Should athletes be allowed to bet on themselves?
The bleak rise of American sports gambling.
Hello NSTers,
To begin, a couple of shameless plugs to get out of the way before we dive into today’s episode. First up: I wrote a book! It’s called Colored People Time: A Case for (Casual) Rebellion, and it’s a collection of humorous essays about the way time wraps itself around the most personal aspects of our lives. Consider checking it out!
Also, if you’re around NYC, we’ll be doing a live event book talk about my book on March 29th. Get tickets here, it’ll be fun.
On today’s episode, we dive into the bleak world of sports betting in the United States. As a sports betting dabbler, I can see both the fun and the darkness in it. As athletes are getting caught up in sports gambling controversies more and more often though, I wondered about whether players should be allowed to bet on themselves.
(Spotify, YouTube, everything else)
We’re joined by Danny Funt, author of Everybody Loses: The Tumultuous Rise of American Sports Gambling, who breaks down how exactly our country became inundated with sports betting, and whether or not this whole gambling thing was a mistake from the get go.
Let us know what you think in the comments below. Do you bet? Has it ruined sports? Or are we overhyping all of this?
That’s all for now! Email us at mannynoahdevan@gmail.com or leave a voicemail at (860) 325-0286, and please leave us a five-star rating wherever you listen to podcasts and write a nice review.
See you again soon!
The question posed..."should Lebron be able to bet on the Lakers to win"...is an interesting one. I generally agree with the position y'all came to, which is that *generally* a straight win/lose bet from a player for their own team to win is harmless but opens the door to worse.
That said, it's absolutely possible to craft hypotheticals where allowing a player to bet on their team to win in and of itself does lead to problem outcomes. Like you I start from the assumption that "clearly the player will always want to maximize the team's probability of winning anyway, so any action they take to win that bet is positive." But this isn't true. For the simplest, most extreme example, imagine a player on a team that has already locked up their playoff seed who then bets more money than they can afford to lose on the team to win.
This player's incentives are no longer aligned with the team. The team, as an entity, doesn't actually care if they win...it's why coaches and managers will pull starters in this situation. The goal of the team is to make it through the game without injury, winning is a bonus. But the player who's bet on that game may well take actions that put *future* wins...like playoff wins...at risk in order to win what is now a meaningless game to the organization.
A rare occurrence, especially since most of the decisions about play or no-play are out of the player's hands anyway, but highlights why you don't ever allow this foot in the door. Even mid-season a player might be willing to eat a small fine and risk a multi-game suspension if they think it will lead to winning a large enough bet...again, putting multiple *future* wins in jeopardy to win tonight's bet.
For another pseudo-example, think back to Suarez's red card in the World Cup for knocking out a last-minute goal with his hands. In an elimination tournament like the World Cup obviously it was rational, his presence or lack thereof for the next game doesn't matter at all if his team is eliminated. His suspension saves the team's campaign. But in a midseason *league* match? Allowing Suarez to bet, even if it's "just on Barcelona to win," means he might do the same in a situation where his team would prefer the loss than his absence next game (or multiple games).
All that said, I do think that in the boxing example there's really no risk of harm. Since that's a one-off event with no future-match implications, and the individual has every incentive to win in all cases. I'd think the only risk is that a boxer might fight beyond their own safety if they had too much riding on the fight, but let's get real it's boxing...that ship already sailed.