By Ray Cardello for February 18, 2025, Season 30 / Post 41

I am old enough to remember when organized sports kept their distance from gambling in any form. Remember how Pete Rose was excommunicated from Major League Baseball and banned from the Hall of Fame because of betting on games when he was a manager? This was when he was the all-time hits leader and should have been a first-ballot entry to Cooperstown. He died, never being enshrined. Today, he would probably be a spokesman for DraftKings!

If my writing reflects this, I am against gambling. I do not even believe in scratch tickets. My feelings about gambling go back to my childhood, but they were reinforced when I owned a convenience store and saw people spend more money on tickets than they had clothes on their backs—wasting a paycheck looking for the big payoff. The game is rigged. You are supposed to lose.

No major sport had granted a team to anyone from Las Vegas for decades. The change started with minor league teams, and then the floodgates opened. The NHL, NFL, and supposedly, the NBA have or will soon have teams in Sin City. You cannot watch any sport on TV that is not sponsored by online gambling operations. Even the pristine PGA has on-air segments that address the wager opportunities at each tournament.

It amazed me how much talk leading up to the Super Bowl involved corrupt schemes, indicating that the NFL and Referees were slanting the field in favor of the Kansas City Chiefs. Here in New England, we heard much of that talk during the Brady Dynasty, even though the commissioner always seemed to penalize the Pats. The Pats did appear to benefit from most calls, but sometimes you are good enough to make that happen as part of the game. Obviously, by the outcome of the Super Bowl, there was nothing the Refs could do to favor the Chiefs when the Chiefs did not show up. But seriously, with the plethora of ways to gamble on an event, the thought of tampering will always be part of the game.

Research is beginning to uncover some alarming trends associated with easy access to legalized gambling. In states that jumped on the gambling phenomenon, and of course, the tax income it presents, reduced savings, increased bankruptcy rates, and less per capita invested in stocks. Some states like New York have gotten greedy and tax gambling winnings at 51%. The state has brought in $862M in 2024 and more than $2B over the last three years. Supposedly, tax revenue from sports betting is earmarked for education. You know, a good chunk is absorbed by government inefficiency and a bloated administration that controls revenue and taxes. Remarkably, there was no data in the studies on the impact to the family unit. I will bet there is an increase in divorce rates and issues with work-related concerns. Online gambling feels to me like legalized pot sales for recreational use. It may sound great when politicians talk about the income stream the states are enjoying, but at what cost to the people we should be most concerned for, the residents?