I grew up in Las Vegas during an era when many American newspapers refused to carry the daily betting-line information.
Don’t laugh. It wasn’t that long ago.
Whether out of a genuine concern for public safety, or an affected fretting over the sanctity of amateur and professional leagues, the press was more likely to send an investigative reporter snooping around the Vegas bookmaking parlors than to admit that sports betting was a form of gambling which large number of Americans enjoyed — and almost all of the betting was illegal.
Everyone gambled on ballgames and boxing matches, or so it seemed, but few solid citizens outside my Las Vegas ever appeared interested in admitting it. How times have changed – and continue to evolve before our eyes.
Some of those changes were highlighted in the run-up to Sunday’s Super Bowl LI. A look on the Internet found plenty about the evolving industry and the making of plans to bring sports betting completely into the open via national legislation.
Local sports talk radio shows and local news pages have long ridiculed sports leagues — especially the National Football League — for their hypocritical stances when it comes to gambling on ballgames. Now everyone is getting into the act.
Journalism is largely a game of numbers, and the numbers for voters favoring legalized sports wagering are undeniable.
The American Gaming Association set tongues clucking throughout the sports world at last year’s G2E industry show by aggressively promoting the legalization of sports betting nationally. The rationale wasn’t news to those who have followed the evolution of sports gambling in a nation in which the vast majority of bets are placed illegally. What set the AGA apart was the enthusiasm for the subject by the organization’s president and CEO Geoff Freeman. By any realistic measure, legalizing, regulating, and taxing sports betting, he argued, was the best alternative to continuing to enable the multibillion-dollar business that now exists in society’s shadows.
Freeman’s argument was bolstered by the appearance of NBA Commissioner Emeritus David Stern, who talked about his own changing viewpoint on the subject. Once the pretense of the purity of amateur and professional sports leagues is stripped away, the need for commonsense legalization and regulation of betting becomes self-evident.
By now you probably have a fairly good sense of the numbers:
— $132 million bet legally in Nevada on the Super Bowl last year.
— $4.5 billion bet illegally on that event last year.
That means that 97 percent of all bets placed on the so-called “Big Game” were illegal, unregulated, and untaxed.
Lately, Freeman and his facts and figures have been omnipresent. On Saturday he tweeted, “$4.7B will be bet on tomorrow’s game — but mostly illegally due to failing federal ban.”
With the dramatic increase in the use of smartphone apps and satellite sports book kiosks, wagering on the NFL’s biggest game continues to expand. Jay Kornegay, vice president of sports book operations for Westgate Las Vegas SuperBook, boasted to radio interviewer Mitch Moss on Super Bowl morning that the handle had jumped significantly from $115 million two years ago. “Sports betting is more popular than ever,” he said.
That’s only likely to continue to increase. Similarly, AGA is likely to continue to pick up allies in its push for increased legalization and repeal of the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act of 1992.
Beyond the accuracy of the numbers, Freeman’s open call for legalization is audacious to those of us who have watched the gaming industry soft-sell legalized sports betting over the years. The issue has long been politically volatile, with fierce critics in Congress and in the amateur and professional ranks.
The critics have managed to stop the spread of legalization, but they have failed miserably at slowing the growing popularity of sports betting. Whether it’s fantasy sports, e-sports, or the traditional odds and proposition bets offered on games large and small, nothing has slowed the action.
More changes are on the way.
I hear the newspaper business has changed, too.
John L. Smith is a longtime Las Vegas journalist and author. Contact him at jlnevadasmith@gmail.com. On Twitter: @jlnevadasmith.
