Sports gambling: Bill in Congress seeks crackdown

Rep. Paul Tonko of New York and Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut introduced the bill Thursday. It is designed to address what are said to be the harmful effects of the rapid expansion of legal sports betting in the US since 2018.

The measure would also ban the use of credit cards to fund online gambling accounts.

Democratic lawmakers say sports betting, now legal in 38 states plus the District of Columbia, has increased gambling addiction and other problems. Every moment of every game is a chance to play, Tonko said.

“This has led to a frightening rise in gambling disorder, which in turn has taken a terrible toll on people, many of whom have lost their homes, jobs, marriages and lives,” he said Tonka.

Blumenthal called the measure a public health issue.

“It’s a matter of stopping addiction, saving lives and making sure young people in particular are protected from exploitation,” Blumenthal said.

The legislation already faces strong opposition from the gambling industry, which has said for years it should self-regulate its sports betting advertising to avoid the federal government imposing standards on it.

The American Gaming Association, the gambling industry’s national trade association, said sports houses already operate under government oversight, contribute billions of dollars in state taxes and offer consumers protections that do not exist with illegal gambling operations.

“Six years after legal sports betting, the introduction of heavy-handed federal bans is a slap in the face to state legislatures and gambling regulators who have devoted countless time and resources to developing well-thought-out frameworks unique to their jurisdictions “, it says in a statement.

The industry has adopted sports betting practices that include some limits on advertising, but critics say they don’t go far enough.

Harry Levant, director of gambling policy at the Public Health Advocacy Institute at Northeastern University School of Law, compared gambling to drugs and alcohol in terms of potential addiction.

“With any other addictive product or substance, the government regulates the advertising, promotion, distribution and consumption of the product,” he said. “With gambling, unfortunately, the exact opposite happens.”

The National Council on Problem Gambling says “problem gambling may grow as sports gambling explodes” across America.

The bill would prohibit operators from accepting more than five deposits from a customer in a 24-hour period and would verify a customer’s ability to afford to deposit more than $1,000 in 24 hours or 10,000 dollars in a month.

The bill would also ban “backed” bets on the performance of college or amateur athletes, such as how many passing yards a quarterback will accumulate during a game.

And it would ban the use of artificial intelligence to track a customer’s gambling habits or create gambling products, including highly specific “microbets” that are based on scenarios as narrow as the speed of the next pitch in a baseball game.