Timothy O'Brien, the executive editor of Bloomberg Opinion, published a piece on December 21st that explores the potential ramifications of the legal online sports betting explosion. The piece was widely distributed, and my local paper, the Johnson City Press, ran it accompanied by a half page photo of one of my favorite hangouts, the Westgate SuperBook.
While the piece was informative and accurate, it was also what I would call a fashionable keyhole piece. "Fashionable" because between now and the Super Bowl, it's fashionable in the United States to run anti-sports gambling pieces in the media, it's fashionable to raid local illegal books and bust Elks clubs for block pools, and it's fashionable to rant about the financial burden of gambling immediately after the American populace has taken out second mortgages to cover their Christmas expenditures. "Keyhole" because these pieces inevitably focus from a particular narrow perspective without placing such gambling spending in the overall consumer context that is 2022 America.
Being a contrarian sort, I hammered out a brief op-ed to respond to Mr. O'Brien's op-ed. I'll present that brief op-ed here. I'll then do a follow-up that addresses some of the specifics of Mr. O'Brien's piece and why I think they are, while accurate as given, so ignorant of the larger consumer context that they amount to crying wolf while surrounded by a half dozen wolves in a kennel that has also been invaded by a thousand flying piranhas. The wolves are, I argue, the least of your worries.
So without further ado, I present my op-ed, which sticks to basics.
Opium is in the Eye of the Beholder
Timothy O'Brien's sports gambling opinion piece in the December 26 Johnson City Press is a solid informational piece. To make his case, however, Mr. O'Brien purposefully ignores the larger context of American consumerism in which the gambling problems play out. Without context, what gets lost is that sports gambling is just one item on a buffet of consumer opiums.
First, I'd like to recommend what I consider the must-read magnum opus for modern gambling, Natasha Dow Schull's Addiction by Design. Dow Schull is an anthropologist. Her book focuses largely on machine gambling, but she has assembled and summarized a trove of recent gambling research into one place. The book is a gem and a wonderful survey of what happened when American uber capitalism bonded with gambling.
Next, I'd like to introduce myself. I've spent the last 40 years as a professional sports handicapper specializing in college football. That means, in essence, that I've been a consultant to high stakes sports gamblers for more than four decades. I'll name drop here; Billy Walters was one of them, albeit briefly. I was featured in former Seattle Times reporter Mike McCusker's "Tipsters or Gypsters?" McCusker's report was published annually out of Las Vegas. I've been in the invitation-only Wise Guys sports handicapping contest for more than 30 years.
Nobody has to convince me about the addictive nature of sports gambling. Nothing has been more frustrating through my 40 years than telling clients what to do on Saturday, and then having them blow that and more on Sunday because they want action. I am well aware that no amount of good Saturday advice guarantees that clients will wind up with a lifetime profit. Odds, in fact, are against it.
Stepping back for a broader view, the question is whether enabling people to thrive with one opium does them any real good when they have easy access to thousands of opiums. Stepping back still further leads to questions I tackled in an old paper I presented at the 1982 Conference on Gambling and Risk-Taking. Those questions involve an American culture that allows gambling, drugs, and even sex to be labeled as "addictions," but is hesitant to categorize fast food gluttony, buying new cars, and watching television as addictions, too. Sports gambling may be addictive and a negative in American life, but is it any more addictive and does it do any more damage to body and wallet than a lifetime of Big Macs and Whoppers? Similarly, time is money in a wage-per-hour economy, but I don't see any public service announcements for Television Addicts Anonymous or Netflix Anonymous.
What I argued in that paper is that until gambling losses reach an enormous chunk of one's income, are they really worse than any other decadent, expensive American proclivities?
The online targeting of gamblers that Mr. O'Brien mentions in his piece is routinely employed by American companies selling everything from shoes to movie tickets. Why should sports gambling online targeting be any different? I've got Joseph Banks, Men's Wearhouse, and Saks popping up every time I'm online. Surely everyone is aware that this kind of specific messaging is standard operating procedure across most businesses. Nobody needs as many button-up shirts as I have, and maybe nobody needs forty-thousand-dollar pickup trucks or Disneyland vacations, either.
As Young Sheldon's Georgia and Connie argue when justifying their laundromat/casino this season, "Who are we to decide how people spend their money?" When American life features a cornucopia of unnecessary opiums on which to spend, it's a convenient kind of keyhole view that enables writers and the public to assign 800 numbers, addiction cottage industries, and labels ranging from "irresponsible" to "sin" to one particular opium as compared to all the others.
Bob Dietz
January 1, 2022
