{"id":80,"date":"2018-09-29T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-09-29T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gbc.ng\/sports-betting-heroes-battle-forces-of-evil-at-house-hearing\/"},"modified":"2018-09-29T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2018-09-29T00:00:00","slug":"sports-betting-heroes-battle-forces-of-evil-at-house-hearing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gbc.ng\/index.php\/sports-betting-heroes-battle-forces-of-evil-at-house-hearing\/","title":{"rendered":"SPORTS BETTING HEROES BATTLE FORCES OF EVIL AT HOUSE HEARING."},"content":{"rendered":"

Thursday\u2019s sports betting hearing in the US congress was not unlike\u00a0The Lord of the Rings<\/em>, in that the forces of darkness significantly outnumbered the wagering heroes.<\/p>\n

Thursday saw the House of Representatives\u2019 Judiciary Committee\u2019s Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, Homeland Security, and Investigations tackle the issue of what role the federal government should \u2013 or shouldn\u2019t \u2013 have in overseeing sports betting activity in the wake of the Supreme Court\u00a0striking down the federal betting ban<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Subcommittee chair Rep.\u00a0Jim Sensenbrenner<\/strong>\u00a0(R-WI) opened the proceedings by noting the lack of any real media presence, given the hearing was taking place at the same time as the Senate\u2019s far more consequential hearing into whether a Supreme Court nominee was a rat-bastard frat-boy rapist.<\/p>\n

Sensenbrenner immediately copped to his impartiality on the subject of betting, saying that the \u201ctemptation is there to throw games\u201d and unless something \u2013 exactly what went unspecified \u2013 is done, Sensenbrenner foresaw \u201ca huge amount of trouble in the future\u201d as legal betting spread across the land.<\/p>\n

Next up was Rep.\u00a0Bob Goodlatte<\/strong>\u00a0(R-VI), one of the architects of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA), who rejected the view that gambling was a \u201cvictimless activity\u201d and claimed that online gambling was \u201cmore destructive\u201d to families than if a brick-and-mortar casino opened on the other side of their white picket fence.<\/p>\n

Goodlatte claimed to be a supporter of state\u2019s rights, but also claimed that state gambling regulations were impossible to enforce in this modern age of newfangled gizmos. Speaking of, Goodlatte rubbished the concept of geo-fencing, saying that the best its proponents could say was that the technology \u201callegedly\u201d works.<\/p>\n

Rep.\u00a0Jerry Nadler<\/strong>\u00a0(D-NY) concluded the committee members\u2019 opening remarks by saying that the feds have a responsibility to ensure that sports are \u201cfree of fraud\u201d and that the games are \u201con the up and up.\u201d<\/p>\n

WITNESS TESTIMONY<\/strong>
\n The first of the five invited guests to speak was\u00a0Jocelyn Moore<\/strong>, the National Football League\u2019s VP of communications and public affairs, who warned of a state-level \u201cregulatory race to the bottom\u201d that practically begged for federal intervention, conveniently ignoring the fact that the NFL felt no particular urge to oversee the legal wagering going on in Nevada over these many decades.<\/p>\n

Moore recited the NFL\u2019s longstanding demands, including the mandatory use of league-supplied data for betting purposes, the ability to veto bookmakers offering \u201crisky\u201d in-play betting markets and protection of the league\u2019s intellectual property.<\/p>\n

Next up was the reliably hyperbolic\u00a0Les Bernal<\/strong>, director of Stop Predatory Gambling, who has made it his life\u2019s mission to get state governments out of the gambling business. We\u2019ll spare you the bulk of Bernal\u2019s testimony, but can\u2019t resist repeating his lines that \u201cstates are laboratories of fraud, exploitation and budgetary shell-games\u201d and that \u201cno illegal gambling operator is putting liens on people\u2019s houses.\u201d (On that last point, touch\u00e9.)<\/p>\n

Legal betting\u2019s first backer was\u00a0Sara Slane<\/strong>, the\u00a0American Gaming Association<\/strong>\u2019s senior VP of public affairs, who argued that state and tribal gaming regulators were already well equipped to adapt to include sports betting in their areas of oversight.<\/p>\n

Slane noted that the feds have no input into oversight of slots, table games and other gambling products, and thus there was \u201cno need to overcomplicate or interfere with system that is already working.\u201d<\/p>\n

Slane added that there was also no need for the feds to legally mandate official sports data deals between leagues and operators. If there are any data deals, they should be done between the leagues and individual operators.<\/p>\n

Jon Bruning<\/strong>, a former Attorney General (Nebraska) and now a counselor at the\u00a0Coalition to Stop Internet Gambling<\/strong>\u00a0(CSIG), steered the ship back on its crazy course by claiming that the feds have \u201ceffectively abandoned\u201d enforcement of UIGEA and demanding that the\u00a0Wire Act be \u201crestored\u201d<\/strong>\u00a0to its pre-2011 DOJ opinion<\/strong>\u00a0era of zero tolerance for onine gambling.<\/p>\n

Given that CSIG is funded by Las Vegas Sands\u2019 boss\u00a0Sheldon Adelson<\/strong>, it was appropriate that Bruning utilized the same \u2018I have a smartphone\u2019 prop comedy so often used by Sands\u2019Andy Abboud<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong>at previous hearings to illustrate, er, something about online gambling being \u201cuniquely susceptible\u201d to criminality, public corruption and terrorism.<\/p>\n

The witness testimony concluded with\u00a0Becky Harris<\/strong>, chair of the Nevada Gaming Control Board, who noted that Nevada has been dealing with legal wagering for decades without any problems. Harris also pointed out that onerous federal regulations would only serve to drive punters to the more attractive offerings of internationally licensed online operators.<\/p>\n

Q&A<\/strong>
\n When it came time for interaction twixt legislators and witnesses, Sensenbrenner turned Harris\u2019 regulation comments on Slane, wondering why any bettor wouldn\u2019t opt to wager with international sites that don\u2019t alert the IRS regarding a punter\u2019s tax obligations.<\/p>\n

Slane claimed that 70% of bettors currently wagering with international operators wanted to move to US-licensed books, but they wouldn\u2019t shift if the feds \u201chamstrung\u201d US books with heavy taxes and overly restrictive regulations.<\/p>\n

Addressing Bernal, Nadler claimed that \u201csociopathology\u201d had increased wherever off-track betting was permitted, and Bernal claimed that all that was necessary was to \u201ctake the government out of\u201d the equation, end all gambling marketing and the urge to gamble will somehow \u201cdissipate.\u201d<\/p>\n

Slane rebutted this exchange, saying eliminating regulatory oversight \u201cdoes not make a whole lot of sense to me\u201d and that legal operators can work with customers to reduce problem gambling. Bruning played his one-note instrument again, saying only land-based operators can properly vet their customers, while online was \u201ca whole different thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

[At this point, we pause to note the blonde woman sitting directly behind Bruning, who perpetually nodded and smiled every time Bruning spoke, much like a devout parishioner during a particularly stirring evangelical preacher\u2019s sermon. One half expected her to jump to her feet and bellow \u2018can I get an amen\u2019 but sadly it didn\u2019t happen.]<\/p>\n

Rep. Goodlatte didn\u2019t so much ask questions as continue his opening statement, saying he wanted to \u201cmodernize\u201d the Wire Act and properly enforce UIGEA. Bruning used this moment to point out that New Jersey regulators had the nerve to\u00a0issue a license to PokerStars<\/strong>, who he claimed were \u201cstill on the lam\u201d from their 2011 federal indictments, despite the original owners having sold out in 2014.<\/p>\n

Rep.\u00a0Cedric Richmond<\/strong>\u00a0(D-LA) wanted to know whether all gambling operators \u2013 online or land-based \u2013 could be restricted to accepting only debit cards, not credit cards, in order to protect citizens from going into debt. Bernal claimed \u201cgetting you to chase your losses\u201d was actually all gambling operators\u2019 \u201cbusiness model,\u201d which we took as a \u2018no\u2019 response.<\/p>\n

[At this point, the livestream began flashing intermittently, effectively rendering the testimony indecipherable, which we assumed was God answering the blonde woman\u2019s prayers by blocking anyone hearing any favorable gambling references.]<\/p>\n

When the signal resumed, Rep.\u00a0Hakeem Jeffries<\/strong>\u00a0(D-NY) expressed concern that legal wagering would pose a threat to the safety of athletes, referees and their families from bettors irate over a dropped pass or ill-timed penalty.<\/p>\n

The NFL\u2019s Moore somehow steered her response into another call for preserving game integrity, without acknowledging the fact that BETTING IS ALREADY TAKING PLACE and there have yet to be hordes of angry Manson Families besieging players\u2019 homes.<\/p>\n

Rep.\u00a0Martha Roby<\/strong>\u00a0(R-AL) wondered whether college athletes could be more susceptible to taking money in a legal betting world. Slane noted that the NCAA doesn\u2019t pay its athletes, and appeared to suggest that colleges monitor athletes\u2019 financial transactions to look for any activity that might indicate something untoward.<\/p>\n

BIG FINISH<\/strong>
\n Sensenbrenner brought the festivities to a close by noting that the hearing was primarily informational, but claimed that everyone was in agreement that Congressional inaction was the \u201cworst possible\u201d reaction following the Supreme Court ruling, and that Congress should probably enact both \u201cshort-term and more permanent\u201d solutions.<\/p>\n

It remains to be seen whether there\u2019s sufficient appetite outside the subcommittee\u2019s narrow confines for Congress to proceed with actively regulating sports betting. Certainly, few impartial observers expect any concrete action in the dwindling days of the current legislative session, which means I wasted my time watching this fiasco, and you wasted your time reading this recap.<\/p>\n

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