Anyone watching Super Bowl LVII or the National Football League playoffs had to wonder if the American people have time for anything other than gambling on sports.
According to CNN, more than 50 million people were estimated to have bet on the Super Bowl, whose broadcast included numerous gambling company ad spots.
In fact, the embrace of gambling by America’s four major professional sports leagues — the NFL, Major League Baseball (MLB), the National Basketball Association (NBA), and the National Hockey League (NHL) — has come with shocking swiftness.
“A flood of advertising, technology that allows for one-click betting at home, and nearly unlimited betting options during games have collided,” CNN reported. “There’s been a spike in inquiries to state gambling-addiction hotlines, states say. In the past five years, there has been an explosion of online sports betting apps from companies like DraftKings, FanDuel, and Caesars. These apps are often replacing illegal betting venues. At the same time, they also attract an influx of new gamblers who had never set foot in a casino or would have known how to place a bet with a bookie.”
Sports leagues and their college counterparts historically discouraged gambling so that fans would be confident that outcomes were the results of honest competition, not fixed for monetary gain.
Ever since the “Black Sox” scandal, in which eight Chicago White Sox players were banned for life from major league baseball after plotting to lose the 1919 World Series to the Cincinnati Reds, the sports world has been especially leery of gambling.
After all, baseball’s all-time leader in base hits, Pete Rose, is still denied a place in the National Baseball Hall of Fame for betting on baseball games while serving as a player and manager for the Cincinnati Reds. “Charlie Hustle,” as Rose is known for his aggressive style of play, has claimed that he never bet against his own team, but the Hall of Fame drew a bright line.
For fans, however, that line became blurred in 2018 when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a federal ban on commercial sports betting. Thirty-three states have since legalized sports gambling.
The effect on the integrity of the game poses a serious risk of ruining sports. But the most important reason to discourage gambling is that it can be spiritually and morally corrosive. It appeals to some of the worst and most vulnerable aspects of human nature — greed, wanting something for nothing, seeking a way to avoid work, and squandering money that could better be used for something important, such as supporting a family.
This is why the Stewardship filter of Timothy Plan family of Biblically Responsible Investing mutual funds and ETFs excludes “companies involved in gambling related activities, including equipment manufacturers, casinos, riverboats, cruise lines, racetracks and gambling software.”
As with any vice, gambling victims typically believe that they could never become addicted. Casino operators and bookies know better. The lure of “the big haul” is a powerful incentive to keep gambling even when one is losing. The deeper one gets, the more desperate one is to score a lot of money to get out of debt.
It can happen to anyone, and no one can be sure that he or she is immune to the siren call of “winnings.” Even “The Book of Virtues” author William Bennett, who served as U.S. Secretary of Education, admitted publicly that he had a gambling addiction problem.
What has changed in American culture to persuade the sports world to openly embrace gambling of many kinds? It could be the sheer power of advertising dollars, combined with the PR effect of generating more interest in games simply because wagers are on the line. There is little doubt that part of the powerful increase in attendance and TV watching can be laid on spectators who have placed bets.
In the 2005 movie “Two for the Money,” Matthew McConaughey plays a former college football star with an uncanny ability to predict game outcomes. He is hired and exploited by a ruthless sports betting consultancy magnate played by Al Pacino, who makes millions by selling the predictions to high rollers. The film captures the perverse power of sports gambling to addict people to ruinous behavior.
While not specifically designating gambling as a sin, the Bible strongly suggests that it corrupts.
Bible teacher John MacArthur gives five reasons why gambling is wrong:
To which I would add that it’s just not all that smart.
Photo Credit: Ethan Miller / Staff