When professional sports teams refused to allow purveyors of legal gambling to use their trademarked names (Canadiens, Cubs, Cowboys, etc.), a wise man I knew said to me:
“They will, once the money is too much to resist.”
In those days, the leagues denied such access on moral grounds. It was, after all, “gambling” and that would tarnish their squeaky-clean images. Eventually, the money did become too much for leagues and teams to resist, and they’ve made lucrative financial deals with “legal” gambling outlets. It wasn’t for a piece of the action, per se, but for millions of advertising dollars to help pay the billions of dollars of contracts to athletes.
That, in itself, was to be a straight business deal. What has emerged is the AG, an abbreviation that once stood for Attorney General and now, somewhat ironically, defines the Angry Gambler. Sport has always had its angry fans, of course, but what they used to have at stake were feelings of loyalty to their favourite under-performing team.
“Hey Johnson, you’re a bum!” they would yell from where they sat, identifiable not by name yet to all who could see them. But “Hey Johnson, you’re a bum!” has become “I’m going to kill your family” — honestly — when an athlete does something like throw an interception or fumble an easy ground ball or miss an empty net, mistakes which cost the AG a bet or more.
Today’s Angry Fan is protected. His insults, now threats, are delivered anonymously. He unscrupulously researches an athlete’s online “account” and demands payment for his losing bets. He threatens physical harm. He can get away with this, unlike the baseball fan in the bleachers or the hockey fan in the blues or the football fan in the end zone, because his identity is a vague ID on social media. The same social media, by the way, makes it possible to bet on who’s going to win the next face-off or score in the eighth inning.
Last year, Americans wagered $147 billion on sports betting. Using a rep-by-pop formula, that would be about $15 billion in Canada. There are many dirty hands in this troublesome explosion and its uncontrollable baggage: teams that trade morality for greed, athletes who accept huge salaries without consideration of its dire effects, unfettered advertising so necessary to deliver those dollars, and a society that accepts viral and unchecked anonymity.
The wise man I knew well was Guy Simonis. He was the head of three gaming organizations, including the World Lottery Association. He was the person responsible for naming — after largely creating — Lotto 6/49. A life-long fan, he was at the forefront of legalized sports betting in Canada, when after the Criminal Code was amended and he introduced a harmless game called Sports Toto. It was the seed that eventually grew to what sports betting is today. It was a game I played, unsuccessfully, for bragging rights and fun.
For most of five decades, Guy Simonis was also among my closest friends. In one of our many discussions about gambling in general, he also said this:
“In history, legalized gambling is cyclical. There’s always a scandal.”
Social media is en route to being sports betting’s scandal.
