Opinion: Gambling threatens the credibility of games

Salt Lake City is contemplating a sales tax increase to fund part of a new entertainment and cultural district, including housing, retail and renovation of the Delta Center to accommodate a new NHL team. Meanwhile, another effort is underway to attract a major league baseball team and build a new stadium, also financed in part by taxpayers.

It’s a heady time for the Wasatch Front, with a growing city hoping to catch the wave of sports fanaticism that seems to be surging ever higher in the United States each year.

But nothing could bring all of this crashing down harder and faster than a general loss of confidence in the credibility of the games people follow. And a lot of smart people are warning that this could happen through a series of serious gambling scandals.

Major media outlets have been paying plenty of attention to this lately. Some are sounding alarms about the future of athletics. It’s vital that people pay attention. The reasons should be obvious to anyone keeping score.

A few days ago, Major League Baseball booted San Diego infielder Tucupita Marcano out of the sport for life because he had wagered almost $90,000 on baseball games over two seasons. Baseball also suspended four other players for wagering on big-league baseball games while they were playing in the minor leagues.

Also earlier this year, the interpreter for Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Shohei Ohtani was accused of stealing millions from the star to pay his own large gambling debts. Ohtani’s former teammate David Fletcher is under investigation for allegedly also using the interpreter’s bookie, although not for wagering on baseball.

In the NBA, Toronto’s center Jontay Porter received a lifetime ban earlier this year for passing confidential information about his own health to a bettor. He subsequently removed himself from at least one game early, claiming he didn’t feel well.

And in the NHL, the first player suspended from that league for gambling returned to action with the Ottawa Senators in January after serving a half-year suspension. Neither the player, Shane Pinto, nor the league have been forthcoming with details of his alleged misdeeds.

The NFL has suspended players in recent years, as well.

After Marcano’s suspension this week, USA Today’s Gabe Lacques wrote that we should all brace ourselves for more. This wasn’t a wakeup call, he said. “It’s more like when you awaken a few minutes before the alarm clock is set to go off, and you toss and turn, awaiting its inevitable buzz.”

Major sports leagues in the United States have signed lucrative deals with online sports gambling sites. They allow these sites to advertise heavily during games and in stadiums, and people are encouraged to use their smartphones to place wagers on all sorts of game-related things.

Lacques calls attention to “a modern reality where a player can dial up his FanDuel account one moment, and then amble in the training room to see who’s hurt the next. To place a seemingly harmless and MLB-legal NBA bet one second and compete for nine innings moments later.”

The Washington Post editorial board, meanwhile, called out the hypocrisy of baseball suspending a player for life while failing to acknowledge its “partners in the $11 billion sports betting industry.”

An earlier editorial by the paper said the ease of online gambling would lead to greater debt, bankruptcies and the loss of jobs and homes. “Predictably, gambling’s problems have also crossed over into the sports themselves, bringing the whiff of scandal and raising questions about the integrity of the games.”

Integrity, confidence and credibility — without these, professional sports crumble and taxpayers lose their investments.

Last week, The New York Times ran an op-ed by sports agent Leigh Steinberg. He said the rush toward profits “have put players, and the people close to them, under untenable pressure.”

“I have represented professional athletes for 50 years and I have never seen a situation that’s more perilous to them and the integrity of sports,” he wrote.

Meanwhile, NBC News reports that gambling addiction hotlines nationwide are busier than ever, and with younger callers than before.

Are we listening?

Every mayor and governor in America, including in Utah, should be demanding an end to in-game wagering and advertising, and to smartphone apps that make betting, especially among young people, as easy as checking the weather.

If nothing else, they should do this to protect the taxpayer subsidies invested so heavily in facilities and other developments that feed off sports. Runaway gambling threatens to destroy the credibility upon which all of that rests.