Unfortunately, the people who run and broadcast sports are so beholden to gambling money that they don't or won't) see it. The people who should love sports the most are feeding the cancer that may kill it.
An overstatement? Nope.
Gambling and sports have a long history. Presumably, the first athletic contests (Races? Fights? Spear-throwing contests?) involved wagers. From the time people began competing, others bet on who would win.
Illegal gambling cast a shadow over American major sports since the start. The "Black Sox" scandal – the biggest sports gambling scandal in American sports history, when Chicago Whites Sox players took money to lose the World Series – took place in 1919: 106 years ago. Then came the college basketball "fixing" scandals that nearly destroyed the sport. Myriad fixed boxing matches. Pete Rose's expulsion from baseball for betting on the sport. Much, much more.
All along, those running the sports wanted to protect their games.
The specter of gambling – particularly shaving points (winning, but ensuring your team wins by less than the gambling spread) – meant that the penalties for involvement in gambling were so draconian that no rational person would consider it (Pete Rose was not rational).
Then . . . our nation embraced gambling. Decision-makers – with the blessing of NBA commissioner Adam Silver, at least – acknowledged that gambling makes sports more popular, so they largely legalized it. The blend of technology and gambling led to myriad phone apps, where gamblers can bet not only on game results, but on whether players will score more or less than a certain number of points or gain more or less than a certain number of yards. Those apps let people make real-time bets on whether a baseball pitch will be a ball or a strike or if the next football play will be a run or pass.
Bad news, right? Gambling – an addiction that so often ruins lives and jeopardizes the integrity of the games – became easy and convenient.
Even worse, those gambling apps (DraftKings, FanDuel, BetMGM and more) realized where their audience was: Watching games. So they began to advertise during games. Then they struck deals with leagues to be the official sponsor. They paid so much that TV broadcasts now show odds on the ticker and announcers talk about what parlay bets they'd make. Former athletes star in commercials about how easy it is to bet.
Gambling apps poured millions (billions?) into sponsoring podcasts and news organizations. Legit sports reporting outlets added betting partners and began running articles that include odds.
Now the piper is being paid. The avalanche of gambling scandals has begun.
One NBA player has been banned for sharing information (that he would fake an injury) with gamblers. At least two others and a coach are under federal investigation for the same.
Two pitchers on the Cleveland Indians face lifetime bans and decades in prison for allegedly tipping off gamblers that they would throw pitches that would not be strikes, so the gamblers could profit on specific bets.
It's chaotic and getting worse. Professional athletes now routinely get death threats because someone lost $200 on a parlay bet that required them to score 20 points or get two hits in a game. Friends of athletes sniff around for information to help them win $2,000.
The leaders of the sports and the media members covering those sports? They wring their hands. They say it's good that gambling is regulated, so they could discover these problems (ignoring that virtually all of the recent gambling scandals have involved "prop bets," which illegal bookies rarely allow). They say people would gamble anyway.
Nonsense. Granted, it's a lot of money. A lot of money.
But it's money that will ultimately kill sports because fans will question whether results are legitimate.
Sports leagues and media outlets are feeding the beast. They're killing their own sport. They're spending their time announcing gambling scandals while protecting the gambling apps that create them.
This is like deciding people will always take drugs, so we allow apps that provide an immediate free hit of whatever drug they use, all while advertising how great the drug app is and having influential people talking about how high you can get off the new methamphetamines.
Professional sports seem healthy, but they're not. The killer and the victim are the same organizations and the only way to fix it is the same thing that gambling addicts need to do. Stop. Now. Pay the price but get away from gambling.
It won't happen. There's too much money involved for everyone to see that they're killing the thing they love.
I hope I'm wrong.
Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.
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