"Call my views extreme, but I think gambling has almost exclusively negative effects on society. Legalized sports betting isn’t any better, as it correlates with a rise in bankruptcies and a decrease in credit scores."
Those shouldn't be extreme and they aren't even views: that gambling is corrosive of society and tantamount to a tax on poor people who participate are facts. You don't even need to accept that gambling is actually addictive to arrive at the conclusion that it's baneful.
I'm with everyone who wishes that gambling would go away. But realize that if you do that, the activity of gambling doesn't go away- much of that money will just go to illegal organized crime.
I think any half-aware NBA fan knows that there was always gambling in the NBA behind the scenes, but we were always made to believe that the card games on the plane didn't affect the product on the court. These recent scandals threaten the integrity of the game. If Silver doesn't come down hard on those who participated, then he risks being replaced when the next scandals inevitably happen.
Is it hypocritical for the league to come down on players who gamble while accepting all that Hard Rock and FanDuel money? Sorta. But that's the reality of the business.
Someone below says if gambling is made illegal it would just continue into organized crime. Jeez my man......LEGAL gambling is run by organized crime. henry Abbot has a piece out today a about the various and multiple connections, starting with the Adelsons. and then the Fertittas and the Ho family in macau. This was inevitable. And yes, it has all has ties to organized crime. The league obviously let the adelsons make the deal for Luka to LA...which the league wanted....and they get the #1 pick . What will the NBA do? nothing. This was going to happen on this scale and now it has. Even just issues like tanking --- is killing the league. And yet Adam Silver (close ties to Apollo Global.....CLOSE ties) so he works with the billionaires. This is not new. The league COULD fix it, but it wont. And eventually the NBA will be a side show like wrestling.
I’m with the calls to curtail legalized gambling. I come for it from a slightly different angle in that I have kids under 18, and many of their friends have access to sports gambling apps/accounts and are actively wagering on sports regularly. That’s a recipe for disaster and I hope my kids aren’t doing it, but as they get older there’s not much you can do to stop them. And having the leagues profiting / legitimizing this behavior makes it really tough to argue against. With regard to this issue specifically, as long as there’s no long-term financial consequence to the owners, broadcasters, etc this whole incident, and any additional instances, will be managed via PR and selective enforcement. There’s going to be no response other than hand-wringing and theatrical oratory. We’re talking about money, after all.
IDK, your panel all seems a little histrionic. It doesn't look like any games were substantively effected, so why should I care as a fan? Some gambling houses lost a bit of money (which they instantly detected as irregular), but that's no skin off my nose.
If you hadn't priced into your expectations some players telling people who told other people that someone is going to sit before it becomes public knowledge, you were being very naive.
- Linking being an ultra competitive alpha to having propensity for addiction is, frankly, absurd. If you were on a plane and in hotels, what, 40% of the time you’re working, cards/dominoes/chess are normal pastimes. (How do we know bets are placed each time they’re played?)
- I feel like sports leagues’ embrace of the gambling industry - while concerning for its potential negative impact on fans, especially young ones - is too convenient a target in the case of insiders cheating. Whether the leagues took gaming money or not, it’s simply the legalization and exponential growth of prop betting that expands opportunity for “bad actors” to act badly.
- An important piece of all this is the administration’s admitted effort to use these indictments to overturn elections in regions with large Black populations by painting them as rigged. It was no accident, the timing of the arrests on the league’s opening week. We don’t know how strong the fed’s case is against Billups (the most famous of the bunch; although I’d argue Jones’s connection to LeBron factors heavily in the opportunism). But that isn’t the value of this legal operation. It serves a terrifying purpose for an anti-democratic executive branch. I BEG sports media to avoid taking this bait, avoid being used for authoritarian purposes.
"Call my views extreme, but I think gambling has almost exclusively negative effects on society. Legalized sports betting isn’t any better, as it correlates with a rise in bankruptcies and a decrease in credit scores."
Those shouldn't be extreme and they aren't even views: that gambling is corrosive of society and tantamount to a tax on poor people who participate are facts. You don't even need to accept that gambling is actually addictive to arrive at the conclusion that it's baneful.
I'm with everyone who wishes that gambling would go away. But realize that if you do that, the activity of gambling doesn't go away- much of that money will just go to illegal organized crime.
I think any half-aware NBA fan knows that there was always gambling in the NBA behind the scenes, but we were always made to believe that the card games on the plane didn't affect the product on the court. These recent scandals threaten the integrity of the game. If Silver doesn't come down hard on those who participated, then he risks being replaced when the next scandals inevitably happen.
Is it hypocritical for the league to come down on players who gamble while accepting all that Hard Rock and FanDuel money? Sorta. But that's the reality of the business.
Someone below says if gambling is made illegal it would just continue into organized crime. Jeez my man......LEGAL gambling is run by organized crime. henry Abbot has a piece out today a about the various and multiple connections, starting with the Adelsons. and then the Fertittas and the Ho family in macau. This was inevitable. And yes, it has all has ties to organized crime. The league obviously let the adelsons make the deal for Luka to LA...which the league wanted....and they get the #1 pick . What will the NBA do? nothing. This was going to happen on this scale and now it has. Even just issues like tanking --- is killing the league. And yet Adam Silver (close ties to Apollo Global.....CLOSE ties) so he works with the billionaires. This is not new. The league COULD fix it, but it wont. And eventually the NBA will be a side show like wrestling.
I’m with the calls to curtail legalized gambling. I come for it from a slightly different angle in that I have kids under 18, and many of their friends have access to sports gambling apps/accounts and are actively wagering on sports regularly. That’s a recipe for disaster and I hope my kids aren’t doing it, but as they get older there’s not much you can do to stop them. And having the leagues profiting / legitimizing this behavior makes it really tough to argue against. With regard to this issue specifically, as long as there’s no long-term financial consequence to the owners, broadcasters, etc this whole incident, and any additional instances, will be managed via PR and selective enforcement. There’s going to be no response other than hand-wringing and theatrical oratory. We’re talking about money, after all.
If the owners and the gambling industry didn’t join arms the betting would be left to illegal operators. There will be gambling one way or another.
IDK, your panel all seems a little histrionic. It doesn't look like any games were substantively effected, so why should I care as a fan? Some gambling houses lost a bit of money (which they instantly detected as irregular), but that's no skin off my nose.
If you hadn't priced into your expectations some players telling people who told other people that someone is going to sit before it becomes public knowledge, you were being very naive.
- Linking being an ultra competitive alpha to having propensity for addiction is, frankly, absurd. If you were on a plane and in hotels, what, 40% of the time you’re working, cards/dominoes/chess are normal pastimes. (How do we know bets are placed each time they’re played?)
- I feel like sports leagues’ embrace of the gambling industry - while concerning for its potential negative impact on fans, especially young ones - is too convenient a target in the case of insiders cheating. Whether the leagues took gaming money or not, it’s simply the legalization and exponential growth of prop betting that expands opportunity for “bad actors” to act badly.
- An important piece of all this is the administration’s admitted effort to use these indictments to overturn elections in regions with large Black populations by painting them as rigged. It was no accident, the timing of the arrests on the league’s opening week. We don’t know how strong the fed’s case is against Billups (the most famous of the bunch; although I’d argue Jones’s connection to LeBron factors heavily in the opportunism). But that isn’t the value of this legal operation. It serves a terrifying purpose for an anti-democratic executive branch. I BEG sports media to avoid taking this bait, avoid being used for authoritarian purposes.