Take Me Out, Coach
Take Me Out, Coach
Can we put the sports betting genie back in the bottle?
If you’re a Vanderbilt football fan, it doesn’t get better than last week, and if you’re not a Vanderbilt football fan, it only rarely gets better than seeing the scenes out of Nashville last week. Welcome to Family Matters. On tap:
The Main Event: Mitigating the harms of unfettered sports gambling
It’s Me, Hi: Dallas Morning News, COMPACT, Notre Dame (Oct. 16)
Et Cetera
The Main Event
October has a very strong claim to make for the best sports month on the calendar.1 The MLB playoffs, big NFL and college football matchups, F1 title shootouts, even the return of the NHL for the true die-hards (in this house, pro basketball doesn’t exist).
And everyone who’s even casually turned on the TV knows that the legalization of sports betting has turned the viewing experience into a constant array of moneylines, prop bets, spreads, and teaser offers of can’t-miss starter deals. DraftKings, FanDuel, ESPN, Fox - heck, even the sports apparel behemoth Fanatics has gotten into the act, where you can gamble real money to try to win gift certificates for jerseys (yes, I’m serious).
At The Atlantic, already wrote the definitive case for why the rush to do so was a mistake on any number of grounds - there’s evidence to suggest it leads to worse financial outcomes and higher rates of domestic violence without producing anything of social value. On that point, there’s not much to add; I endorse nearly every word.
On top of his piece, I’d argue that a culture of pervasive sports betting detracts from what makes sports a valuable source of social cohesion and even social capital. In its ideal form, sports help build a form of community through the communal experience of joy and pain (oh, so much pain.) Subjecting that to — as our Marxist friends would say — the cash nexus is a recipe for disintegrating the experience of being a fan of a local club or college team.
In a world of individualized, rather than communal, sports fandom, it’s not enough that the Chiefs win; Xavier Worthy has to score at least two touchdowns or my parlay won’t hit. Fantasy football is another example of this individualization of sports consumption, but at least has the merit of being pointless outside of office bragging rights. No one cares about your fantasy football team, but society has an interest in caring about your bad underdog picks if it leads to increased risk of bankruptcy and interpersonal violence.
(In some ways, it’s similar to how the online Tumblrification of being a fan of a major movie franchise or recording artist has shifted from fan clubs and gathering for midnight releases to obsessive (and often toxic) message boards and the like. If you wonder what I mean by that, click on a few Star Wars related tweets and then see the kind of manic bilge the Twitter/X algorithm queues up for you.)
Sometimes these disordered affections can lead to impacting the games and players themselves, such as enticing athletes to bet on their sports or to harassment against players who didn’t deliver for bettors. College athletes — remember, kids in the late teens or early 20s — have been subjected to casual death threats for missing a play that cost a bettor some money. MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred has named betting-related threats towards his league’s players as being a major area of concern.
But would Manfred take any steps that might jeopardize its lucrative partnership with FanDuel, the co-exclusive Sports Betting Partner of Major League Baseball? Because the reason why every league keeps getting deeper into bed with sports books is that the money is good. Per the American Gaming Assocation, sportsbooks collected nearly $11 billion in revenue, a 44 percent increase from the prior year, off of a total of $120 billion worth of bets placed in 2023. Through their partnerships, NFL, MLB, and other top sports leagues benefit from those numbers continuing to go up.
And it’s not just the house and the leagues profiting. As of July of this year, 38 states had legalized sports betting; 30 over them had made it available online. These states are already gorging themselves on that sweet, sweet tax revenue; $769 million in taxes collected in the first quarter of this year in exchange for very little effort from the states. If current trends hold, a simple linear projection suggests total national tax revenues will top $1 billion by the time of the next Super Bowl (to be held, appropriately enough, at the Caesars Superdome in New Orleans.)
The push for ever-greater sports betting is funded by deep pockets. Restoring the pre-Murphy v. NCAA status quo seems unlikely. So are we stuck with this as the future of professional and collegiate (or should I say semi-professional) sports?
One option would be to borrow some best practices from the European soccer leagues, which have incorporated betting not as a get-rick-quick mentality but as a casual way of “having a flutter.” The average bet in the UK is about five times smaller than that placed in the U.S., and far less of the player-specific prop bets are offered. Even still, the rise of commercialized sports betting globally has led the English Premier League to enact a ban on sportsbook sponsorship of soccer jerseys starting in 2026. In Italy, a 2019 law required its top soccer league to do the same thing, along with broader laws against advertising sportsbooks more generally.
It’s the cigarette advertising approach; advertisements for Marlboro and Camel used to be ubiquitous in American sport culture (check the left field scoreboard in the Kingdome picture above.) The Tobacco Master Settlement banned public or outdoor advertising of cigarettes in most states in 1997. In 2010, the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act banned tobacco companies from sponsoring sports or entertainment events. Congress should pass something similar targeting the ubiquitous sportsbook ads (the amount of online gambling ads hit $1.8 billion in 2022.)
It should also regulate the types of bets that available. Betting on the final outcome of a game is one thing; placing one winnings in the hands of one athlete’s statistical output is asking for point-shaving scandals. Louisiana has already banned athlete-specific prop bets for college athletics; that should be a national starting point, with serious consideration given to expanding to pro athletes as well. No one — not even a member of the San Francisco 49ers — deserves to be on the receiving end of hate-filled vitriol because a gambler lost money betting on their individual performance.
I also think states should consider raising their tax rates on gambling winnings to New York or New Hampshire levels, and require that sportsbooks show the after-tax return on any proposed bet before allowing a gambler to submit a bet. If demand for those services is inelastic, states can use the resulting higher tax receipts to fund gambling addiction help lines and other harm mitigation efforts. If demand proves elastic (as in, before placing a bet online, users see that their potential take-home winnings is accompanied by a prominently-displayed 50 percent chunk taken out of it and decide it’s not worth it,) the number of people on the gambling apps will fall. Either way, it’s a win.
There are other ideas that should be explored. The Netherlands has introduced age-based gambling limits that probably wouldn't fly in the U.S., but acknowledge that young men are most susceptible to being sucked into gambling debts beyond their ability to control. The U.K. has banned gambling companies from using athletes or celebrities as endorsers. Currently, eight states — Miss., Mont., Neb., N.M., both Dakotas, Wash., and Wisc. — only permit in-person sports betting. Studying their outcomes versus other states who have embraced smartphone-enabled gambling should provide good evidence as to whether these approaches which raise the bar to casual gamblers actually work in curbing abusive behavior.
Sports can cement community bonds. Ideally, they serve as a place where young and old, red and blue, weird and normal can all come together, don some matching laundry, and come away feeling like they just consumed smoked meats of various provenance and - sometimes - experienced a very small bit of transcendence.
For sports executives to eagerly turn the institutions they are supposed to be stewarding into a way to funnel money from young men into the pockets of big corporations is bad for communities and ultimately self-defeating. It’s probably too late to put the sports betting genie fully back in the bottle. But we can at least curb some of the most egregious abuses, and try to put the fun back in fan before it’s too late.
It’s Me, Hi
It was such a pleasure to join friend of the newsletter Abby McCloskey to talk abortion, family policy, and tech for the latest episode of her podcast “Beyond Talking Points,” produced by the Dallas Morning News. It’s available on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or elsewhere.
“I think that's the challenge for pro-lifers is to figure out a way to find that a way of casting their proposals and their agenda in a way that can appeal to that voter who's in the middle and is inclined to say, ‘I'd rather err on the side of being too permissive than too restrictive.’”
For COMPACT magazine, I wrote about how prescribing marriage as a tonic for the GOP’s struggles with suburban women is not just ineffective, but potentially counterproductive (hit the paywall? I know a guy):
“[Conservative] efforts to turn a walk down the aisle into a get-out-the-vote project could backfire not just by coming across as tone-deaf, but by accelerating the decline in marriage rates due to reverse polarization.
For The Dispatch, I argued that Sen. Vance’s debate performance offered a model to other Republicans to talk about family and fertility with compassion:
“Vance’s political philosophy lends itself to the kind of earnest discussion of ways to materially support families needed in this post-Roe moment. It’s no secret that conservatives with an eye toward boosting families and protecting the unborn were always in a marriage of convenience with those of a more libertarian or limited-government bent. Vance, as his short time in the Senate has indicated, represents a champion for those who would like to see government shore up the family as the basic building block of a healthy society.”
I spoke to Dave & Dujanovic on KSL Newsradio about the Family Security Act recently introduced by Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah):
“What Sen. Romney’s bill would do is basically collapse all that and just say, ‘Look, here’s a straightforward benefit per child that’s $3,000 for kids who are school-aged [and] $4,200 for kids who are under five to kind of give parents a little boost with the cost of child care.”
Next week, I’ll be speaking on a panel at Equal Protection Summit, hosted by Americans United for Life, Oct. 16-18 at the University of Notre Dame. If you’ll be there, please say hello.
I was quoted in Kimberly Heatherington’s coverage of Trump’s IVF proposal for Our Sunday Visitor…The Dispatch editor Rachael Larimore included my piece on the aftermath of Roe as part of the site’s best of the past five years…
Et Cetera
Articles
Biden’s push for child care failed. What lessons are there for Kamala Harris? (, Vox)…Porn Industry Jumps Into the Presidential Campaign (Jonathan Weisman, New York Times)…China’s In-Your-Face Push for More Babies (Vivian Wang, New York Times)…How ‘Snowflake Babies’ Could Change IVF Politics (Joanna Weiss, Politico)…America’s Young Men Are Falling Even Further Behind (Rachel Wolfe, Wall Street Journal)…The Age of Depopulation (Nicholas Eberstadt, Foreign Affairs)…Annual Family Premiums for Employer Coverage Rise 7% to Average $25,572 in 2024 (Kaiser Family Foundation)
Takes
Roe is gone but abortion is still central this election (Abby McCloskey, Dallas Morning News)…Third-Trimester Abortions Are Happening in America (Emma Camp, The Atlantic)…New York baby bonus would better support all new parents (Josh McCabe, Niskanen Center)…Democrats and Republicans Agree on Childcare! Or Do They? (Grace Segers, The New Republic)…Trump’s Subsidized IVF Spells Disaster (Vanessa Brown Calder, AIER)…Vance has been precise on abortion (Emma Fuentes, Washington Examiner)…IVF Is No Answer for Women's Health or Abortion Politics (Lila Rose, Newsweek)…JD Vance might be Reagan’s real Republican heir (Henry Olsen, New York Post)…Harris Tax Credits Would Largely Benefit Low And Middle-Income Households (Howard Gleckman, Tax Policy Center)
Roundup
Missouri: Medicaid will now cover doulas for pregnancy and up to one year after birth…West Virginia: Senate passes state child care tax credit at 50% of the federal amount
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My provisional rankings: October (aforementioned smorgasbord), April (MLB Opening Day, the Masters), September (NFL returns, MLB pennant races), May (NHL playoffs, Kentucky Derby, Indy 500/Monaco Grand Prix), June (Stanley Cup playoffs, US Open), November (nonstop football, baby), July (Wimbledon, All-Star Game), January (NFL playoffs), December (who doesn’t love Capitol One Bowl Week), March (March Madness, spring training), August (dog days of MLB, F1 hiatus), and February (good chance to catch up on Oscar bait you may have missed).