A gamble North Carolina shouldn't risk
Published November 13, 2015
By Tom Campbell
by Tom Campbell, Executive Producer and Moderator, NC SPIN, November 13, 2015.
Tune in any sports event and chances are good you are going to hear repeated ads from FanDuel and DrafKings promising you can win millions of dollars by going online and playing their “games.”
Fantasy sports have become a way of life to many, choosing teams of players and pitting these teams against friends, family or online leagues. What started out as clean sporting fun has ended up as widespread online gambling. Each week a FanDuel or DraftKing participant goes online and selects players for that week, betting that his fantasy team will outperform others and win big dollars. You can slice and dice this any way you want but it is nothing less than gambling.
As a broadcaster, I remember repeated admonitions from legal counsel warning against airing messages that might be considered gambling. There are three elements to gambling: prize, consideration and chance. In those days we were mostly dealing with mundane stuff like turkey shoots, raffles and wheels of fortune, chickenfeed compared to the current lure of winning millions online.
We’re told many millions of venture capital dollars have been poured into these online video ventures from the likes of Google, Comcast, 21st Century Fox and even Major League Baseball. How else could Fan Duel and DraftKings have the cash to pay out the millions in prizes they claim to award each week?
Some of us still remember the cancellation of the beloved holiday basketball tournament, The Dixie Classic, because it became betting and bookmaking had invaded the games and players were paid to throw games. We rightly declared this was a negative influence on collegiate sports and stopped the Classic. Baseball player Pete Rose was banned from the sport for life because he gambled on his own team’s games. With so many dollars riding on the performance of athletes today we wonder how long it will be before we learn players are being paid to underperform? Already there are reports of employees of the online gambling operations using and sharing improper information.
Seven states, concerned about the potential problems, have made these online sporting games illegal, including Arizona, Iowa, Louisiana, Montana and Washington. The Nevada Gaming Control Board has banned fantasy sports and just this week New York’s Attorney General ordered them to cease and desist from taking bets in that state, saying they were “neither harmless nor victimless.” In defense, these new online sports games claim theirs is a game of skill, not chance, and that people can play for free. Common sense says it isn’t the case. Investors wouldn’t put up so much money if fans weren’t shelling out big dollars in hopes for big payouts.
North Carolina passed laws outlawing video sweepstakes games because of the potential for harm, but so far our state has been silent regarding FanDuel and DraftKings. We may not prevent them from advertising during sporting events but we don’t have to let them operate here.
We think it is time for our regulators and our lawmakers to join other states in declaring these are thinly veiled gambling operations and outlaw them. We had gambling problems before and the odds are better than even this new online games will result in addiction, corruption or crime. We can enjoy sporting events without this gamble.
November 13, 2015 at 11:14 am
Richard L Bunce says:
Setting aside the hypocrisy of a State government that runs a lottery for State residents and has First Peoples gambling operations within it's borders we know what happens when the government bans something for which it's residents have significant demand... criminal organizations move in to fill the demand. For something that is intrinsically and internet operation it is so easy to setup VPN and play at foreign websites for which the player will have no recourse if ripped off other than perhaps their credit card. Maybe that will be a good thing to learn not to depend on a undependable government. One might be left with the impression that the State government only supports gambling for it's residents if they get a sizable skim off the top.
November 15, 2015 at 6:31 pm
Norm Kelly says:
Amazing! When the state was trying to thrust state-sponsored gambling down our throats, some of us knew that gambling is bad regardless of who is behind it. For some reason, state-sponsored gambling is acceptable, and to be promoted, but ANY other form of gambling is to be banned. Talk about hypocrisy!
Is state-sponsored gambling 'good' because an extremely small part of the income is funneled into education for the children? We all know that the socialist party portrays everything they can as 'for the children' (regardless of how much of a stretch it might be) because they have this 'thought' process that people will accept their scheme if it's couched in these terms. So, because the socialist party wants to depend on gambling to support education spending, we are simply supposed to accept it? And also accept these same pols telling us that ANY other form of gambling is BAD for us and the state? This is a perfect example that government prevents ANY competition. It isn't just schools/education that governments want to monopolize.
