Sports Integrity Law

No sooner had I posted this blog piece about sports partnerships and the collection and use of real-time game data, that we get news that Congress is busy fooling around with something they call the Sports Wagering Market Integrity Act of 2018. There’s that word integrity, again.

“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”
– Ferris Bueller

As near as I can tell, this proposed legislation doesn’t do anything about integrity. It does such things as require sports bettors to be at least 21 years of age and allows problem gamblers to put themselves on a “do not serve” list and a couple other mundane things. But, more importantly, what it also does is require licensed operators – sportsbooks mostly – to utilize official data collected and published by the various sports leagues until the year 2024. You can read more about the proposed legislation in these two articles:

• Article 1
• Article 2

The bill is co-sponsored by Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Orrin Hatch (R-UT) as a show of bipartisanship. Predictably, both guys blather on about the integrity of sports and keeping corruption out of sports. Implying that, if the league is in charge of the data, well, it can’t be corrupted, I guess.

The requirement that licensed operators only use data direct from the leagues – and presumably certified to be accurate – will create a $1 Billion market windfall for the leagues – overnight. The Action Network story sums it up perfectly, stating:

“It isn’t so much as to protect anyone. It’s to make more money.”

I know, I know, I sound like a broken record. The money generated by this new law (and others that will surely be coming) will ultimately come from the pockets of sports bettors. Somewhere, somehow, sports bettors will be paying these fees. I predict, after everyone takes their cut, standard vigorish will rise from -110 to perhaps -115 or even higher. For the privilege of making legal wagers on their favorite team.

And there is no one out there looking our for the interests of the sports bettor. Except us here at ESBN.