t heed the siren call that “everyone’s doing it.”
Our state needs legalized sports betting about as much as we need higher tides and stronger hurricanes.
Plus, Senate Bill 968 openly defies what nearly 5.7 million voters intended when they approved Amendment 3, an anti-casino initiative, in November 2018. That was a 71% blowout.
The amendment bars the Legislature from authorizing new casino gambling anywhere. Any proposed expansion now requires the approval of 60% of voters statewide. The amendment exempts tribal governments, which operate seven Florida casinos under federal law.
Senate President Bill Galvano, R-Bradenton, is an avid proponent of gambling and the money it would add to the state treasury. He called on voters last year to reject Amendment 3, saying it would be “game over for the Legislature” and that sports betting would “most likely require a referendum.”
What Galvano said then doesn’t square with what’s happening now.
SB 968 bears the signature of Sen. Jeff Brandes, R-St. Petersburg, a close ally of Galvano, who gave it a favorable committee path. It has no House sponsor yet. For the moment, it may be only a test run. Even that is too far.
What’s to be tested if Galvano thought it would be “game over” under Amendment 3?
One likely purpose would be to start a legal debate over whether Amendment 3 applies to sports betting and put the Legislature’s lawyers on the wrong side of it.
John Sowinski, president of No Casinos Florida, which originated the amendment, insists that it forecloses sports betting. He relies on a 13-page legal opinion written for No Casinos by Paul Hawkes, a former judge of the First District Court of Appeal.
Amendment 3 defines casino gambling as “any of the types of games typically found in casinos and that are within the definition of Class II gaming in the Federal Indian Gaming Regulatory Act.” According to Hawkes, the federal law applies to sports wagering, which was typically found in Nevada casinos, if only there, before the Supreme Court allowed it to metastasize.
Hawkes’ opinion acknowledged that the gambling industry’s lawyers might quibble over the grammar in Amendment 3 — specifically, over what the word “and” means. But he concluded that anti-casino forces would win the argument.
Regardless, Brandes’ bill is a bad bet for Florida. By vastly increasing the opportunities to gamble, especially instantaneously, it would aggravate an existing problem with compulsive gamblers, which the Legislature made worse by raiding funds earmarked to help them.
The bill would turn the Department of the Lottery into a gambling commission, charged not only with overseeing online wagering by commercial actors but also with operating its own gambling kiosks in a manner similar to its lottery outlets. The Lottery Department has no experience with that kind of gambling and isn’t suited for it.
Brandes contends that legalized sports betting would cut into the illegal market and produce new revenue for schools and scholarships.
That’s the same rationale that was used to pass the initiative establishing the Lottery. The Legislature didn’t sponsor that, but did promise to spend the proceeds on education. What they didn’t say was that general revenue dollars spent on education would be shifted elsewhere.
Plus, it’s morally wrong for tax-phobic politicians to resort to a vice that already does so much to bankrupt its victims and destroy their families. Such “easy money” is sleazy money.
It’s a particularly bad bet when the subject is sports. A University of Massachusetts study in 2015 reported triple the rate of problem gambling among people who were betting on sports, however illegally, than among those who bet on the lottery, parimutuels and other means. (Massachusetts is considering whether to legalize sports betting, but an earlier version of this editorial erred in saying that it had approved it.)
SB 968 bars sports betting by persons younger than 21, but it would be a fool’s errand to try to enforce that.
In Great Britain, where gambling is legal at age 18, a government survey issued in November 2018 found that half of 16-year-olds had gambling apps on their smartphones. Of all children 11 to 16, 14% had spent money on gambling during the previous week. That was a higher rate of harmful activity than for smoking, alcohol or drugs.
Once before, the Florida Legislature turned to instant gambling to help pay for schools and regretted it. Having legalized slots everywhere in 1937 over the objections of Representative (and future Governor) LeRoy Collins, it outlawed them two years later.
Another future governor, Reubin Askew, was a 9-year-old in Pensacola then. What he saw it do to people made him a lifelong, passionate foe of gambling and motivated his successful opposition to Florida’s first casino initiative in 1978.
The dam has been breached in many places since then. But enough is enough.