As this
article is being written in 2015, there is a significant debate in the United
States generally, and in various state legislatures specifically, on the
legalization of sports betting. Since the issue relates to legalization, it should not be surprising that semantics play an
important role in the debate. This article is, by no means, a comprehensive
look at the subject, but it aims to serve as an introduction to some of the
main elements surrounding in the debate.
Even a simple discussion of
sports betting is immediately subject to semantics. For example, betting on
horse racing, dog racing, or jai alai is NOT included in the debate on sports
betting, even though most consider horse and dog racing to be sports (after
all, horse racing is the so-called sport of kings), while everyone knows jai alai to be a sport. Dog racing
is legal in 12 states, and horse racing is legal in 32 states. Non-race sports betting is legal in
Nevada, Delaware, Montana, and Oregon- the four states “grandfathered in” as
exceptions to PASPA, the Professional Amateur Sports Protection Act of 1992. Of
the four states, only Nevada allows the full compliment of sports wagers to be
placed on individual events.
Further complicating the
matter, but central to some of the hypocrisy surrounding federal government
policy is playing fantasy sports for real money. Even playing daily fantasy sports for money is not
considered “gambling” thanks to a “carve-out” in the Unlawful Internet Gambling
Enforcement Act of 2006 (UIGEA). Without devolving into the “legalese” and
minutia of the law, that carve-out differentiates fantasy sports play for money
and sports betting primarily by stating that, “All winning outcomes reflect the relative
knowledge and skill of the participants and are determined predominantly by
accumulated statistical results of the performance of individuals ... in
multiple real world sporting or other events.”
The federal government wants us to believe that playing
fantasy sports for real money is not “gambling” or “betting” because the
outcome (winning or losing) depends on skill and knowledge. The suggestion is
that the outcome of other forms of non-race sports betting are dependent on
luck, as opposed to skill or knowledge. Truly, any professional sports bettor is
living proof that successful sports betting is the result of knowledge and
skill since they could not continue to make money from sports betting if the
matter were relegated simply to sheer luck.
We could play around with the semantics of the law ad infinitum (or at least ad nauseam), but the real issue, as we
see it, is money. The leagues that lobbied together against the legalization of
sports betting (in places like New Jersey) had no immediate way of profiting
from that legalization. The continued federal prohibition on non-race sports
betting (everywhere but in the grandfathered-in states) and the carve-out to
UIGEA was, according to an article in the New
York Post, influenced by a National Football League (NFL) “...big bucks lobbyist to ram through Internet gambling-curbing
legislation in the final minutes of the legislative session ... [but the] NFL broke the rules when
it fast-tracked legislation that never even got a vote in the Senate - a trick play that provided a big exemption for fantasy football. The NFL runs its own fantasy football site, and gets royalties from others.”
Conclusion
If we
include lotteries, racing, poker, fantasy sports, and every other form of
staking one’s money on the outcome of an uncertain event or series of events
with the possibility of either losing one’s stake or adding to it (i.e.
gambling), some form of gambling is legal in all 50 states. The sports-betting
debate that the United States is now just beginning
to have in earnest, is fraught with inconsistencies at best and hypocritical
positions from unsound jurisprudence and unethical federal policy-making at
worst.
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