Pete Rose, known as Charlie Hustle, was an indomitable force in the baseball world during the 1970s. He was renowned for his incessant hitting prowess and his dedicated attitude both on the pitch and at the crease. His career boasted of three World Series victories and he still serves as the record holder for the most games played and hits in Major League Baseball. However, Rose’s transition into management in the 1980s led to his life-long expulsion from baseball due to his involvement in betting on matches as both a player and a coach. Despite his accomplishments, Rose is still denied entry into the Hall of Fame and is largely ostracised in the baseball community.
Alex Rodriguez, on the other hand, dominated the baseball scene during the 2000s. He holds the record for being the youngest player to hit 500 home runs and has twice held the record for the most lucrative contract in professional sports. Despite facing a one-season suspension for using performance-enhancing drugs and denying it for ten years, Rodriguez has managed to rebuild his reputation. He is now a major television personality, seen on mainstream shows like Shark Tank and is even in the process of purchasing the NBA’s Minnesota Timberwolves. Despite his past, Rodriguez is now held in high regard.
The different trajectories of these two players highlight the distinct attitudes towards gambling and drug use in sports within the United States. Gambling is seen as a grave offense, the most severe of sporting sins, whilst drug use is viewed as a professional risk, akin to suffering from a large injury – painful, but something that can be overcome with time.
It seems ironic then that the same sport which welcomes back a repeat offender of drug use such as Rodriguez, is currently in uproar over Shohei Ohtani’s interpreter being accused of betting a substantial amount of the Los Angeles Dodger’s wealth on sports. There are those who naively accept this as truth, however, most see the recurring scandal as an inevitable repercussion of a nation that has sold its sporting spirit to betting establishments.
Today, it’s nearly unfeasible to watch a game in America without a flood of advertisements encouraging you to bet on various aspects of the athletic showdown.
Unscrupulous gambling companies entice bettors with complimentary funds to trigger accounts, fully aware that the habit-forming nature of wagering will ensure the house swiftly reclaims several times that initial investment. It’s not unlike the most cunning narcotics pushers providing the first dose free of charge.
Every NBA match is laden with chances to gamble, not just on the final outcome, but on the tally of penalties given, successful penalty shots, spot-on and off-base shots, and countless statistical odds one could think of.
In-stadium bookmaker establishments exist in four clubs and the array of proposition bets (for instance, predicting someone’s minutes on the field) is held accountable for ambiguity surrounding performances from Jontay Porter, forward for the Raptors in Toronto this season. Under suspicion are two matches where he exited early due to health and injury, under suspicious circumstances – circumstances which proved profitable for the astute bettor.
The feigned surprise of the NBA, akin to Captain Renault’s gasp in discovering illicit gambling in Rick’s nightclub in Casablanca, is characteristically holier-than-thou and hard to seriously entertain. Surely, they questioned what might ensue upon taking on the betting revenue?
This is the same organisation that has just granted subscribers of LeaguePass – a system enabling viewers to watch all season matches – the choice to embed a betting app for an even simpler way to squander money whilst streaming games live.
It’s hardly surprising that JB Bickerstaffe, coach of the Cleveland Cavaliers, has shared his experiences of menacing threats in-play from irritated courtside gamblers outraged with his decision to take key players off the field when they relied on his team maximising the score for a profitable points difference.
Various other coaches also share tales of being aggressively pestered by seething wagerers looking to sway the game due to their significant financial stake in the result. Tyrese Haliburton, star player for the Indiana Pacers, has spoken candidly about how the omnipresence and unhealthy impact of betting can lead fans to objectify the athletes on the court.
“Many aren’t interested in our viewpoint,” voiced Haliburton recently. “To half the population, I’m merely assisting them in making a profit on DraftKings or something of the sort. I’m just the commodity – that’s the main theme of my online presence.”
Over the last half-dozen years, 38 states along with Washington DC have legalised the practice of sports betting, turning it into an industry worth $11 billion annually. In the last year, a number of significant gambling scandals emerged, implicating the University of Alabama baseball, basketball at Temple University, and athletes from a variety of sports at the Universities of Iowa and Iowa State.
The prevalence of these scandals in both professional and university-level sports augurs a rise due to the increasing pervasiveness of adverts promoting betting, and the compelling narratives of unsuspecting teenagers ensnared by the lure of online betting at an early age. An outbreak on a national scale is on the horizon. However, media channels and sports leagues are preoccupied with the easy profits involved to take preventative measures.
Basketball commentator, Rece Davis created controversy last month when he termed early betting advice for a March Madness game as a “risk-free investment,” for which he later had to issue a statement to correct his earlier assertion, acknowledging the capricious nature of sports and the importance of financial prudence.
Davis made these comments on ESPN, a television channel that devotes a significant amount of daily broadcast time to endorsing betting. The network not only platforms alleged experts to entice audiences to try their luck at betting but also recently inaugurated a new gambling division called ESPNBET.
The dynamics of the game are ever-changing.