1. None of your business.
2. None of my business.
Gambling Is Ruining Sports
The Free Press | April 4, 2024 | Joe NoceraFor decades, Las Vegas was the only place in the country where sports betting was legal. And once upon a time, the men who ran the major sports leagues were terrified of betting. The great fear was that it would corrupt the players, who would be tempted to fix games.
Turns out, those fears were valid. In the last year, there’s been a spate of gambling-related controversies. The NBA is investigating Toronto’s Jontay Porter for taking himself out of two games to boost gamblers betting against his performance. Major League Baseball’s best player, Shohei Ohtani, is under a cloud after his Japanese translator used $4.5 million of Ohtani’s money to pay off gambling debts. (For the moment, at least, the translator is believed to have stolen the money from Ohtani, and he says he never bet on baseball.) And in 2023, the NFL suspended five players for betting on games in their own league.
Perhaps these controversies were inevitable. Because these days, professional sports have a lot to do with Vegas.
The dam broke in 2017, when the National Hockey League put a franchise in Las Vegas, and when the Oakland Raiders relocated to the city—where they play in a stadium where gambling takes place. The following year, a Supreme Court decision opened the doors to sports betting across the country; 38 states have since legalized it. Since then, online sports betting behemoths FanDuel and DraftKing have plastered their logos on the floors of basketball arenas and become major advertisers for televised pro sports events. And this year’s Super Bowl actually took place in the Raiders stadium—yes, the one where gambling takes place.
Did the Founding Fathers concern themselves with what a person did with his own money?
Of course I recognize there’s a problem when players, owners, managers, and the mob get involved.
I don’t think I’ve thought this through, which is why I’m going to you guys.
Cross-Eyed Johnny, from his office in the back of El Skeezo’s Liquor Emporium, is absolutely dead set an opponent of legalized sports gambling.
It really cuts into his bottom line.
It is a bit hard to fathom that professionals athletic the amount of cash they get nowadays are really susceptible to bribery, but might still be influenced by threats, and legal gambling is probably less likely than black market betting to go to that extreme.
My take: The home team, giving the points.
Take the under – there are fewer and fewer overachievers these days…
Players like the thrill. Betting increases that. It’s the play that matters.
Not much different from Wall Street.
Gambling is a cancerous disease which despoils everything it touches.
There needs to be a Gambling Vaccine with yearly booster shots. I blame Biden.
I’d wager my savings that there is an effective medical remedy to gambling.
They have it up in Canada.
Well, when I’m watching hockey and there’s a play review that is clearly not correct, I realize that it’s not the situation room in Toronto making the call, but the Board of Directors at Draft Kings. Other than that, I guess it’s okay.