Gambling as a public health issue (Lancet)

 Here's a warning about gambling from the Lancet:

The Lancet Public Health Commission on gambling   October 24, 2024

"Executive Summary: Gambling is not an ordinary kind of leisure; it can be a health-harming, addictive behaviour. The harms associated with gambling are wide-ranging, affecting not only an individual's health and wellbeing, but also their wealth and relationships, families and communities, and deepening health and societal inequalities. By examining these harms, the Commission unveils the intersections between the social, commercial, legal, and political determinants of health. The Commission sheds light on the increasingly complex commercial ecosystem for gambling and its digital transformation which offer unparalleled capacities for gambling. The Commission calls on governments and policymakers to treat gambling as a public health issue—just as for other addictive and health-harming commodities, such as alcohol and tobacco—and provides recommendations to prevent and mitigate the broad range of harms associated with gambling.

Gambling addiction

 When gambling opportunities were rare and often illegal in the U.S., gambling addiction was a less visible problem than it is becoming today.

Here's a story from the NYT, about a sports news broadcaster who went to prison after pursuing fraudulent schemes to raise money to pay his gambling debts:

Saturday Mornings With the ‘Voice of Problem Gambling’  Craig Carton, the bombastic sports broadcaster, shows a different side on a weekly show that focuses on the stories of gambling addicts like himself.  By Zach Schonbrun

“There’s a preconceived notion of the kind of guy or gal that is a gambling addict,” Mr. Carton said. “And now you’re listening to schoolteachers and doctors and lawyers and first responders and librarians — normal people who went down a road never having any expectation of having a problem.”

...

"The show’s arrival coincided with an explosion in gambling as 38 states legalized sports betting. The National Council on Problem Gambling estimates that 1 percent of U.S. adults meet the criteria for a gambling disorder, and that an additional 2 to 3 percent are “experiencing problems” due to “moderate” gambling behavior.

"That suggests that most Americans are capable of gambling responsibly, and Mr. Carton believed he could, too. He had gambled his whole life.

...

"The incident that he says “accelerated” his descent into problematic gambling didn’t come until 2014, when Mr. Carton, in his typical bombastic fashion, proclaimed on the air with Mr. Esiason that he could take $10,000 and turn it into $25,000 overnight playing blackjack. To his surprise, Mr. Esiason handed him $10,000 in cash a few weeks later during a special taping at the Borgata, a casino hotel in Atlantic City. Mr. Carton backed up his boast, winning $80,000 playing blackjack.

"But the seeds of compulsion were planted. Almost immediately, Mr. Carton began receiving calls from listeners eager to test his magic touch. Soon he was being handed duffel bags of cash and ushered into private parlors at casinos.

“That just gave me access to more money,” Mr. Carton said. “And when you’re already going down a road where you want to gamble all the time anyway, if you’re betting $100 a hand, and now you’re betting $1,000 a hand, you can’t go back to $100. It just became progressive.”

He won a lot, but at the rate he was going, the odds weren’t in his favor. Debts snowballed; then the federal agents arrived. The judge at his sentencing, Colleen McMahon, introduced herself to him as “Colleen from New York — first time, long time,” echoing a common phrase used by callers into WFAN’s shows. She then told Mr. Carton, “You have indeed descended into a hell of your own making.”

"Mr. Carton’s public disgrace resonated with Dan Trolaro, a former investment adviser for Prudential who spent four and a half years in state prison in New Jersey for stealing $1.9 million in client money. He had committed the thefts to feed an online gambling addiction.

"Mr. Trolaro went on to work for the nonprofit Council on Compulsive Gambling of New Jersey, which is the home of the 1-800-GAMBLER addiction hotline.

...

"On a recent Monday evening, Mr. Carton stood with a microphone in a lecture hall at the LaPenta School of Business at Iona University in New Rochelle, N.Y. For an hour, he implored the 40 or so students in attendance not to follow in his footsteps.

“I’m not here to tell you not to gamble,” he said. “But I am here to tell you that, if you allow it, gambling can ruin your life.”

"The event was presented by FanDuel, the largest online sports book in the country. Mr. Carton is on his second contract as the company’s paid ambassador for “responsible gaming,” a relationship that, he admits, carries the appearance of conflict with his efforts to combat addiction. He insists the arrangement allows him to carry his message to a wider audience."

#####

See also Gamblers Anonymous  https://www.gamblersanonymous.org/ga/

Gambling on sports, by and on athletes

 Now that sports betting is legal, and apps allow people to bet on particular events within a game as it unfolds, there is concern that players could be (illegally) incentivized to under-perform in order to cause some bets to become winning bets.

The WSJ has the story:

America Made a Huge Bet on Sports Gambling. The Backlash Is Here.  Less than six years after a Supreme Court ruling paved the way for widespread legal sports gambling in the U.S., sports leagues face an onslaught of scandals related to betting.  By Joshua Robinson, , Jared Diamond,  and Robert O'Connell

"American sports spent more than a century keeping gambling as far away as possible, in the name of preserving competitive purity and repelling scandal and corruption. 

"Now, less than six years after the Supreme Court opened the door for states to embrace legal sports betting, major U.S. leagues are already confronting the darker sides of sports betting with alarming frequency. And at the heart of the problems is the population whose ability to bet on sports is the most severely curbed: the athletes themselves.

...

"The situation has become worrisome enough that National Collegiate Athletic Association president Charlie Baker on Wednesday amped up his organization’s call for a nationwide ban on bets on the performance of individual college athletes. 

...

“All of the positive benefits and additional fan engagement that could potentially come from sports betting mean nothing if we’re not protecting the integrity of the game,” Marquest Meeks, MLB’s deputy general counsel for sports betting and compliance, said in an interview last summer.

"Gambling scandals have long tainted sports. The 1919 Black Sox scandal involved eight players accused of throwing the World Series for money. Baseball superstar Pete Rose received a lifetime ban for betting on baseball, a penalty that has blocked the game’s all-time hits leader from the Hall of Fame. Point-shaving scandals have periodically roiled college basketball, and NBA referee Tim Donaghy went to prison for betting on games he officiated.

...

"Odds are now openly discussed on live broadcasts. Ads for betting apps seem to appear during every commercial break and are plastered around stadiums and arenas. Sports leagues even have gambling-focused programming on their official networks. 

...

"What’s at stake now is the promise that lies at the very center of the sports experience: Fans and participants must believe that what they are seeing is true. Yet as the leagues and the gamblers grow closer together, the mere suggestion that players could be motivated to manipulate outcomes has been enough to create fresh doubts. 

...

"Since the prohibition on sports gambling was lifted, leagues that had once viewed betting as an existential threat to their integrity scrambled to partner with gambling companies and brought them into the tent. This winter, Los Angeles Lakers superstar LeBron James became a brand ambassador for DraftKings, where he will dispense picks for football games. The NBA itself also announced a new feature designed to mesh the betting experience with live action: Fans watching games on League Pass, the flagship streaming platform, would be able to opt in to view betting odds on the app’s interface and click through to place wagers.

"Nothing, however, made the American marriage between sports and betting more public than what took place in the Nevada desert in February: The NFL held its first ever Super Bowl in Las Vegas.

...

“To half the world, I’m just helping them make money on DraftKings,” [Indiana Pacers point guard Tyrese] Haliburton said Tuesday evening, naming one of the league’s partners. “I’m a prop.” He was referring to so-called proposition bets, in which gamblers can place wagers on specific outcomes such as how many points a player scores or rebounds he grabs."

Gambling in video games--entry level gambling for minors?

 In-game gambling for video game tools has become an unregulated form of online gambling that may provide minors with their first gambling fix...

The Guardian has the story:

‘It’s rotting young people’s brains’: the murky world of gambling in video games. In-game purchases of bonus items have long been available. But now gamers are being lured into casino-style betting to win them.  by Rob Davies

"For the uninitiated, “skins” are virtual items within a computer game that can be bought for money, or won as a reward for gameplay. Skins might be devastating weapons, a snazzy uniform for a character or – in a football game – a player who could be the missing link to complete an all-conquering team.

...

"Typically, skins are contained in “loot boxes” or “cases”, which gamers pay small sums for without knowing what they will get.

"Loot boxes have already become a lightning rod for controversy due to their gambling-style mechanism, although the UK government has refused to recognise them as gambling products.

"While skins can be found in loot boxes, they can also be bought in the online marketplace operated by online gaming platform Steam – the medium through which many games such as CS:GO are played.

"Through that marketplace, skins can also be transferred between players and into the game. There, competitors can use them to gain an advantage, or just for cosmetic effect.

"What bothered Jeff [a professional video gamer], however, was not so much the loot boxes or the skins in themselves but another phenomenon that they have spawned: skins gambling.

'This works like any other casino. You load up your account with funds, place a bet, watch the graphics spin and either win or lose.

"The big difference in this case is that the casino taking your bet has no gambling licence and, in some cases, no reliable mechanism to stop under-18s getting their first taste of gambling – via an online ecosystem that is, to many parents, a total mystery

...

"Some skins carry enormous price tags in the real world. One website that tracks skin prices values a “Gungnir” sniper rifle, available in the CS:GO game, at more than $18,000. A knife – a “factory new, case-hardened Karambit, pattern 387 (blue gem)” – is reputedly the most expensive CS:GO skin in history, attracting a $1.5m offer that its owner turned down. Further down the scale, guns, outfits, stickers and knives sell for hundreds of dollars.

...

"it can be literally child’s play to turn skins into hard cash. To use sites such as KeyDrop, players must have an account on the Steam platform, which was created by the maker of CS:GO, US-based game developer Valve.

"Steam has its own marketplace, where gamers can trade skins. Gift cards to help gamers buy such skins are big business at Christmas, an obvious choice for anyone with a relative or a friend who loves nothing more than spending hours in front of a game.

"The Steam marketplace is self-contained, at least initially. You can load cash into your wallet and use those funds to buy skins from Steam or from other gamers. You cannot, however, withdraw the funds. In ­theory, therefore, the marketplace is not somewhere you could properly cash out any winnings.

"But an industry has sprung up: third-party marketplaces such as SkinBaron and Skinwallet, where you can sell skins, including those won on gambling sites, for real money."

The NFL embraces sports gambling for fans but not for players

 The Superbowl is in Las Vegas, and gambling is being embraced by the NFL for fans, but not for players and other NFL employees.

The NYT has the story:

N.F.L.’s Rapid Embrace of Gambling Creates Mixed Signals. The league is pushing to popularize and benefit from sports betting while still trying to guard against the potential pitfalls for its players, employees and fans.  By Jenny Vrentas

"Since the Supreme Court struck down, in 2018, a federal law that effectively banned sports betting outside Nevada — a prohibition once backed by the N.F.L.’s commissioner, Roger Goodell — the N.F.L. has embraced the gambling industry. It has forged partnerships reportedly worth nearly $1 billion over five years with sports betting companies, and permitted a sports book to operate inside one of its stadiums. Now it even has a team in Las Vegas, which the league shunned for decades because any affiliation was seen as a threat to the integrity of the game.

"Yet the embedding of sports gambling so quickly into the culture of the league has resulted in jarring contradictions. The N.F.L. is pushing to popularize and benefit from sports betting while still guarding against the potential pitfalls that it long condemned. While the league donates money to promote responsible gambling, its broadcasts are peppered with advertisements for sports betting companies. The N.F.L. is part of a growing apparatus that encourages casual fans to regularly place wagers on games, while punishing league employees — most notably players — who might do the same.

...

"Americans legally wagered more than $115 billion on sports in 2023, according to the American Gaming Association, the national trade group for the gambling industry. Nearly 25 million more Americans bet on sports last year than in 2018, the group said, and the number of states where betting on sports is legal will reach 38 this year.

...

"[A] report projected that around $1.5 billion would be legally wagered on next Sunday’s Super Bowl, more than 1 percent of the money bet legally on all sports last year.

...

"n 2021, the year the N.F.L. struck deals with its three sports book partners, it gave the National Council on Problem Gambling a three-year, $6.2 million grant that was used in part to modernize the help line that appears at the bottom of betting ads. The league’s contribution is a small fraction of what gambling companies pay to be part of the N.F.L.’s marketing apparatus, but it is the largest grant in the council’s history and exceeded the nonprofit’s grant total over the previous four years, according to tax filings.

...

"The league’s approach to gambling violations within its own ranks, though, remains punitive. For decades, sports leagues have believed that gambling could damage the integrity of results — with worries over a player’s throwing a game because of a bet, for instance — so the focus has been on enforcement and punishment over prevention and treatment.

"The N.F.L. prohibits league and team personnel from betting on any sport, while players are allowed to bet on sports other than the N.F.L., as long as they do not do so at the team facility or while on team or league business. While in Las Vegas for the Super Bowl, members of the Kansas City Chiefs and the San Francisco 49ers and the hundreds of league employees, many staying at Caesars Palace, are not permitted to play casino games and may enter a sports book only if passing through to another part of the hotel."

Money Laundering

 Financial regulation plays a big role in law enforcement, by helping investigators to follow the money, which is often easier than following the crimes that generate the money. So, for example, drug dealers and others have trouble turning their income (which is often in cash) into bank accounts that can be used to buy the things that legal money can buy.  Money laundering involves turning ill got gains into reportable income.  Gambling, it turns out, offers some possibilities: if I come into the casino with some cash, and come out with some cash, it's hard to prove that I'm paying tax on more than my winnings.

Here's a story that touches on that, from the WSJ:

Cantor Fitzgerald Gambling Affiliate to Pay $22.5 Million to Settle Probes. CG Technology is said to have admitted aiding and abetting illegal gambling and money laundering   By Kate O’Keeffe and Alexandra Berzon

"Cantor Fitzgerald LP’s sports-betting affiliate has agreed to pay $22.5 million in penalties and forfeiture to the U.S. government in conjunction with its involvement in illegal gambling and money laundering, according to people familiar with the matter.

...

"The agreement comes as the U.S. Treasury and Justice Departments have been increasingly focused in recent years on potential money-laundering violations at casinos. The probes generally center on how the gambling companies allegedly help to facilitate money laundering or fail to report suspicious activities.

...

"Two people who were running their own illegal bookmaking operations elsewhere laundered money through Cantor as part of this system, the people said."

Super (bowl) markets

 There's also a football game, but here are some other, related markets (gambling, advertising, deal making...).

Gambling:

WSJ: Watching the Super Bowl? Bettor Beware. It’s easier than ever for the average fan to bet on sports, even mid-game. But when it comes to winning, the odds are stacked. by Danny Funt

"Thanks to the profusion of online betting, sportsbooks are encouraging customers to bet during games—a category that is “growing exponentially,” Mr. Scott said. Chris Grove, partner emeritus at Eilers & Krejcik, said in the near future, in-game betting should account for the “overwhelming majority” of U.S. sportsbook revenue.

"Roughly half of bets on NFL games this season were placed after the opening kickoff. Customers can wager on lines that move with every play, as well as on short-term “prop” bets like, “Will this possession end in a touchdown?” 

...

"An even bigger source of growth for sportsbooks has been parlays, in which bettors string together multiple bets for the chance at a larger payout, but lose if any of the components fails to transpire. Bettors can now place same-game parlays, bundling wagers on, say, the winning team, the total points scored and a quarterback’s passing yards. (Naturally, sportsbooks offer in-game same-game parlays, too.)

"FanDuel, which controls about half of the national online betting market, according to Eilers & Krejcik, leads the industry due in part to its success capitalizing on parlays. Last October in Illinois, for example, seven out of every 10 bets placed at FanDuel was a parlay, according to data published by the state’s gaming board. FanDuel made about $29.60 for every $100 bet on parlays, compared with $4.80 for every $100 in non-parlay bets."

------------

Record 50 Million Americans to Wager $16B on Super Bowl LVII Press Release 

"A record 50.4 million American adults (20%) are expected to bet on Super Bowl LVII, a 61 percent increase from the record set in 2022, according to a new American Gaming Association (AGA) survey. Bettors plan to wager an estimated $16 billion on this year’s championship game, more than double last year’s estimates.

"With the expansion of legal sports betting, traditional Super Bowl wagers are expected to pass casual wagers for the first time ever:

"30 million American adults plan to place a traditional sports wager online, at a retail sportsbook or with a bookie, up 66 percent from 2022.

"28 million plan to bet casually with friends or as part of a pool or squares contest, up 50 percent from 2022."

********

Advertising:

The 2023 Super Bowl Ads Will Feature Booze, Betting and Jesus. Alcohol is an open field after Anheuser-Busch InBev gave up category exclusivity, while cryptocurrency is set to be a no-show. By Megan Graham

"The Super Bowl still regularly draws an audience of around 100 million people, making it TV’s biggest event of the year and advertising’s biggest night.

"Fox this week said it has sold out of advertising for its Super Bowl broadcast, with some 30-second slots selling for more than $7 million"

----------------

The Backstory to the Jesus Ad Coming to the Super Bowl. The political underpinnings of this campaign are hiding beneath the surface. BY MOLLY OLMSTEAD

"The campaign is being run by something called The Signatry, a Kansas-based Christian foundation that exists, essentially, to connect donors (and their financial advisors) with causes in order to “inspire and facilitate revolutionary, biblical generosity.” According to Ministry Watch, an evangelical watchdog organization that scrutinizes the finances of Christian charities, in 2018, the foundation reported more than $1 billion in contributions. "

*******

Dealmaking by DEALBOOK NEWSLETTER:

"For most of America, the Super Bowl starts on Sunday evening. But for the deal makers who use the event as a backdrop for doing business, the real game starts days before kickoff.

"It’s not uncommon to attend exclusive dinners and parties during the week, and then jet out of town before the opening kickoff. “Once the game starts, it’s just a game,” said George Foster, a professor at Stanford Business School who directs the school’s sports management initiative. “It’s much more effective to get extended time fairly focused on the business relationship on Thursday, Friday and Saturday.”

...

Sex work (same link as Dealmaking):

"In December, Gov. Doug Ducey of Arizona, like many government officials preparing to host the Super Bowl before him, announced a statewide campaign to raise awareness of human trafficking, including sex trafficking, ahead of the big game. Though the claim that increased sex trafficking and sex work occurs during major sporting events like the Super Bowl has been debunked over and over and over and over and over again, anti-human trafficking campaigns often target these events.

"Campaigns by cities have been criticized by advocates for sex workers, who say such efforts often rely on law enforcement “raids.” More patrolling can lead to more arrests of sex workers who are not being trafficked, they say, as well as the possibility that victims of trafficking will be arrested.

"It’s also unclear whether campaigns to raise awareness about sex trafficking are effective at addressing it. “If we want to protect people who are being trafficked, we need to protect sex workers because they are the most vulnerable for that happening to them next,” Kristen DiAngelo, executive director of the Sex Workers Outreach Project in Sacramento, told The Washington Post ahead of last year’s Super Bowl."

Lobbying for sports gambling, with cigars and whisky

 Do addictions go together?  The NY Times has the story of how legalized (online, sports) gambling lobbyists wooed state legislators with whisky and cigars (and campaign contributions, which I guess can be addictive too...). Maybe Thanksgiving football can draw in more of the gathering if there's betting involved? (Not to mention whisky...)

Gambling has long been a repugnant transaction because the consequences of gambling addiction can be destructive for individuals and families. And betting on sports has been repugnant because of the danger that athletes will be drawn into fixing matches (even in once genteel sports like tennis).  Lobbying is a competitive sport too:

Cigars, Booze, Money: How a Lobbying Blitz Made Sports Betting Ubiquitous By Eric Lipton and Kenneth P. Vogel

"Less than five years ago, betting on sports in the United States was prohibited under federal law except in Nevada casinos and a smattering of venues in other states. Sports leagues argued that the ban safeguarded the integrity of American sports, while consumer watchdogs warned that legal gambling could turn fans into addicts. In countries like Britain, sports gambling free-for-alls had left trails of addiction.

"But in 2018, the Supreme Court ruled that the federal prohibition was unconstitutional.

"DraftKings and FanDuel, giants in the fast-growing field of fantasy sports, had already mobilized an army of former regulators and politicians to press for sports betting in state capitals. Soon, in a crucial reversal, sports leagues overcame their antipathy toward gambling, which they came to see as a way to keep increasingly distracted audiences tuned in. Casino companies also hopped on board.

...

"The results of the lobbying campaign have been stunning: 31 states and Washington, D.C., permit sports gambling either online or in person, and five more have passed laws that will allow such betting in the future.

...

"In May 2018, the Supreme Court struck down the federal ban on sports gambling, ruling it infringed on states’ rights."

*******

Here's a map:

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The NYT has these related stories:

Key Findings From The Times’ Investigation of Sports Betting. By David Enrich

"Four years ago, it was illegal to gamble on sports in most of the United States. Today, anyone who turns on the television or visits a sports website or shows up at a stadium is likely to be inundated with ads to bet, bet, bet."

How Colleges and Sports-Betting Companies ‘Caesarized’ Campus Life. by  Anna Betts, Andrew Little, Elizabeth Sander, Alexandra Tremayne-Pengelly and Walt Bogdanich

"Ever since the Supreme Court’s decision in 2018 to let states legalize such betting, gambling companies have been racing to convert traditional casino customers, fantasy sports aficionados and players of online games into a new generation of digital gamblers. Major universities, with their tens of thousands of alumni and a captive audience of easy-to-reach students, have emerged as an especially enticing target.

"So far, at least eight universities have become partners with online sports-betting companies, or sportsbooks, many in the last year, with more expected."

Desperate for Growth, Aging Casino Company Embraced ‘Degenerate Gambler’

Image By Emily Steel

"Mr. Portnoy rarely if ever mentions the bankruptcy. Yet he and his company, Barstool Sports, are urging their tens of millions of followers to dive into the fast-growing and lightly regulated world of online sports betting."

**********

And here's a story about gambling addiction from The Times of London, which points to online, in-game gambling as a particularly addiction-prone activity (especially during the current World Cup):

Big rise in gambling addictions putting suicidal young men in hospital. NHS lambasts ‘predatory’ betting firms amid 42% increase in demand for specialist clinics by Eleanor Hayward (Ungated summary here).

"The NHS is “picking up the tab” of the online betting industry, with a surge in suicidal gambling addicts turning up to A&E, doctors have warned."

...

"“People start gambling as soon as they wake up in the morning; they’re gambling in the shower, gambling while they’re driving to work.

...

"Gaskell suggested that doctors' surgeries should routinely ask new patients whether they gambled--in the same way they asked how much alcohol people drank in a week.

...

"Figures from the Gambling Commission show the majority of online betters place bets in play...Customers are able to wager lare sums of money multiple times in a matter of seconds on unfolding events.

...

"There are 400 suicides a year in England lnked to gambling."

Legal lotteries and illegal numbers games: some history

The NY Times published a nostalgic look back at the widespread illegal gambling on the "numbers" that preceded the introduction of a legal state run lottery, which eventually competed away the illegal game. It's a story of both market design, to produce a trustworthy lottery that could be run by criminals, and a story of how a legal market eventually replaced it (although, as I recall, only slowly...)

The Daily Lottery Was Originally a Harlem Game. Then Albany Wanted In.
The numbers were a sprawling, black-run business for decades.

"In the early 1920s, Casper Holstein, a black man from the Danish West Indies who worked as a porter for a Fifth Avenue store, liked to study the “Clearing House” totals published in a year’s worth of newspapers he’d saved. The Clearing House was an operation that managed the exchanges of money among New York City banks on a daily basis. It occurred to Holstein that the numbers printed were different every day.

"Until then, lottery games existed, but the winning numbers were often chosen in unreliable ways that could produce rigged results. According to the 2010 book “Playing the Numbers,” Holstein came up with an ingenious solution. Using the Clearing House totals to produce a random combination between 000 and 999, he came up with a daily three-digit winning number for a new kind of lottery game. His invention became known simply as the numbers.

It was an immediate hit and quickly created a sprawling underground economy that moved through Harlem and other black communities in the U.S. For 60 years, the numbers reigned supreme as New York City’s pre-eminent daily lottery game — until 1980, when the state decided it wanted in."
************
And here's a 2013 story, about how the numbers hung on for a while, but its customers got older and older:
Relics of the Bygone (and the Illegal)
The numbers game is dwindling, even in Harlem, once its stronghold, but it’s not obsolete.
"Back then, there were an estimated 100,000 numbers workers and more than 8,000 arrests a year. In neighborhoods like Harlem, the game became an element of black and Latino identity and culture. Black leaders called for black-owned rackets in the 1960s, and there were conflicts with the Mafia.

Several years later, with the state lottery offering a similar game, runners and numbers bankers openly protested in Manhattan. They feared the legal game would wipe out the rackets and their jobs. They were, for the most part, right."
*****************

I have an unreliable memory that I can't now confirm online that when I matriculated at Columbia University in 1968, the local weekly Harlem newspaper (probably the Amsterdam News) didn't publish any financial information except for a single number, which I recall not as the clearinghouse numbers described above, but something like the volume of trade on the New York Stock Exchange the previous day.  I remember naively inquiring why this should be the one number reported in a weekly newspaper, and it was explained to me that its last digits were the weekly number.  (I think it was published on the front page, but looking online at old photos of the Amsterdam News front page I don't see it.)  If anyone has a more reliable/correct memory, I'd be glad to hear of it.

Gambling and Sports

A class of repugnant transactions (gambling, subject to many legal restrictions designed to limit its availability) and  protected transactions (sports events, subject to many regulations designed to protect their integrity) have come a bit closer together through a recent Supreme Court decision about a complicated law.

Here's the news story from Inside Higher Ed:
Gambling on Sports Legal
The Supreme Court has opened the way for states to legalize betting on athletics, a defeat for the National Collegiate Athletic Association and professional leagues.

"The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday struck down a law that had forbidden gambling on college and professional sports outside Nevada."

The link above goes to the Supreme Court decision.
But what makes the law that they struck down complicated is that it didn't make sports betting a crime, rather it forbade States from allowing it.

Here's some legal commentary on the decision from a law firm involved in the case:
https://www.gibsondunn.com/supreme-court-strikes-down-federal-limits-on-sports-gambling/

"The Supreme Court held 7-2 that a federal law prohibiting States from authorizing sports betting violates the Tenth Amendment because it impermissibly commandeers state legislatures.

"Background: A federal law – the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act of 1992 (PASPA) – prohibits States from authorizing or licensing sports gambling.  In 2014, the New Jersey legislature repealed existing prohibitions on sports gambling at casinos and racetracks.  The NCAA and the four major professional sports leagues sued the State, arguing that the decision to allow sports gambling violated PASPA.

"Issue: Whether PASPA’s federal prohibition on state authorization of sports gambling violates the Tenth Amendment because it commandeers state legislatures.

"Court’s Holding: Yes.  PASPA unconstitutionally commandeers state legislatures by dictating the content of state law regarding sports gambling (i.e., preventing States from legalizing sports gambling).

“A more direct affront to state sovereignty is not easy to imagine.”

***********
Here's the Volokh conspiracy on possible broader implications of this decision

Broader Implications of the Supreme Court's Sports Gambling Decision
Commentators are right to suggest that Murphy v. NCAA will help sanctuary cities, but wrong to claim it is like to undermine federal laws restricting state taxes.

Repugnance watch: sports gambling is largely illegal, while fantasy sports leagues are thriving

Itai Fainmesser points me to this story in the NY Times, about how some things are illegal while similar things are legal--the legal distinction being between games of chance and games of skill:

Daily Fantasy Sports and the Hidden Cost of America’s Weird Gambling Laws

"An entire industry has emerged out of a legal loophole for something that looks a whole lot like sports gambling, which is illegal outside of Nevada and a few other states.
...
"The fantasy sports industry argues that its service is not gambling at all, but rather a game of skill. It’s the sort of game specifically allowed by most state laws and by a 2006 federal law restricting online gambling that carved out protections for fantasy sports leagues. The industry is right about that much. It is a skill, and it unquestionably rewards those who apply dogged analytics to assembling their fantasy lineups.

Although daily fantasy sports advertisements target casual fans, a disproportionate share of the contest entries — and even more disproportionate share of the winnings — go to people who play the game on a scale most armchair sports fans couldn’t imagine. An analysis of Major League Baseball contests by Ed Miller and Daniel Singer published in the Sports Business Journal found that 1.3 percent of fantasy players paid $9,100 in entry fees on average, accounting for 23 percent of all entry fees and 77 percent of all profits."

Virtual greyhound racing: technology meets repugnance

I've written before about how greyhound racing is a transaction that many find repugnant. The Economist reports that technology may be coming to the rescue: it's possible to gamble on computer generated virtual greyhound racing, conducted entirely on a computer screen (much as you could play virtual roulette, but apparently more exciting...)

They note that "the move from real dogs to virtual ones threatens to kill off a working-class pastime." (But note that in the picture there is a virtual crowd in the virtual stadium watching the virtual dogs...)

Greyhound racing: a repugnant transaction with shifting coalitions

Lots of animal lovers find dog races a repugnant transaction, and it has faced ballot measures and bans.
As you would expect, firms that ran dog races opposed such bans. But that is changing, as dog races become less profitable. However, what keeps them in business is that laws were passed allowing dog racing venues to offer other kinds of gambling, and these are profitable. But, as the NY Times recently reported, to keep the licences for the other, profitable kinds of gambling, "even though the races are losing millions of dollars each year, the owners are required to keep the greyhounds running six days a week."

Read the full story (and weep) here: Greyhound Races Face Extinction at the Hands of Casinos They Fostered