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Showing posts with label sports betting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sports betting. Show all posts
Thursday, February 17, 2022
What you should know about the national headlines our members made last week
Saturday, February 12, 2022
New plan to open a casino inside every Massachusetts home
In Massachusetts many citizens got involved in the movement to stop casinos because they opposed a casino where they lived.
Today there is a lobbying effort underway for state government to sponsor online gambling which will ultimately open a casino and lottery retailer right inside your home and on your smart phone, as well as for everyone else in your community.
Attorney General Maura Healey's office has proposed an initiative legalizing online gambling by regulations, a political strategy that contrasts the actions of the New York and Illinois Attorney Generals who have acted to shut down online gambling operations in their states.
The Attorney General's proposed regulations represent the biggest expansion of gambling in Massachusetts history. While it has been presented to the public as a bid to regulate online fantasy sports gambling, the end game for gambling interests is to offer more extreme forms of gambling to citizens through the internet.
Casino companies like MGM and Caesars have unsuccessfully lobbied for internet gambling to be legalized at the federal level. Authorizing DFS would provide gambling interests like these and others a back door way to bring in internet casino gambling.
Legislation was recently filed in the Massachusetts Legislature to do just that. It's also why when the Mass Gambling Commission released its review of so-called "Daily Fantasy Sports" this week, it also looked at other forms of online gambling.
I urge you to please share your comments about this issue with Attorney General Healey and her staff by Friday, January 22. Here is the info about her proposal to introduce internet gambling. Comments can be emailed to
A few items to help you learn more about the topic:
1) Read our national report.
2) Here is a colorful, recently published New York Times Magazine story titled “How the Daily Fantasy Sports Industry Turns Fans Into Suckers.”
3) Our testimony presented at the AG's hearing this past Tuesday.
4) National political comedian John Oliver's review of online fantasy sports gambling on his HBO show Last Week Tonight. (If the image below doesn't show in your email, watch the segment here.)
We believe Attorney General Healey, her staff and others who propose to introduce internet gambling into Massachusetts are better leaders than this initiative demonstrates.
Best,
Les
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Les Bernal
National Director
Build a more humane and just society: end government-sponsored gambling because it is dishonest, financially damaging to citizens and contributes to rising inequality of opportunity.
Sunday, November 18, 2018
Big victories against predatory gambling at the ballot box on Election Day Tuesday
There were some major victories against predatory gambling at the ballot box on Election Day Tuesday:
1) Florida citizens voted overwhelmingly to put the power to decide gambling expansion in the hands of the people instead of the Legislature. The state group No Casinos Florida organized the referendum and led the fight to pass it.
2) The people of Florida also voted to abolish greyhound dog racing after years of work by the greyhound protection organization Grey2K.
3) Idaho voters rejected the deceptive proposal to legalize slot machines at Idaho race tracks. Our chapter Stop Predatory Gambling Idaho played a key role in educating citizens about the issue.
4) In a history-making referendum, an Illinois community that introduced video gambling reversed that policy through a binding ballot question. Voters in Forest Park, Illinois shut down video gambling machines in their community.
There were also two efforts that did not go our way on Tuesday. In Arkansas, out-of-state gambling interests spent millions of dollars to initiate a referendum to pass regional casinos and then saturate the state with campaign advertising. And in Louisiana, sports gambling operators spent more than $1 million to lure voters in some state parishes to support "daily fantasy sports" gambling. It was a blatantly deceitful attempt to force online gambling into people's homes by disguising it as something harmless.
2) The people of Florida also voted to abolish greyhound dog racing after years of work by the greyhound protection organization Grey2K.
3) Idaho voters rejected the deceptive proposal to legalize slot machines at Idaho race tracks. Our chapter Stop Predatory Gambling Idaho played a key role in educating citizens about the issue.
4) In a history-making referendum, an Illinois community that introduced video gambling reversed that policy through a binding ballot question. Voters in Forest Park, Illinois shut down video gambling machines in their community.
There were also two efforts that did not go our way on Tuesday. In Arkansas, out-of-state gambling interests spent millions of dollars to initiate a referendum to pass regional casinos and then saturate the state with campaign advertising. And in Louisiana, sports gambling operators spent more than $1 million to lure voters in some state parishes to support "daily fantasy sports" gambling. It was a blatantly deceitful attempt to force online gambling into people's homes by disguising it as something harmless.
I'm so proud to be a part of this just and important fight with you to improve the lives of the American people with compassion and fairness. Thank you!
Best,
Best,
________________________________
Who We Are —
- A 501c3 non-profit based in Washington, DC, we are a national government reform network of individuals and organizations from across the U.S.
- We believe in improving the lives of the American people with compassion and fairness, freeing us from the lower standard of living, exploitation, and fraud that commercialized gambling spreads.
- We are one of the most diverse organizations in the United States, one in which conservatives and progressives work side-by-side with with a common national purpose.
What We Stand For —
- We believe everyone should have a fair opportunity to get ahead and improve their economic standing.
- We believe every person’s life has worth and that no one is expendable.
- We believe that a good society depends on the values of honesty, concern for others, mutual trust, self-discipline, sacrifice, and a work ethic that connects effort and reward.
- We believe no government body should depend on predatory gambling to fund its activities.
If you share our beliefs, please help sustain our work by making a tax-deductible, financial gift today of $10 or more.
Monday, January 2, 2017
Casino Vulture in the White House
Transition: Gambling interests seek friend in Trump
The industry awaits policy positions from the president-elect and former casino owner on Internet gambling, sports betting and daily fantasy sports.
Donald Trump will be the first U.S. president to have ever owned a casino, and the gambling industry is wondering how he will handle three major issues: Internet gambling, sports betting and daily fantasy sports.
The industry has sent its wish list to the president-elect. The American Gaming Association told The Associated Press it has asked Trump for fewer regulations, approval of sports betting, a crackdown on illegal gambling, tax reform and immigration policies that don't dry up the flow of overseas gamblers - and workers - to U.S. casinos.
"President Trump, his administration and Congress will unquestionably implement policies that will directly impact our industry for years to come," Whitaker Askew, the association's vice president, told the AP.
Kirk Blalock, a lobbyist who worked for the George W. Bush administration, said Trump "comes to the table with a good, solid understanding of how the industry works and what the challenges are."
Just three states - New Jersey, Nevada and Delaware - allow Internet gambling, and well-financed opponents, backed by billionaire casino magnate and Trump backer Sheldon Adelson, want to ban it nationwide.
Trump and his daughter, Ivanka, formed a company in New Jersey to explore the possibility of offering Internet gambling in New Jersey before the state legalized it in 2013, but they never applied for a license to do it.
In a brief interview in September, Trump told the AP he had not settled on a position regarding online gambling.
His transition team did not respond to several recent requests for comment. The gaming association does not take a position on Internet gambling.
Sports betting is currently legal in four states: Nevada, Oregon, Delaware and Montana. And dozens of states are grappling with whether daily fantasy sports, in which players put up money to compete with each other to assemble teams of athletes who accrue points based on their real-world performances, constitutes a game of skill that does not need to be regulated, or gambling, which does.
In a November 2015 interview with Fox Sports 1, Trump indicated he would not oppose sports betting or daily fantasy sports.
Trump owned three casinos in Atlantic City, as well as one in Indiana for a time. Two of his former Atlantic City casinos, Trump Plaza and the Trump Taj Mahal, have closed. The third, Trump Marina, was sold to Texas billionaire Tilman Fertitta, who now runs it as the Golden Nugget.
Gambling industry eyes Trump policies
ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. — Donald Trump will be the first U.S. president to have ever owned a casino, and thegambling industry is wondering how he ...
Gambling industry hopes casino mogul in White House pays off
Donald Trump will be the first U.S. president to have ever owned a casino, and the gambling industry is wondering how he will handle three major ...
Sunday, August 7, 2016
Pete Iorizzo: Fantasy games pave way for sports betting
Pete Iorizzo: Fantasy games pave way for sports betting
Updated 7:34 pm, Saturday, August 6, 2016
If daily fantasy sports isn't gambling, then I'm going to be the starting quarterback for the New York Jets this season.
The bill signed into law by Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Wednesday makes it legal to win or lose money — or ... you know ... gamble — based on the performance of your imaginary team of real players.
Lawmakers essentially ran an end-around play to elude another state law that makes games of "chance" illegal, instead defining daily fantasy sports as games of "skill."
Please. If you've had your fantasy football season waylaid by a balky hamstring, then you know that even the geekiest stat-heads can't succeed without some good fortune.
To be clear, though, this isn't to argue that daily fantasy sports should be illegal.
Sure, I can think of better things to do with your paycheck than letting it ride on the Arizona Cardinals' kicker and Cleveland Browns' running back. But who am I — and who is the state of New York — to tell you how to spend your money? Some of us collect stamps, some of us have FanDuel accounts. To each his own.
But defining lottery games, daily fantasy sports and horse racing as legal forms of entertainment while prohibiting bets on the Cowboys-Steelers game as a threat to civil society is so blatantly hypocritical that it's not sustainable.
It won't happen overnight, but the real takeaway from the state's thumbs-up to daily fantasy sports should be that we've taken a step closer to fully legalized sports wagering.
The major hurdle remains a 1992 federal law called the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA), which bans most forms of sports wagering in all but four states.
That law already has been challenged by New Jersey, where in 2012 Gov. Chris Christie signed a bill legalizing sports betting in the state. That's not to say there is now fully legalized sports betting in New Jersey. The state has lost suits from the four major sports leagues that have argued New Jersey is in violation of the 1992 federal law, though the appeals process continues.
But this is a case in which the court of public opinion could factor significantly. With public pressure and lobbying from the major sports leagues, Congress could change the 1992 law, an outcome that isn't all that far-fetched, several legal experts tell me.
Expanding the right to bet on sports seems to be one of the few issues on which most Americans agree. An estimated 57.4 million people play daily fantasy sports in the United States and Canada, according to the Fantasy Sports Trade Association. And each year an estimated $400 billion is wagered illegally.
Guess what: People like to bet on sports.
And though the major sports leagues vehemently have resisted New Jersey's push to have the federal law struck down, their opposition is much more nuanced than it might appear.
Many professional sports teams now are invested in daily fantasy companies, a sign they're not queasy about getting cozy with wagering. NBA commissioner Adam Silver even wrote an op-ed for the New York Times in 2014 calling for more widespread legalization. The NHL is putting a team in Las Vegas, and the NFL is talking about doing the same.
Their real opposition to New Jersey's push is that it would legalize sports betting without establishing a federal framework for regulation. Probably, the leagues have their self-interests in mind, too. If we're going to have fully legalized sports gambling, the owners will want a cut.
"It seems there is a lot of hypocrisy in the sports leagues' sustained opposition," says Marc Edelman, a professor of law at Baruch College's Zicklin School of Business. He'll appear Wednesday at the Saratoga Institute on Equine, Racing and Gaming Law Conference's panel discussion on sports wagering.
"They seem opposed to traditional sports gambling when they're not in a position to profit directly from the activity, but they're more willing to accept it if they are. ... It seems reasonably likely to believe that at least the four traditional sports leagues would support the repeal of PASPA if sports gambling would lead to direct profit to their owners."
How might that happen? Owners could become shareholders in sports wagering organizations, just as they have made chunky investments in daily fantasy companies.
In New York, repealing PASPA would make it possible for the new casino being built in Schenectady to include a sports book. In fact, it seems inevitable that someday you'll be able to drive down Erie Boulevard to bet the Giants and the over.
The effort to continue banning sports betting seems awfully futile when you consider that so many of us already do.
Tuesday, June 28, 2016
Big gamble: How families are suffering as men lose millions to sports betting
Big gamble: How families are suffering as men lose millions to sports betting
Sport betting is the latest scourge stealing happiness out of marriages and throwing relationships over the cliff. This is an industry valued at more than Sh5 billion by Betting Control and Licensing Board and through which men lose millions of shillings daily.
So far this year; a man in Eldoret committed suicide, leaving his family behind, after losing Sh45,000 which he had borrowed as loan from Kenya Commercial Bank. Kennedy Kosgei, it was reported, borrowed the sum to place as a wager on a match between Spanish football clubs Real Madrid and Atletico Madrid.
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