Wagering on the future
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Gamblers want regulation because it ensures that they get paid. It keeps the sport clean, which means that guys fixing matches aren't stealing your money. It enables people to talk about it at the watercooler without repercussions. People would rather do something that's legal than something that isn't. But it has to be regulated in a way that gambling here becomes more attractive than gambling overseas. There are ways that we can set up gambling markets that lend themselves less well to corruption, like limiting betting to which team will win instead of which team will beat the spread. That reduces the incentive for corruption. As we've seen sports betting get bigger, we've seen more scandals-soccer match fixing, cricket has been mired in scandals and, of course, we've heard about it in the NCAA. The most obvious place to be concerned about ongoing corruption would be the NCAA. ?A few thousand dollars may be sufficient to corrupt a 19-year-old.
Another thing to think about is what we do to protect the people who could become compulsive gamblers. Most people bet small amounts and enjoy it, but most of the revenue that the bookies or state governments would earn would come from a small number of people who are basically destroying their lives. My hope, and I'm not optimistic about this, is that if we do have a legal sector, we regulate it in a way that will provide protection for those people-whether it's support, counseling, regulation about how sportsbooks can advertise, gambling limits. It's clear that the NBA is going to be involved and casinos are going to be involved, and they're both going to lobby for what's best for them. But there's no lobby group out there trying to protect the families whose lives would be devastated by Mom or Dad becoming a compulsive gambler.
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