The road to March Madness that culminates in a champion being crowned in One Shining Moment is almost here. Brackets will be busted as the annual rumble between Cinderellas and Blue Bloods thrills fans nationwide. Yet, while all of that is familiar, recent years have brought a new wrinkle, as the legalization of online sports betting has enabled a new level of excitement for basketball fans to enjoy the tournament.
Now, instead of hiding in the dark corners of shady offshore sites or working with underground bookies, many Americans can legally and safely make wagers while sitting on barstools and couches. Unfortunately, there are still too many puritanical politicians that want sports betting to be illegal, leaving many fans on the metaphorical bench.
Big government types appear to think they know best about how adults should spend their leisure time. Fortunately, they’re a shrinking minority. Only 11 states currently prohibit sports betting, and the legislatures of six more have introduced bills to legalize the practice. Nonetheless, even as online gaming prohibitions slip, some nanny state politicians are attempting to take a step backward toward legislating morality.
The case against online sports betting rests on a foundational misconception. The scale of the average participant’s involvement is dramatically exaggerated and distorted by detractors. In fact, the average monthly outlay for two-thirds of sports betters’ is less than $100, while only one in ten spends more than $500 per month and the vast majority spend less than $2 per quarter. This means that for the supermajority of bettors — the “casuals” — a monthly gambling tab comes to less than a daily latte drinker’s monthly coffee bill.
For further perspective, consider that the cost of subscription bundles — from streaming to gym memberships — paid for happily by the average American comes to $77 each month. Sports betting is not free — few pastimes are; but neither does it seem uncommonly expensive when considered alongside Americans’ other voluntary purchases.
This points to the obvious fact that sports betting is a consumable recreational product, not a means of money-making. The $10 a bettor places on a basketball game is intended not to be remunerative but to increase the bettor’s gametime enjoyment. The money spent serves the same purpose as the $10 (or, likely more) the same person might spend on a beer at a stadium or arena.
Other facially plausible objections to sports betting’s legalization are similarly overstated. Not withstanding a careful review, many fretful commentators — including the authors of this recent paper — seek to tar the proliferation of sports betting as a well-spring for gambling addiction. Unfortunately for anti-gambling advocates, the paper’s methodology fails basic scrutiny.
Good data on the topic remains scarce, writes the Reason Foundation’s Guy Bentley, but the experience of New Jersey, which legalized sports betting in 2018, and whose data can be trusted, contravenes nanny-statist assumptions. “In 2021, the latest year for which we have data, problem gambling in New Jersey was 5.6 percent,” Bentley reports. “But in 2017, before sports betting was legal, New Jersey’s problem gambling rate was 6.3 percent.” Whatever the causes of this 0.7 percent decrease, it testifies against the notion that legalization precipitates an epidemic of addiction. Not to be missed is the fact that New Jersey’s numbers are higher than the national average of 1% according to the NCPG. Indeed, at a recent debate, even a critic of sports betting admitted that “problem gambling rates…are static.”
Bentley notes further that the American experience legalizing lotteries and casinos in the 1980s and ‘90s, and the United Kingdom and Australia’s experience legalizing sports betting, suggest further that addiction will not spike should the liberalization of gambling stateside proceed.
At root, the American experiment presumes that, absent a compelling public interest to the contrary, the government has no right to impose its preferences on the citizenry. The composite right to pursue happiness encompasses more than just political and economic rights. The right to choose one’s recreational pursuits — with all its consequences for one’s quality of life and character — lies well within the boundaries of the sphere of personal freedom governed rightfully by the individual, not the state. Virtue cannot be coerced. The fact that the presence and popularity of sports betting rankles the moral sensibilities of the kind of person who wants the government to excise his personal hobbyhorses from American culture does not constitute a just license for lawmakers to treat their constituents as parents do children.
Americans choose to spend their disposable income and free time in many ways — many questionable ways, even. Nobody justly can be forced to like, endorse, or refrain from decrying any given recreation. Likewise, nobody justly can be barred from partaking in his chosen leisure activities (unless those activities harm others). Drinking alcohol, eating food, scrolling social media, playing video games — all these activities ruin lives and livelihoods, when taken to excess. Yet only the most puritanical would favor their regulation or abolition. Besides the fact that no states ban these behaviors, little distinguishes their respective cases from that of sports betting.
States should get out of the way and allow fans to enjoy March Madness, the NBA or any other sport they follow. Online gaming should not become the casualty of lawmakers’ personal tastes or preferences.
