A joint letter from the five major professional sports leagues in the United States to state officials is asking for new regulations to be put in place for bettors, and punishment if anyone is found to be harassing athletes, coaches, officials, or their respective family.<\/p>\n
All five of these leagues have partnerships with a gambling company, which is branded as the \u201cofficial betting partner of [league]\u201d in all five cases. They want to keep those partnerships going, but are asking for the following steps to be taken:<\/p>\n
The leagues want to have their cake and eat it too. They want to promote betting at every turn for their partners, have broadcasts which encourage fans to wager on the games as some sort of \u201cenhancing experience,\u201d but don\u2019t want any headaches on the back-end when some gamblers, who may have become addicted to gambling because of their endorsement, are upset.<\/p>\n
When we get down to brass tacks it\u2019s simple: Everyone was aware of the inherent risks of opening up sports betting nationwide. Other countries have served as the litmus test for the risks of sports betting. There are always going to be the casual, occasional bettors who are able to bet responsibly, but there are also going to be thousands upon thousands of people who fall hopelessly into the pit of gambling addiction, risking their livelihoods to keep funding their addiction, and these people are not going to be prone to rational thought when a single athlete\u2019s performance or one bad call costs them everything.<\/p>\n
Aside from being a strongly worded letter, there\u2019s nothing of consequence in this statement \u2014 and perhaps that\u2019s by design. These leagues could threaten to pull support and branding from gambling companies, they could ensure their stats weren\u2019t being scraped in real-time for live betting, they could refuse to take money from gambling companies \u2014 but we know that\u2019s not going to happen. It\u2019s all hollow.<\/p>\n
This isn\u2019t a problem of the leagues\u2019 making, but one of human nature. That doesn\u2019t absolve them from any responsibility. Abuse from angered bettors was always going to happen, and the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, and MLS all clutching their pearls as if they can\u2019t believe it took place is ludicrously disingenuous.<\/p>\n