Jay Caspian Kang, New York Times Magazine
In the early 1990s, Bill Bradley, the New Jersey senator and former New York Knick, argued several times in front of Congress that legalizing sports betting would dehumanize athletes and lead to the rampant corruption of children. This was no cynical political crusade; Bradley was a true believer. He liked to declare that athletes were not “roulette chips” and tell the story of a game he once played in Madison Square Garden. His Knicks were up by 5 at the end when the other team hit a meaningless basket to cut the final lead to 3. A confused Bradley heard cheers in the crowd, and when someone told him why — the opponent had just lost by fewer points and beat the spread predicted by oddsmakers — his eyes were opened to the sordid callousness of the gambling world. Bradley helped push through the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act in 1992, all but banning sports betting outside Nevada and driving a growing industry that employed hundreds underground.
As it turned out, the country’s millions of sports gamblers didn’t share Bradley’s concern for the sanctity of athletes like Bill Bradley or the children who might grow up to be just like him. In practical terms, the Sports Protection Act has mostly failed, and gambling has effectively grown to be an inescapable part of big-time sports. Nobody knows how many Americans bet illegally on sports, but the American Gaming Association estimates that roughly $150 billion is wagered annually. (By contrast, $4.5 billion was bet in Nevada sports books last year.) A gambler with a hunch about, say, a Golden State Warriors playoff game this month can use a debit card on any one of dozens of offshore online betting sites. If the gut feeling runs a bit more toward whether a specific player can handle the big stage, he or she can pick him in a daily-fantasy lineup and enter a contest to win thousands.
Sometime in the next four months, the Supreme Court is likely to decide whether to hear an appeal by Gov. Chris Christie and the State of New Jersey that would essentially let states determine whether to allow sports betting within their borders. What the court will do is not certain: The debate is largely being framed in the language of states’ rights versus intrusive and economically harmful federal overreach, and the position the Justice Department will take in any opinion it files is unclear. But most in the gambling industry believe that some court case either now or in the near future — seven other states have recently expressed interest in the added tax, infrastructure and tourism revenue that would come from legalized gambling — will succeed in repealing or gutting the Sports Protection Act.
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