On Tuesday, Major League Baseball did something it has not done in 35 years: It banned an athlete for life for charges related to gambling on baseball. The player, Tucupita Marcano of the San Diego Padres, is not nearly as well known as Pete Rose, who was banned for life from baseball in 1989. But Marcano may not be the last player punished this way — or the most famous. Thanks to a Supreme Court decision in 2018 that opened the door for legal sports gambling nationwide (and abetted by current technology that allows bettors to place wagers on all sorts of outcomes from the phones in their pockets), sports gambling has infiltrated every corner of fandom. Companies like FanDuel and DraftKings advertise widely on sports sites and telecasts; the chance to wager instantly now seems ubiquitous beside online injury updates and game scoreboards. Pro leagues have happily embraced both the revenue and the fan engagement that gambling outlets deliver. But this gold rush brings the unavoidable threat — and increasingly the reality — of players, even superstars, being caught up in gambling scandals. At a glance, sports gambling could seem like a doubly inconsequential issue. Sports are a lucrative but entirely fabricated institution consisting of made-up games with arbitrary rules; who should care if people want to wager on how those games play out? But as Leigh Steinberg, a sports agent who represented superstar athletes in multiple sports (and who was reputedly the inspiration for the lead character in "Jerry Maguire"), points out in a guest essay for Opinion, integrity is the foundation of the cultural edifice of sports: Without it, the whole enterprise crumbles. That puts athletes in an especially perilous position, enduring the ire of fans and facing the temptation to place wagers themselves (or to share inside information with those who do). Several players have been banned or suspended already. They likely won't be the last. Here's what we're focusing on today:
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Wednesday, June 5, 2024
Opinion Today: Here come the sports betting scandals
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