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June 27, 2018
Society is like a wave barreling toward a shore that’s an infinity away.
It goes up and down, sometimes picking up steam and sometimes losing it.
It is sometimes bigger, sometimes smaller, but it’s always evolving and changing as it rolls toward its ending destination which it will never see.
What I mean is that there are things that are acceptable today that would have never been accepted 10, 20, 50, 100 or 200 years ago.
We’ve made huge strides on race relations in the past century. Heck, we have become more accepting of homosexuality in just the past decade. The list of changes are endless and the progress made is taken for granted, but still is phenomenal nonetheless.
In today’s column, I’d like to offer up one more change. It’s not near as significant as the other examples I’ve listed above, but it’s something that was once heavily frowned upon, but is now becoming more and more accepted.
It’s a revenue generator and could provide hundreds of millions of dollars to empty state cupboards that have taken on dust because they’ve been drained for so long.
It’s time that Louisiana joins the wave of change forming around the United States and learns to accept sports betting.
It’s time our legal leaders take advantage of the Supreme Court’s recent decision, which gives state’s the power to adopt their own betting laws and with that power, the state needs to join others around the country in passing legislation which makes sports betting legal around the state.
There are literally no arguments against sports betting that outweigh the benefits it would bring to Louisiana.
Let’s start with revenue.
The government can concoct a plan with casinos where they will get a huge slice of the pie once legislation is enacted.
Maybe they’ll get a penny off every bet placed. Maybe they will get a percentage of casino profits. Maybe there will be a flat tax levied onto casinos. There are many ways to skin a cat.
But all of them equal money … lots and lots of money for a state that is starved for it.
Sports betting is a BILLION dollar industry around the world. In Las Vegas alone, casino profits for sports books total $5 billion per year. Again, that’s BILLION with a capital B.
Las Vegas had a monopoly on the market with federal laws banning sports betting around the country except in Nevada.
But the Supreme Court ruled recently that the power to set those laws should belong to the states and since that declaration, several states – including Mississippi – have spoken out and said they are going to make sports betting legal in their states.
Books are already open in Delaware and New Jersey. Mississippi said they are planning to be open and in operation before the start of the 2018 football season this fall.
In true Louisiana political fashion, we are behind the 8-ball and late to the party – even though we have the infrastructure to pull this off with casinos in place and a sports-craved populous.
The governmental and financial reasons speak for themselves.
But selfishly, I’m not afraid to admit it. I want books to be made legal because … it just makes the games more fun.
Look, I am one of the stingiest people I’ve ever known. I don’t waste much money (except on the occasional baseball cap).
But I do like to put a potato chip or two on games just to add a little bit more excitement to it.
People agree with me.
Offshore sportsbooks dominate the market, generating $400 billion worth of bets each year. Not all of that action is in the United States, but the majority of it is because betting is legal around the globe, so the only way to place wagers here is through those global books.
With an offshore book, there is no benefit to anyone except the pockets of the bookie and with $400 billion in action, it’s obvious that the market is there.
So why in the heck are we not trying to take advantage of it all and get our slice of the pie?
I get it. Gambling addiction is a real thing. But don’t throw sports betting in my face as a detriment to gambling addiction when there are legalized poker machines at every turn.
I get it. There are concerns about integrity of games being compromised. That’s hogwash. In the 1950s, sure, this was a concern. Athletes were paid like common people then. Now, they make hundreds of millions of dollars. They don’t need that path to find riches.
And look, because of their financial power, if an athlete wanted to cheat, he/she’d just get a lackey to fly to Vegas and place a bet anyway.
Irresponsibility and fear of a small minority of abusers is not reason enough to deny the majority.
The only reason sports betting isn’t legal is because “that’s just how it’s always been done.”
That’s irresponsible government. Imagine how shameful the world would be if we always did things “just the way they’ve always been done.”
This makes too much sense and the iron is red-hot right now.
It’s time to strike and bring this untapped resource to Louisiana.
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