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Losing Big: America's Reckless Bet on Sports Gambling

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Jonathan D. Cohen

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“After the 2018 Supreme Court decision, sports betting launched in thirty-eight states in less than six years. In much of the country, this rapid pace was facilitated by the gambling industry, which not only lobbied for legalization but helped write the bills and the regulations governing its own behavior.”

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“In most states, sports betting was the first form of legal internet gambling. But lawmakers did little to prepare the populace. Gambling can be harmless, provided the right safeguards and treatment options are in place. They are not. Most lawmakers are either oblivious to the harms from sports betting or have chosen to turn a blind eye.”

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“The sports leagues and their gambling partners ... conspired with state governments to place what he calls a “landmine” in front of young people. Many of these young people will be able to avoid gambling or avoid incurring any harm from gambling. Many will not. Most do not realize how addictive it can be, how much attention, time, and money it can suck away. So they download the app onto their phone, eager to add some excitement to the games they love, not realizing this can be the start of a dangerous journey.”

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“[New Jersey Democratic senator Bill Bradley] feared the spread of problem gambling, that legalized gambling would supplement rather than supplant illegal gambling, and most of all, the threat of the corruption of sports and of America’s youth. “When young people see the State involved in gambling on sports, can there be any doubt that they will think that that’s what sport is all about?”

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“Garnett and the sportsbooks justified the design of their bill by emphasizing the need to compete with the illegal sports betting market. By their telling, Colorado was a state overrun with bookies and offshore gambling websites, and the only defense against these nefarious forces was legal, regulated gambling. DraftKings’ Stanton Dodge estimated that sports betting was already taking place “on a massive scale,” and that 1.2 million Coloradans (one out of every five people) bet a total of $2.5 billion per year illegally, an enormous, un-fact-checkable figure of unknown origin. Proponents implied that so much gambling was happening anyway that HB1327 would not so much expand sports betting as siphon existing illegal players into a taxed marketplace. The black-market bogeyman both got legislators on board and rationalized the industry-friendly aspects of the bill.”

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“Garnett chose water as the beneficiary for sports betting as a matter of both good policy and good politics. Water turned gambling skeptics—and maybe even opponents—into believers. Western Colorado state senator Dylan Roberts (at the time a member of the state house) said the water tie-in made it a “no-brainer” for him to support the bill, “not because I love sports betting or anything.”

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“The ad campaign focused on the Water Plan, not sports betting. As Perry put it, “No one really understands the nuance of why water is important, but they know it’s important.” In one commercial, Terry Fankhauser, longtime executive vice president of the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association, proclaimed, “DD is a win for Colorado’s water.” While the campaign did not hide that DD benefited sports betting, neither did it place gambling front and center. The campaign turned the ballot measure into a simple equation: A vote for DD was a vote for water. A vote against was a vote against water, and by extension, against the future of Colorado. Of course while the ads never quite claimed sports betting would be a panacea for water, neither did they make clear just what percentage of the Water Plan would be funded by gambling.”

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“The election still proved extremely close. At one point on election night, “Yes” led by just eighty votes. Sports bettors across the country stayed up to watch the results. Garnett was awake with them, tweeting at 10:30 p.m. “Just hang tight and enjoy the #sweat,” the term used by gamblers to describe anxiously watching the outcome of a bet. Ultimately, DD would prevail with 51.4 percent. “Yes” votes outnumbered “no” in just seventeen of Colorado’s sixty-four counties, but the campaign was able to run up the score in Denver and its surrounding suburbs. Despite the bipartisan nature of the original bill, the vote fell largely along the state’s established rural/urban, Republican/Democratic divide. In all but nine cases, a county’s vote for DD predicted which way it would swing in the following year’s presidential election, with pro-DD counties going for Joe Biden and anti-DD counties for Donald Trump. According to Brian Jackson, polling conducted after the vote by the Environmental Defense Fund revealed that, without the water tie-in, the proposition very likely would have failed.”

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Book:Losing Big: America's Reckless Bet on Sports Gambling
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