We looked at the research you published and want to know: why do you think professional athletes should be allowed to bet on sports they don’t play?
We were curious about how people felt about these kinds of issues, given that we have just had a spike in these instances recently. The findings reflect the maturation of people’s thoughts about legal sports betting. In the poll that we did, all of the respondents were in states that have legal sports betting.
These are people that are bettors themselves, or they just live somewhere where they’re seeing advertising for it, or they know other people who are doing it. You are in a situation where we have more and more people getting comfortable with the idea of sports betting and with letting athletes bet on other sports, just because that seems to be a less problematic way. When you have athletes betting on their own sports, that becomes more of an appearance of a conflict of interest; even if there isn’t an actual conflict there, it’s just a harder sell.
You see it reflected in some of the league guidelines. I think there’s a bit more of an acceptance to let athletes be adults and to bet on sports that aren’t their own if they so choose; but also still, there is a fair amount of discomfort with letting them bet on their own sport. However, we have and we are getting much more rigorous standards and regulation of that aspect of it, which is in part causing some of the recent headlines when it comes to this thing, because in some ways the system is working and athletes are getting caught for betting.
With the recent NFL news, do you think more players are getting caught because of the lack of concern for the rules put in place, or because it’s an overall miscommunication between the company and its players, with regards to what their rules are?
There were some interesting comments made by Detroit Lions player, Jameson Williams. Of five NFL players who were suspended in April, four had played for the Lions. Williams said something to the effect that he wasn’t aware of the rules. He was given one of the lesser penalties, for wagering at the team facility on other games, not on the NFL itself. That, to me, suggests there is (or has been) perhaps a lack of communication between the leagues, the teams and the players – or the message just isn’t resonating well enough with them.
Maybe it needs to be refined so it sticks with people when they hear it, and it sounds like the NFL sort of agrees with me. They’ve really gone all out, and it sounds like they’ve been on a bit of an awareness campaign with players and media, informing them about exactly what is and isn’t allowed. I think communication is an issue for sure. You can’t rule out entirely that some of the blame is also on the players. Maybe you do have a few bad apples that are going to engage in bad behaviour no matter what; but I think the recent issues sound like more of a lack of understanding or not getting the message across about what is and what isn’t permitted. If you live in a state like New Jersey or Pennsylvania and you’re an NFL player, you could go on your phone and bet on online casino, not even on sports, and that could potentially be a violation of NFL rules because you’re gambling in the workplace. Even though that’s something that other residents of that state could do, it’s something players have to avoid at all costs.
You can’t rule out entirely that some of the blame is also on the players. Maybe you do have a few bad apples that are going to engage in bad behaviour no matter what; but I think the recent issues sound like more of a lack of understanding or not getting the message across about what is and what isn’t permitted.
With regards to the research, 19% of people disagreed with legal and regulated sports betting and 25% of people disagreed with athletes being able to bet on other sports. Do you think those two points coincide in that people who don’t agree with legalised sports betting think athletes shouldn’t bet because they’re against betting in general?
I’m sure if there was a Venn diagram, you’d get a lot of the same people in there, because of the objection to sports betting and the objection to athletes betting on sports; they seem to go pretty well together. We didn’t drill down into that specifically. Maybe it’s something for a subsequent survey, but I do think those are pretty parallel. Around 6% of people who support sports betting also have objections to athletes engaging in it, including some of the people who oversee professional sports and college sports.
Do you think betting could be regulated more for athletes, or that the transparency of the rules could be enforced more to make sure all the athletes are crystal clear on regulations?
I think there’s definitely room for improvement. Technologically, they’re already starting to look into some more stringent guard rails to the extent. Say, my name is Patrick Mahomes and I sign up for a FanDuel account, they’ll just say ‘Absolutely not, Mr. Mahomes, you play in the NFL’ – that kind of thing. I can envision a day where something like that is possible, with collective bargaining agreements. It can be a kind of private agreement that the players and the leagues can strike, to try and ensure people don’t even have the ability to make the mistakes that could cost them a suspension or other penalties.
Is it totally fair for the athletes? Maybe they still want to go on to bet on baseball or whatever, but I think there are ways around the technology side, where there could be room for improvement. The MLB made some interesting points about how people see all of these headlines of athletes getting caught up in this stuff and think, ‘Things are going crazy, what’s going on?’ Meanwhile, the industry is saying ‘Hey, this is working, we are catching this behavior.’
Overall, by having these kinds of high-profile cases get out there, it’s really increasing awareness among athletes, among bettors, among operators, among regulators and among legislators about the issue and just putting it on their radar. The NFL might even have more announcements to come, but there have been several already. This whole recent burst of news has gone a long way toward just creating awareness of the situation. You probably have athletes, regulators and lawmakers asking a lot more questions about what we have here for rules. What sort of rules do we have for the players? What sort of rules do we have in our states to ensure this doesn’t happen? It’s creating a lot more awareness with everybody.
A few English footballers were recently suspended as well for betting breaches. Do you think it would ever get to a point where they would lose a job over betting breaches? Or do you think consequencs would always be a fine or a certain length of suspension? Obviously, it’s completely different when you’re a professional athlete because it’s your work, but if you’ve got hundreds of betting breaches, how can that be justified?
I do think that it could get to a point where people could face loss of future employment over this. If not as something that’s imposed by the laws themselves, as something like a Pete Rose situation where the league says, ‘You’re banned for life.’ The other part of it is that players who break gambling policies might face a bit of a softer regulation just from within the leagues themselves, with teams saying, ‘I don’t want to potentially bring someone onto the team who’s going to get suspended.’ It kind of creates a liability; it’s a distraction situation.
In the NFL, they’re very concerned about ensuring there are no distractions away from the football itself, especially at the team level. That could be something where, if you have someone who is an offender or a repeat offender of gambling-related policies, maybe they just don’t get picked up as a free agent. Maybe nobody wants to trade for them, and they just find themselves slipping out of the league in that fashion.
The reputational risk is huge, and you’ve seen it in the NFL with people who get wrapped up in other kinds of criminal behaviour not getting onto teams. Teams just want to avoid any sort of headache off the field.
Is there anything else you would like to add?
I know it’s different talking to someone from the UK, where you have a much more mature industry that’s been around for so long. When it comes to British footballers getting into situations there is a very clearly defined process, whereas in the US, it is still relatively nascent. The only thing I would want to add is to underscore that more data is needed, in general. More public opinion surveys are needed to keep trying to capture the mood of what people are thinking; that data then helps to inform the leagues. There needs to be more data collected, more of an effort to collect that data and more discussion to be had around the findings of those types of surveys (and other forms of data collection) to inform policy.
