Currently Sports betting is illegal everywhere in the United States except Nevada. Ian McGugan writes “The Case for Legalized Gambling on Sports” for the New York Times in January, 2015. He doesn’t pick a side but does list the pros and cons for the legalization of sports gambling. I believe that the legalization of sports gambling will overall benefit the sports economy, help prevent of match fixing and eliminate the gambling that already occurs. Adam Silver the new NBA commissioner declared he was in favor of legalizing sports betting. He wrote that adapting to the market and regulating the “400 billion a year” (McGugan) industry would benefit the NBA. Illegal sports gambling is rampant and widespread, with current technology sports gambling …show more content…
It is difficult to catch and punish an unofficial underground match fixing organization. All bookies want to avoid match fixing in the market, unless they are the ones match fixing. Match fixing causes bookies to lose money and consumers. Consumers will be repelled away from fixed games. Rigged games ruin the viewer experience as well as the gambling experience. Bookies and casinos benefit from an honest game, as Stefan Szymanski an economist from Michigan said “you can enlist an army of private business people that want to help you police a sport” (McGugan). Every single bookie and casino that does not fix matches will help prevent cheating because they lose money when cheating …show more content…
Football, baseball and hockey require much more team cooperation to pull off match fixing. McGugan points out that point shaving is an especially easy way to manipulate the gambling spread and cheat. The regulation of gambling would not deter this from happening. Studies by Justin Wolfers who has analyzed 16 years of college basketball spreads, has concluded that games with large spreads had just barely fell short of spread “far more often that would be expected in the normal course of events” (McGugan). As recently as 2012 a point-shaving scandal was uncovered at San Diego State University. Cheating and gambling already happens, legalizing and regulating the industry would not enhance the rate at which point-shaving and match fixing occurs. However Maria Haberfield argues that legalizing gambling would only increase the “incentive to find new ways to fix games” (McGugan). She argues that people will become more resourceful at turning a profit and cheating, but with a regulated industry we would be more adept at spotting the cheating and match