An Idiot's Guide To Sports Betting: Handle With Care
While MLB works feverishly behind the scenes to blame Shohei Ohtani’s brush with sports gambling on his hapless translator the rest of the world has woken up to the reality that is sports betting. Much of the reaction has been negative. Often misinformed. But negative.
There are glaring holes in Ohtani’s defence that must be answered, but MLB saw fit to allow a player— whose employee, an admitted sports gambler, had access to the coveted secrets of the California Angels’ dressing room for five years— to start the season as if nothing had happened. It beggars credulity that Ippei Mizuhara never leaked a single secret to the gamblers to whom he was massively indebted.
Whatever. If they can’t square the circle of the Japanese Babe Ruth letting his money be used for illegal gambling in California then our opprobrium will be the least of MLB’s problems. Suffice to say MLB and the other sports outfits that have made a pact with legal gambling have done a poor job selling it to non-gamblers.
The biggest complaint from non-bettors seems to be the tidal wave of gambling content that has suddenly washed over the telecasts of games and sports networks. Much like the overnight onslaught of same-sex/ mixed-race / green memes in commercials, this explosion of betting info has unsettled traditional audiences. The most daft examples of this content in Canada have thankfully disappeared, but there remains a massive effort to sell people on the fun of sports betting.
Which leads those of us who actually use these sites to point out that promising big payouts is a gambit guaranteed to fail. The best professional bettors will tell you that winning 57-58 percent of your bets is considered excellent. After the house takes its bite of your profits via the vig, you’re talking about slim margins. And that’s the best bettors.
Your garden-variety gambler won’t end up owing $4.5 million like Ippei, but he/ she will likely see success in the 40-percent range (even the translator probably won this often). If you can afford to sustain losses like that then, go ahead, fill yer’ boots. But learning to lose is the real art of sports betting. While the sites in Ontario, Alberta and elsewhere advertise help lines for addiction, few explain the basic odds that bettors face.
The greatest complaint about sports betting from people who don’t know a parlay from a chardonnay is the effect on young people seeing so much on wagering. “It’ll pervert them!” Alert: In every jurisdiction it is illegal for anyone under 18 (sometimes 19) to bet legally. The image of 11-year-olds betting props on their own phones is a canard. Can they get someone to front their bets the way young people got grownups to buy them beer? Sure. But legalization isn’t changing that.
As for legitimizing betting, kids watching Hockey Night In Canada experienced decades of alcohol commercials. Many of them survived the experience and never touched a drop of beer as adults. Many others drank responsibly. But the idea that seeing Molson ads on a hockey broadcast turned kids into raging alcoholics is a stretch. Ditto gambling.
Is there a concern for 18-plus bettors getting in a hole? Yup. But there are lots of temptations that must be faced down when adult status is conferred. Some will handle gambling better than others. But remember, sports betting has been around forever— see: 1919 Black Sox— if one knew the right guy. Or lived in Vegas or Europe.
The other alarm has been over fixing sports events. Some believe that mobsters will now have an easier time getting athletes to throw games. First, athletes have been warned against sports gambling forever. Which is why we have little sympathy for Pete Rose ignoring the signs on MLB dressing room forbidding betting on sports for decades.
Second, the onset of legal sports wagering has made it easier, not harder, to detect if the outcome of a game is being fiddled. The casinos and websites that now handle betting have a much easier time seeing where suspicious action is happening. So do the cops. As they say, sunlight is the best disinfectant.
The allegations against Raptor Jontay Porter are a good example. When the largest bet in the NBA one night was under-three-point attempts on bench warmer Porter—who pulled himself from the game in the early minutes— set off alarm bells. In the old days when the Mob handled a lot of the wagering they were loath to leak any samples of their data to a broader audience lest it bring in the cops.
Now everyone can see if suspicious bets— or unknown parties—are fudging the numbers. The banks are (or should be) alerted to sudden large money transfers— another question mark in the Ohtani case. Plus the huge amounts earned by many athletes makes many immune to temptations. Can they be blackmailed? Sure. But it’s less likely when a ball player is making $700 million during his current contract. And remember, only players at certain positions— baseball pitcher, football QB, hockey goalie— can truly turn a game.
It’s predictable in the nanny state of safe spaces and hurt feelings that something adult must be squashed. But being an adult means you have the right to waste your money on idle thrills.
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his new book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.