Off-Track Betting: Senate Hearing Wanders From Gambling To Gender

Things I learned watching the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary hearing on sports betting Tuesday morning:

1. NCAA President Charlie Baker is pretty darn unflappable.
2. {list complete}

Maybe I should come up with another list. 

OK, let’s try this: Things that either entertained, enraged, or otherwise held my attention for more than 12 seconds while watching the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary hearing on sports betting Tuesday morning:

Props be gone

College prop betting is going to be the Lexington and Concord of federal regulation when it comes to sports betting. Most of the senators who spoke brought it up, the aforementioned Baker is going state-to-state seeking to get it banned (and he’s been successful so far, as only 19 states still allow it), it’s part of the SAFE Bet Act, and it’s low-hanging fruit.

To wit: The committee co-chair, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), started the proceedings with a hypothetical that was about a college basketball player being asked to miss the first two free throws he attempts. This hypothetical came up again during the less-than-two-hour hearing, and there really wasn’t an argument “for” college prop betting to continue to be allowed.

Of course, there are (at least) two problems here: One, college prop betting will not disappear if DraftKings and FanDuel can’t offer it. There will still be offshore, sweeps, and the like. And two: Someone should’ve probably mentioned the “miss the first two free throws” market does not exist at any sportsbook. Details, dither, etc.

Lies, damn lies, and suicidal ideation

Harry Levant, the director of gambling policy and certified gambling counselor at the Public Health Advocacy Institute at Northeastern University School of Law, is a gambling addict in recovery. He was a lawyer, stole a ton of money from clients and family, thought about killing himself, got help, and now is one of the architects of the SAFE Bet Act, which would dramatically change the sports betting industry (limits on advertising, affordability checks for bettors, bans on use of AI, among other items).

He claims to not be anti-sports betting, but it’s a fine line.

Anyway, he said something that shocked me: He said that one in every two people who are addicted to gambling will contemplate suicide. That number sounded wildly high to me.

So I checked, and a meta-study by the American Psychological Association, looking at 107 other studies, didn’t show that. It showed a little less than one out of every five problem gamblers had suicidal ideation. Which is still bad. But one out of 10 people in general have had thoughts of suicide at some point in their lives. (Also bad.) So according to this meta-study, problem gamblers are twice as likely as non-problem gamblers to consider taking their own life. Terrible, sure, but not nearly as terrible as wherever Levant is getting his stats.

Takeaway: Levant is almost certainly over-selling the risk, he provided no context, and he did not separate “gambling” in general from “sports betting.”

But — most importantly — we need to do better, as a nation, and start having some serious conversations about suicide and suicidal ideation. It’s frighteningly common, and nobody talks about it.

Man, that was a bummer. Let’s talk about something more fun, like …

Transgender athletes 

Rodney Dangerfield had a one-liner that went something like, “I went to the fights and a hockey game broke out.”

Same principle here: We went to a sports betting hearing and an argument over transgender athletes broke out, as both Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) and Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) took their allotted five minutes to rail against Baker and his “allowing” of male-to-female transgender athletes to compete in women’s sports. A lot of yelling, some name-calling, and Baker just calmly took it and gave back measured answers.

Doesn’t matter what any of us think on the topic in this space, but for Kennedy and Hawley to use their time on trangender athletes instead of on what the committee is calling “America’s High-Stakes Bet on Legal Sports Betting” makes it feel like it’s not such a high-stakes bet and so why is the committee wasting time on it?

It was grandstanding at its finest. Well done, America.

#Baker2028

Let’s talk about Baker. The dude was cool as a cucumber despite being — I’m guessing — sandbagged by Kennedy and Hawley. He’s a two-term Massachusetts governor — as a Republican. He left office with a 68%(!) approval rating, which is insane. He’s a fiscal conservative and a cultural liberal. I don’t know what he did last month, but he refused to cast a ballot for either presidential candidate in 2016 or 2020.

I may start an exploratory committee for him. 

Let’s tie it all together

Well, Durbin pretty much did at the end of the short hearing, when he said, “This is not the end of this discussion, but only the beginning.”

Translation: We’re just getting started. I would expect in addition to college prop betting potentially being on the chopping block, there will probably be some (good, if you ask me) federal legislation at some point about athlete harassment, and … well, that’s about all the lay-ups I see.

Federal oversight, in some manner, is probably coming. When? Who knows. What? I know even less.

But, yep, I do agree with Durbin: This is only the beginning.