Opinion: Should Gamblers and Gambling Be Connected to American Sports Teams at All? Your Thoughts?

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Do you remember, Peter Rose?

He was a great baseball player for the Cincinnati Reds with over 4000 hits in his career. Still waiting to get into the Hall of Fame.

Paul Hornung, a halfback for the Green Bay Packers, league MVP in 1961, and future Hall of Famer was suspended for one year in 1963 by then NFL commissioner, Pete Rozelle.

The reason: Gambling.

In more recent times, the NFL has suspended 10 players in the last two years – also for gambling.

Since 2018 when the Supreme Court struck down the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act of 1992 (PASPA), thus allowing states to legalize sports betting, approximately $250 billion has been wagered by Americans on all forms of sporting events.

Sports is big business but sporting betting is becoming much bigger.

At the same time, 55% to 63% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. How does this math work out? Who is doing the betting?

The allure to win at all costs is growing steadily as Billionaires become sports team owners and the stakes increase exponentially.

In 2019 an article hit the pages of The Athletic claiming that the 2017 Houston Astro, World Series Champs, were involved in a sign-stealing scandal. This led to suspensions and firings as a result.

There was no gambling involved but there was cheating and that’s what league commissioners are always worried about when any athlete is placing bets on games within their league or elsewhere. The perception of cheating ends up impacting the integrity of a sport.

As it stands whenever some NBA player goes to the free throw line 20 times in a game, fans are already calling favoritism by the referees which is only a short distance from thinking it might be something worse. Even when it isn’t.

It doesn’t take much for fans to be disillusioned that their teams are not getting a fair shake.

Factoid: in 1985 Herb Kohl (former US Senator) purchased the Milwaukee Bucks for about $18 million. Today that team is valued by Forbes, at $3.2 billion.

Sports has always been big business, now almost all teams in the NBA, NFL, and MLB are valued near a billion dollars and most much higher.

The Dallas Cowboys are currently valued at $9 billion – the highest.

There’s a lot at stake for the league and teams. Most of the money for these valuations comes from ever-increasing contracts with media companies broadcasting hundreds of games every year. These contracts are also worth tens of billions.

If fans or viewers believe something is wrong, they might stop watching. If they stop watching the ratings go down. If the ratings go down, the Ad revenue will follow and team values will drop.

Thus, no gambling and no activities that threaten the image or integrity of any sports team.

So, it’s curious that Dallas Mavericks owner, Mark Cuban, sold a controlling interest in his NBA team to, of all entities, the Las Vegas Sands Corp. A corporation owned by the Adelson and Dumont families. The sale was approved this past Wednesday by the NBA.

The Las Vegas Sands Corp owns casinos and hotels in Las Vegas, Macao, Singapore, and elsewhere. Macao, located in Mainland China is the largest gambling hub in the world. The casinos there generated about $36 billion in gambling revenue in 2019

So, are gambling and casinos in the plans mentioned by both Cuban and Las Vegas Sands Corp, yes. Though gambling is still illegal in Texas, efforts (lobbying paid for by Adelson) have been underway over the past few years to loosen the objections and eventually bring full-tilt gambling to the Lone Star State.

Now a player in the NBA or NFL betting on teams, their own or others is not the same as a gambling-related corporation having a controlling interest over a team.

But how different is it?

Back in 2017, the NFL Commissioner stated that no team owner could have an ownership stake in a casino.

In 2018 the NFL claimed it had no objections to Carolina Panthers owner, David Tepper having ownership in casino stocks while also owning an NFL team.

In 2020 the Las Vegas Raiders got approval for a new stadium, partly funded by the Raiders through loans and sale of seat licenses and naming rights and $750 in public funding approved by the state. The Oakland Athletics appear to be following the same basic formula.

Keep in mind that the State of Nevada has no state income tax due largely in part to the revenue generated from legal gambling throughout the state.

No one wants to watch a sport or any competition where there is even a possibility that someone is influencing the outcome. So, it’s understandable why the NBA, NFL, MLB, NHL, and other leagues are rather ruthless in stamping out even the perception of wrongdoing by their players.

But when teams are owned by gambling-related enterprises or take up residence in cities dominated by gambling is it only a matter of time before influence becomes a possibility?

Currently, 37 states are allowing online gambling on all major sports.

“According to the American Gaming Association (AGA), the NFL collects an extra $2.3 billion per year in revenues due to the advent of widespread, legal sports gambling.”

When a large corporation controls the natural resources, manufacturing, distribution lines, and retail locations for the sale of a specific product, essentially becoming a monopoly or close to it, we often see this type of control resulting in higher prices and at times diminishing service.

Factoid: Members of the 1919 Chicago White Sox baseball team, about 8 of them, were banned for life because it was found that they threw the World Series, having been paid off and influenced by a gambling syndicate.

A hundred later, gambling is still an issue, with players being suspended today.

It seems a fair question to ask that with sports betting gaining traction, with sports teams profiting from legal gambling, and sports teams being open to purchase by a group involved in gambling what will be done to keep ownership from influencing how teams recruit, train, or play in the future?