Our Sports Are in Trouble With Legalized Sports Betting
Thomas Boswell of the Washington Post writes: "Right now, everyone — from teams and leagues to state governments to the Supreme Court (which decided in May each state can decide if it wants to legalize gambling on pro and college sports) — wants you to run right out and place a bet on the Dodgers, Caps, Blue Devils or Pats."
WHY GET 35% OF ALL SPORTSBOOK PROFITS WHEN YOU CAN GET UP TO 90%?
Boswell promotes himself as a Major League Baseball (MLB) "stat nerd", before "analytics" had a name.
Boswells suggests that his experience makes him the perfect candidate to become a sports tout or handicapper....
"I'd just have to be sleazy enough to do it," he says.
Boswell warns that the tout service sector, long an ugly reality in the world of sports wagering for decades, will rear it's ugly head.
For every Tony George and Docs Sports there are ten so-called "scamdicappers".
Boswell explains the issue at hand following a U.S. Supreme Court decision to rule in favor of sports betting in every state, with the condition they amend their own laws.
Soon, if they have their way, you will be bombarded by analysis, tips and odds from insiders and experts on every screen of every device you own — 80-inch television to smart phone. Teams and leagues will provide data, and an omnipresent in-stadium interface for gambling — for a price. An industry of advisors will materialize to “help” you.
All of them will tell you that gambling on pro sports is a skill, a talent you can acquire or perhaps a gift that is uniquely yours. They just want to help you.
They all will be lying.
Very few are as qualified as I am to help you bet on baseball.
Boswell adds:
The analogy of sports gambling to the stock market is especially deceitful. Betting on a team, giving six points, is not at all like investing your 401(k) money into a broad index fund that is virtually certain to grow over decades. It’s like day-trading or creating highly-leveraged derivative contracts. That is “speculating” or gambling — almost the antithesis of investing. Didn’t the Great Recession — Wall Street’s gambling crash with worldwide damage — teach us the difference?
If you want to damage a sport, sour the public toward its games while also maximizing the amount of money lost, and the number of addicts createdthen legalize sports betting.
- Gilbert Horowitz, Gambling911.com
