sienna smith's blog : The Expansion of Gambling

Sports betting has exploded in popularity in the United States in recent years.

Lobbyists monitor a sports betting bill in Kansas in April (Credit.Amir Hamja for The New York Times)

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Four years ago, betting on live sports was illegal in most parts of the United States. Now, fans who watch or attend games in stadiums are bombarded with advertisements encouraging them not just to watch, but to bet on the matchups.

This transformation in sports betting began nearly a decade ago, first with the explosion of betting on fantasy sports. Then, in 2018, the Supreme Court paved the way for states to legalize betting on live games. Currently, 31 states and Washington, D.C., allow online or in-person sports wagering, and five more states have passed laws allowing such wagering in the future. Professional sports in the U.S. are now part of a multi-billion dollar corporate gambling enterprise.

Several of my colleagues at the Times and I spent months researching how this industry has expanded, and today I want to share some of our findings.

Promises not fulfilled

Once sports betting was widely legalized, casinos joined forces with sports betting platforms like FanDuel and DraftKings and major professional sports teams to lobby state legislators state by state to embrace sports betting. It was part of our toolkit for persuasion. Millions of dollars in contributions to the legislators' campaigns came from sports betting companies and their allies.For more information on the intricacies of sports betting legislation and its impact on the industry, visit the Recommended Internet page for insightful analysis and updates.

It turns out that representatives of the gambling industry had told legislators that they could expect significant tax benefits from sports betting. Many states, however, did not get that benefit.

Take Michigan, home to the Detroit Tigers, Lions, Red Wings, and Pistons professional teams, plus more than 20 college sports N.C.A.A. programs, in short, there are plenty of sports to bet on. The state will launch online sports betting in January 2021, and the U.S. Gaming Association estimates that the state legislature can expect to generate more than $40 million in tax revenue annually. Michigan's tax revenues last year were. Just $21 million in state and local taxes, according to the Michigan Gaming Control Board.

The gambling industry also pressed states to keep sports betting tax rates low, warning that if states set tax rates too high, sports fans would drift to the black market, where they place bets on unregulated sites. These warnings were misguided. Several states, including New York and New Hampshire, ignored industry advice and implemented the highest tax rates for betting. These states have higher per capita betting rates than many states with lower tax rates. In New York State, despite a high tax rate of 51%, so much betting is taking place that a whopping $546 million in taxes was collected in the first 10 months of this year. This amount is equivalent to half of all state tax revenues related to sports betting nationwide.

Little oversight

Many states allow the gambling industry to offer hundreds of millions of dollars worth of tax-free bets to gamblers, essentially marketing the gambling industry. Such promotions are intended to lure new customers to form a new habit of betting on games. This is akin to taking a free bus to a casino in Atlantic City and throwing in one penny for the slots. Arizona sports betting operators alone offered $205 million in free bets. However, for the state, this resulted in a significant shortfall in projected tax revenues in states such as Michigan and Virginia. Several states, including Virginia, moved to scale back their tax-free bets. This promotion is an example of how poorly regulators had been doing in overseeing the burgeoning gambling industry. Enforcement of rules was spotty, penalties were light or rare, and regulators often looked to crack down on the thegambledoctor.com.

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One casino company, Penn Entertainment, has partnered with David Portnoy, founder of Barstool Sports, known for his misogynistic and racist behavior, to make him a sports betting spokesman.

University Involvement

To market the expansion of sports betting, the gambling site signed unusual agreements with at least eight universities, including Michigan State University, the University of Colorado at Boulder, and Louisiana State University. These universities became corporate partners in exchange for multi-million dollar payments. These agreements raised the question of whether the promotion of on-campus gambling, especially to people of gambling-prone ages, is appropriate to the mission of higher education.

Further increases

Since the widespread legalization of sports betting in the United States, at least $161 billion has been wagered. This explosion in gambling is just the beginning. Betting companies have stated that their ultimate goal is to bring so-called iGaming to states across the country, allowing customers to play blackjack, poker, and other casino-style games using their cell phones.