The increasing prevalence of sports gambling, including gambling partnerships with sports leagues themselves, is going to lead to more and more gambling scandals in the coming years.
The latest eye-catching headline is the arrest of New England Patriots wide receiver Kayshon Boutte, who is facing a felony charge of computer fraud and a misdemeanor charge for gambling under the age of 21. At LSU, Boutte allegedly used his mother’s credit card and a fake name to create an online gambling account that he used to place more than 8,900 bets, including a handful on LSU football games while he was playing at the university.
This is not the only gambling scandal in college or professional football in the last two years. More than a dozen Iowa and Iowa State athletes, including football and basketball players, were charged last year with gambling before they turned 21. Many of them also bet on their own games. Over the past few years, the NFL has suspended 10 players for gambling on NFL games or in NFL facilities.
This is a problem that is going to become worse, not better, in the coming years. Sports gambling is now a staple feature of sports broadcasts, whether those be analysis shows or the actual game broadcasts themselves. Sports leagues rushed into big-money deals with gambling companies and sportsbooks, meaning that leagues and sports broadcasters are marketing them to children and young adults who watch sports as well as older fans.
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The increased prevalence has also made sports gambling a far more casual endeavor, one in which you can partake from your phone. As a result, young adults are able to place bets far more easily, making it more prevalent and making it inevitable that younger athletes (like Boutte) see it as no big deal, even if they are gambling on their own games.
You can expect more and more suspensions and stories like this one in the coming years as gambling continues to take up more and more oxygen in the sports landscape. The headfirst plunge into widespread, easy, legal sports gambling was just too rapid, and sports leagues aren’t going to be able (or willing) to tap the brakes on the money train to reevaluate these partnerships and their consequences.