The Big Ruling Comes Down: Sports Betting is LEGAL. The Bad News,,,

Well, I have done one post on the good behind the 7-2 ruling today, but there's another side to all of this.

I've had quite some time to figure out some of the problems behind this as well.  Here are a few:

First, if the leagues can enforce and get the casinos and states to allow a 1% "integrity fee" on all sports bets (which will include Nevada eventually, by the by), could that situation become a coercion/extortion situation in which leagues would more-openly screw teams from cities and states that refused?

As I said over the course of the NFL Playoffs this year, the league got a lot of mileage out of the controversial officiating and the rules interpretations (both late in the regular season and in the playoffs).

It is known that the leagues want a 1% "integrity fee" on all wagers on their league.  There is an increasing acceptance, on a storyline level, that the referees fix the games the way the league wants them to go.

So would it not make sense, on every conceivable level, that teams from states which do not affix the integrity fee (in hopes of getting business from states which do -- a 10-11 juice is a better bet than a 9-10 one) will get screwed by the leagues which would receive the money, in the favor of teams from states which do?

If you don't believe me:  Nevada sportsbooks took in $4.8 BILLION in legal bets in 2017.

(That was a record, as was the amount fans lost -- such that the profit for the books, according to Nevada Gaming Control, was almost $250,000,000.)

This is no trivial amount.  We're probably talking hundreds of millions of dollars if sports gambling becomes widely legal across the land.

Second, although it may remove or stunt the partnership between leagues and Vegas on a specific part, it also brings back a lot of the other salient dangers of localized books regarding point-shaving and the like.

I am reminded immediately of the controversies surrounding Rapeis Winston.  One of a massive number of them in his senior year (as reported in this blog) was rumors from the likes of Incarcerated Bob that Winston point-shaved games on behalf of a high-school friend who was making money with an illegal bookie

Once you localize the process, you are also going to force any investigative bodies trying to prevent actual point-shaving to localize their efforts quite a bit.

It does raise the side question as to whether some localities will, in fact, start authorizing betting on high-school sporting events.  I could see it - certainly not nationwide.

Third, it raises a very real problem regarding books local to teams.  Imagine the whole scene, Milwaukee to Chicago, on Bears-Packers, Cubs-Brewers, and what not.

And then imagine what happens in places with good teams that their fans can ride -- yes, the books will try to set the lines for even wins and losses.  But imagine how much a book in the Bay Area might've lost on the Warriors the last 4 or so years...

I'll probably have a lot more to say about this later, but there's some good tidbits to start with now.