Some of the biggest scandals in sports history have revolved around players and gambling.
Pete Rose is barred for life from baseball, in an agreement stemming from admissions of gambling. The Black Sox scandal, about a thrown World Series, is perhaps the most notorious sports debacle of all time.
Yet in a rush to embrace the potential profits provided by new forms of legalized sports gambling, the professional sports leagues have put players, and the people close to them, under untenable pressure. I have represented professional athletes for 50 years and I have never seen a situation that’s more perilous to them and the integrity of sports.
There’s traditionally been an impregnable wall between professional sports and the world of gambling, but that wall is not just crumbling, it’s evaporating. Leagues must start by acknowledging that athletes are human. They have failings. They make missteps. The N.B.A., M.L.B. and other leagues have facilitated a situation that makes it all too easy for players to falter.
If more of those players do, they will bring down the edifice of professional sports.
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Government regulates vices like gambling. And liquor, tobacco, and drugs and prostitution which are even more heavily controlled.
So why does the FCC and FDA allow gambling to advertise, thus encouraging the use of the very product that is being limited by this regulation?
@SolidSparrowVeteran2yrs2Y
My guess is regulations around gambling advertising, which are egregious in their "gambling is fun" display, will happen once one of our politicians families ends up in a gambling fiasco. But I fully agree with this essay and have been shocked at the lack of enforcement thus far for all the reasons mentioned.
@OutlyingTr3atySocialist2yrs2Y
Because the politicians want the tax revenue. Here in Connecticut, the state gets 25% of the slots.
@ThriftyRelishRepublican2yrs2Y
I wish every person would take the time to look into these gambling syndicates. They are corrupt in every regard. Gambling addiction is massively accelerating- that is, people are being led addictively to hand over their life’s savings to these gambling consortiums
@Bi11R1ghtsEllaDemocrat2yrs2Y
Same could be said of lotteries. Have you seen the comedic aspects of these state lottery commercials? Just harmless fun.
@B1ll0fRightsDonMountain2yrs2Y
I knew a Native American artist who was working for a casino which, to get its license from the tribe, paid extremely well for Native American art. He and his wife were leaving the lucrative gig because they found the place disgusting. They told me many stories, but the one that sticks in my mind is the guy who lost so much that he refinanced his house. He lost everything and jumped off the top of the parking garage. His wife got a call that their two children were fatherless and that she was destitute.
@ScornfulMinorityPatriot2yrs2Y
My money is on the online gambling sites
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