Gambling is great! Just don’t do it if you are a player! Because if you do you will be thrown out of sports…for life!!
Now does that sound like a coherent, consistent message to you? While fans around stadiums in America line up to place bets, and advertisements adorn sport venues nationwide, players who dare bet will not only face the possibility of suspension, they can be removed from their sport for life. Just ask now former MLB player Tucupita Marcano how he feels today after learning that he has been banned for life for betting on baseball, especially as he looks around at all the fans in the stadium being encouraged to do exactly that — bet on sports.
The impact of gambling on sports
Seemingly overnight, we have gone from gambling being an underground, covert, illegal operation, to what it has become today — exciting, legal, and omnipresent. In fact, gambling has become so en vogue that most stadiums now have kiosks on site where you can actually place your bets (or, even easier yet, you can bet through your smart phone!). All this is great for fans who like to gamble, but what about players? Of course, we expect players to exercise integrity and responsibility by refraining from gambling, but what message are we sending to players like Marcano and others when everyone else is now allowed to bet on sports? That it’s OK for literally everyone, except you?
In some ways what we are seeing with sports gambling resembles the now antiquated NCAA “amateur” sports model that has been flipped on its head where student athletes are finally being paid. It was only recently where collegiate, amateur athletes could not profit from their talents or likeness, even though literally everyone else could! While colleges sold player jerseys for profit, that same player could not so much as charge for a mere autograph, much less his or her jersey. Sports gambling, at least in this moment, feels a lot like that — players can only watch everyone else gamble, and if they themselves take a chance and gamble they will not just miss a few games as a penalty, they will be gone for life.
Personally, I don’t think the current sports gambling rules make a lot of sense, not just because of what happened to Tucupita Marcano, but because of all the risks and threats to integrity that come part-and-parcel with betting. There will always be players who think they can sneakily bet, and other players making league minimum salaries who very well might consider directly impacting a “prop” bet for personal financial gain. I don’t know that sport leaders and decision-makers will ever be fully equipped to handle those very real concerns, as all we have to do is look how MLB handled (and it still handling) Pete Rose.
As I have previously written, there will be more players caught gambling in the days, weeks, and months ahead, and some of those players will end up being the better players in their respective sports. Banning Marcano is one thing, but what do you do if the player is Mike Trout, or Mookie Betts? It seems almost a certainty that eventually better players will be caught gambling, prompting professional sports leagues to apply the same consequences for revenue-producing players as they currently do for journeymen and players who do not drive ratings or revenues. Can you imagine Mike Trout banned for life, during the prime of his career (unlike Pete Rose), for betting on a game? Or will there be a separate set of rules for star players?
Final thoughts
Pro and college sports have decided to not only allow gambling, but to encourage and provide opportunities to gamble on-site at games. While decision-makers have fixated on the increase in revenues that will flow from legal sports gambling, what they have not prepared for are players like Tucupita Marcano and others who have decided to do what millions of people are doing in this moment — bet on sports. While you might not care about lesser known players like Marcano, you might care a whole lot more when a star player (or players) are caught betting on their sport. That day is most certainly coming, and it will be the first big test to see if legalized sports betting makes sense, and if star players will be treated the same as lesser players or given special considerations because of their status.
drstankovich.com
