Gamblers Monotonous

I got the horse right here,
The name is Paul Revere,
And here’s a guy that says if the weather’s clear,
Can do,
Can do,

-Frank Loesser, Guys & Dolls

There was a time when those engaged in sports gambling on the screen and stage had a certain raffish charm, enough to inspire a memorable Broadway show tune or two. Omar Sharif’s portrayal of Fanny Brice’s husband, the real life inveterate gambler Nicky Arnstein in the movie version of Funny Girl, is the stuff of legend. 

Not so much today. With the scourge of smart phone access to dozens of online sportsbooks, we routinely get to watch three decidedly non-Runyonesque losers in sweatpants – racially mixed of course – exploding off a cheap couch on cue in one of way too many commercials selling us on the concept that gambling goes with televised games like salsa and chips. Welcome to FanDuel, Bet365, DraftKings, BetRivers, ESPNBet, PrizePicks and the most pervasive, BetMGM, which used to feature hockey legends past and present Wayne Gretzky and Connor McDavid as shills, forever soiling their reputation. In my opinion at least. They have since been shelved as casinos have been told to dial back on pro athlete endorsements.

Not much of an improvement is former respected actor Jamie Foxx preying on the community that needs this the least, black Americans. Do I sound racist? Hear me out – the average black family in the US had an income of $56,490 last year against $89,050 for non-Hispanic White families. Black men in Canada make about 75% of what the average white worker makes which is misleading because black unemployment is over two points higher than the national rate. So it’s actually worse. Maybe the DEI people can take a knee on this one.

And it gets worse. Have you seen the FanDuel commercial in which the newly cancer-free Dolph Lundgren, still well past his has-been phase, is selling a solo female bettor on the Philadelphia Eagles? Just what guys need, their girlfriend/wife second guessing even more of your decisions and risking the ‘nest egg’ as it was called in Albert Brooks’ brilliant Lost In America. Yet, Lundgren is not quite as repulsive to me as the couple who, bored with the speeches at a wedding – mixed race of course – turn to their “in game” Score bets on the over/under for hot dog consumption at a Hornets/Pelicans tilt. Witness the breakdown of social graces as a marketing concept. Fuck them.

My level of stomach upset reached a peak during the recent US Open for tennis because of the repeated, and it was during pretty much every break, racist, or at least, racist-adjacent, PointsBet spot showing an aging Tiger Lily replete in a tracksuit and a bad wig accessorized by blackjack configuration tattooed to her wrist, playing said game on her phone. Charming. Her son loses a side bet and gets to haul a couch up her stairs for his trouble while she is transfixed on her phone. What a lovely old lady. Of course, I wonder what was in it for him if he had won. Not exactly sports gambling but if poker is now a staple on the sports networks it qualifies. A study conducted by CBC’s Marketplace and researchers at the University of Bristol found that over the course of seven sports broadcasts in five days last October, twenty one percent of the screen time was filled with gambling messages. 

I’m not much of a gambler myself, preferring actual, infrequent visits to Vegas where I budget myself to a couple of hundred dollars at the blackjack table. Left to fond memories are the trips to Miami Beach as a kid and my grandmother dragging me to the ponies, the Hollywood dog track and, my favorite, the fronton in Dania to bet on Jai Alai, the greatest corrupt sport ever invented. In the couple of times I have bet football in the recent past have not only have I come up craps but there was zero enjoyment.

The NFL, NHL and NBA are making too much money off it as official licensors. Even if they are not directly benefitting, their league owned TV and streaming services are raking in the commercial ad money. Almost $1 billion was spent on advertising last year by various sites. The coming Super Bowl commercial rate is a record high and the inventory is sold out. The experience will be soiled by more insidious gambling ads. Have you noticed that a couple of sites have commercials generously showing newbies how to control their gambling expenditures. Translated – you’re going to lose money that might have gone to your kids’ education, a gift for the wife, retirement or, wait for it, a deserving charity with tax benefits but with proper budgeting you can keep your losses well inside the range of a divorce. Check out this surprisingly funny/not funny commercial parody from SNL

Yes, there are people who beat the apps. A friend of mine says his son has been kicked off a couple of sites because he has won too much. Talk about sore losers. Then again, this is more than a hobby for the hard core. According to a Forbes article last May, total revenue from casino games, sports betting and iGaming reached $66.52 billion, a 10% increase over the previous record set in 2022. However, an article in Graydon Carter’s excellent webzine Air Mail countered that Americans wagered $119.8 billion on sports last year (compared to $93.2 billion in 2022 and $57.2 billion in 2021), and the nationwide revenue from sports betting increased 44.5 percent from 2022. Similarly, in our province, the Ontario government made almost $7 billion in lottery and gaming revenues last year and was an early adopter of sports gambling with Pro Line going back to 1992. Money squandered by the public returned to public squanderers. Nice mix.

I read somewhere credible that The National Council on Problem Gambling estimates that approximately 2.5 million adults in the U.S. are severely addicted to gambling, and another four to six million people have mild to moderate gambling problems. Currently there is no federal funding to treat gambling disorders. But Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut wants to change that. In January, he introduced the Gambling Addiction Recovery, Investment, and Treatment Act which sets aside federal funds to help prevent, treat, and study gambling addiction. Your tax dollars to counsel degenerate gamblers.

The second worry is more abstract, but also I think, more substantial. It involves what commentators like to call the “integrity of the game.” We’ve already seen some lines crossed like that kid from the Ottawa Senators who was suspended for half a season for gambling and that genius on the Toronto Raptors D League team who was compromised. Then there’s the Shohei Ohtani incident involving his translator – excuse me while I chortle. Yes, you argue, there was the Chicago Black Sox scandal of 1919 and the subsequent Hollywood hit of 1988. Green Bay Packer great Paul Hornung was suspended for the 1963 season for merely associating with gamblers. Gambling and pro sports have always had a relationship of some sort. But it wasn’t in our face.

But now it’s the most important relationship, keeping viewership up in a declining cableverse especially in games between teams with no hope of a playoff slot. Prop bets regarding individual performance are commodifying athletes in terms of their ROI rather than their ERA, GAA, FT or RBI stats. I was at a hockey game recently with the son of a close friend, a young lawyer who says that gambling is the primary hobby for a lot of his similarly well-educated friends. I mentioned above that there are an infinite number of ways to spend discretionary cash on alternatives to sports gambling but there’s also the time factor. Even though the come-ons from PrizePicks make it look easy, handicapping sports is a serious undertaking and beating the algorithms is not as easy as they make it seem. And chasing your own money can be dangerous.

As I try to do in these little emissions, let’s frame it in the context of the generation that grew up with heroes like Mickey Mantle, Gordie Howe, Jim Brown and John Havlicek. Below that we had college greats and even high school legends. Yes, for the generation that grew up in The Depression, pre-TV, high school athletes could set themselves for life by staying in the community that worshiped them, for better or worse. Read Roth’s American Pastoral. 

When I was a kid, going to a game was about my team winning on the scoreboard, not on my phone. And I’m sure for a great many fans today it still is, with or without a few beers. Well, today only the very wealthy can afford to take their kid or grandkid to a game. Most times, they have to watch it on TV and although I would kill to introduce a grandson or granddaughter to sports (hope my kids are reading this) I worry about what I would have to say when they would ask what all these commercials are about. Similarly, I would hate to have to explain to a child exactly what they are selling in that weird looking store with the smoke graphics at the corner next to the Starbucks. And what are those women doing standing on the corner in their underwear. Just to be clear, the New York Times recently published an article that because virtually every child with a smart phone has been exposed to porn by the time they are twelve, it is something we have to accept.

Gambling, sex, drugs, it doesn’t matter. The normalization of vice is having a profound effect on a western society that is starting to look like the last days of Rome. Even in the context of a world weary guy like me who just re-released Caligula on Blu-ray, it’s not too far from the truth. Did you hear about the 20-year old girl who made $43 Million on Only Fans last year having who knows what done to her? For a lot of lost young women, she’s their Mickey Mantle.

In my humble opinion, innocence is not overrated when it’s shielded with proactive behaviour. If your kids don’t do it, take your grandkids aside and show them how hard it is to make an honest buck and the value of saving their chore money if such a thing still exists. If they seem curious about drugs, fly them to Vancouver’s East Side and show them where that story ends. And if your granddaughters start dressing like child prostitutes, read them Jocelyn Nungary’s story at bedtime. Or tell their parents to. Fear works and this is no time to keep your opinions to yourself.

Yeah, sure when they are adults they can make their own decisions. However, those decisions should be well-informed. I know, I am starting to sound like an angry Walter Brennan on The Real McCoys, shaking my cane at the world that is passing me by. But there is a whole new meaning to the word “spoilsport” out there.

Yeah, as the song goes, we got trouble right here in River City…