Jack Todd: Hypocrisy of legal sports betting has real consequences
It was inevitable as death, taxes and impromptu tinfoil Cup parades in Toronto every time the Leafs win a playoff game.
Don't have an account? Create Account
The NFL last week banned three players for the season and two others for six games each — for gambling. A league with active relationships with sports betting companies (corporate bookies, in effect) has made it clear that gambling on sports is wrong — unless you’re rich, white and not paid to risk life and limb on Sunday afternoons.
Receiver Quintez Cephus and safety C.J. Moore of the Detroit Lions and defensive-end Shaka Toney of the Washington Commanders were suspended for the 2023 season for betting on NFL games, while Lions receivers Stanley Berryhill and Jameson Williams were suspended for six games each.
There will be others, in every sport. The thoughtless, headlong plunge into gambling has consumed every North American sports league since the U.S. Supreme Court opened the floodgates five years ago and Canada followed suit with Bill C-218 two years ago. It’s now the wild west, with governments, leagues, teams and betting companies falling all over each other in the race to scoop up millions or billions of dollars before some semblance of order is restored.
The hypocrisy is astounding. Somehow, it’s OK for athletes to shill for betting companies but not OK for them to gamble on sports. It’s a fine line, indistinguishable to patchily educated young men who have come up through junior hockey or American universities where the primary subjects are football and basketball.
The consequences ripple in all directions, from NHL playoff games (all but unwatchable in real time because of the inundation of gambling ads) to young athletes under threat because their actions caused gamblers to lose a bet.
With a quarter of U.S. adults betting an estimated total of $15.5 billion on the NCAA March Madness basketball tournament, the risks should have been obvious. ESPN writer David Purdum wrote of one player, TCU’s Damion Baugh, who was under threat after making a shot in a loss to Gonzaga.
Baugh’s late three-point shot with less than a second to play transformed Gonzaga’s margin of victory from six points to three. Gonzaga thus failed to cover the four-point spread and Baugh, who was guilty only of playing to the final whistle, found himself a social-media target of bettors who lost big. Baugh himself said on Twitter: “Nobody told y’all to bet.”
That isn’t strictly true. Everyone, it seems, is telling gamblers to bet, from former stars as prominent as Charles Barkley, Wayne Gretzky and Chris Pronger to analysts like Kevin Weekes, Davis Sanchez and Luke Willson to the egregious TSN personality who calls himself Cabbie.
It’s gotten so bad, the Alcohol and Gaming Commission in Ontario is proposing a ban that would prevent online gambling sites from featuring celebrities and athletes like Auston Matthews in their ads. (Chances the ban ever goes into effect? Call us skeptical.)
The all-consuming insanity was brought home following a play-in game in Toronto when the Raptors lost to the Chicago Bulls, in part because they missed 18 free throws. Diar DeRozan, the 9-year-old daughter of beloved former Raptor DeMar DeRozan, received some of the credit for her well-timed shrieks as Toronto players were at the free-throw line.
Credit — or blame, depending on your perspective. After the game, the young DeRozan was granted a security escort to leave Scotiabank Arena following online threats that blamed her for the loss. The origin of the threats was not clear, but you can bet (sorry) that most involved bettors were angry because the missed free throws cost them money.
Here’s another safe bet: There are scandals brewing that will dwarf the suspensions of a handful of NFL players. When you have $15.5 billion bet in little more than two weeks on an “amateur” sport played by young male and female athletes who are barely earning a living wage, you have a ton of kindling waiting for a match.
At the front of the line waiting for a cut of the gambling proceeds are the state and provincial governments, which see it as free money without considering the social cost of bankruptcies, wrecked families, repossessed homes and suicides.
But the transformation is irreversible. Watching an afternoon Yankees game, I was struck by the ads behind home plate for a gambling corporation and a ticket resale company: a bookie and a scalper. Not so long ago, either business would have been the target of police raids.
The last word: If Andrei Vasilevskiy had played in the summer of 2021 the way he has played the last two games against the Leafs, the Canadiens would have 25 Stanley Cups.
Heroes: Jean-François Houle, Corey Perry, Phillip Danault, Anze Kopitar, Leon Draisaitl, Zach Hyman, Igor Shesterkin, Kelsey Mitchell, Christine Sinclair, Iga Swiatek, Carlos Alcaraz &&&& last but not least, the Leaf fans who decided that after 56 years of failure, they’ve had enough.
Zeros: Michael Bunting, Sam Lafferty, Auston Matthews, Sheldon Keefe, Andrei Vasilevskiy, Anthony Bass, Dillon Brooks, Draymond Green, Claude Brochu, David Samson &&&& last but not least, Jeffrey Loria.
