Feature: Nobody asked me but… - October 2007  

Mickey Charles, president and CEO of The Sports Network in the US (pictured right), explains why he is more than a little vexed about the issue of lotteries versus internet betting…..

Gambling comes with the territory. And the territory is life. The conservative right in the US, the zealots and misinformed, the politicians seeking votes and support from their myopic constituencies, make the Ostrich look like a species that wants to see the entire world when burying their head(s) in the sand.
The territory in question covers much and, like it or not, a disproportionate amount of it is replete and basking in the shadows of attitudes and circumstances that are not, contrary to the machinations and presentations of Hollywood at any given moment, going to disappear within a world run by one company or computer. Smoking will survive although those that indulge in it to excessive degrees will not. Alcoholism will remain the substitute closet for those seeking to escape from reality, depression and the lives that they wish were otherwise but about which they seem incapable of doing anything. Sex is…well, sex. Whether it is the silver screen, Chicken Ranch in Nevada, internet, phones, videos, cable channels or outright prostitution, it is, safely or unsafely, here to stay. And, those that herald the abstinence until wed approach coupled with doing nothing more when indulging in it than the missionary approach to same have to remove the Trampolines, blow up dolls, vibrators, guide wires and copies of Hustler from their homes before they become believable.
No matter which process of creation tickles your fantasy, from Evolution to some Grand Design on a drawing board in the sky, the Garden of Eden or visitors from space, it was a gamble. Look around if you don’t believe that. As of today one has to wonder if that gamble was worth it.
That makes gambling part and parcel of the plan of action. One aspect of it cannot be conveniently separated from the rest to satisfy the few who likely believe that death by a drunken driver is not nearly as bad. Why else do we still allow autos on our roads?

It’s a lottery

At this very moment, in the US and elsewhere, governmental bodies are encouraging the populace to spend hard earned monies, savings, social security incomes, trust funds, coins out of the children’s’ piggy banks, college tuitions set aside, payments for the mortgage and more to purchase lottery tickets where the odds of winning the big prize promoted on radio, TV and in print is somewhere around 176,000,000 to 1. How about that? But wagering on the outcome of a sporting event, by people that can, in most cases, afford to do so, is anathema to our very being. The approach is stupefying.
Research indicates that there are lotteries on our side of the pond in every state except Alabama (proving the Southern Baptists still have some control there), Alaska (where it gets too cold to go purchase tickets), Arkansas (locals mathematically unqualified), Hawaii (where it is more fun to surf, swim and suntan), Mississippi (riverboats and Indian casinos have picked up the slack), Nevada (no explanation necessary), Utah (the Mormons have relatives in other stats make the purchase) and Wyoming (where tourism brings in more than enough money to satisfy everyone). Other than that, we are drowning in every form of lottery imaginable.
Bear in mind that there are, among the above, multistate lotteries and multistate games. Everyone wants in. Of the 42 states that have lotteries only Florida is not a member of a multistate game even though they have a statute on the books that allows, encourages, them to do so.
That leads to Powerball and the end to all of your financial woes if you are the one in 176,000,000 with the winning ticket – out of all that entered in Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Vermont, Virgin Islands, West Virginia, Wisconsin. Nice odds.
Then there is Hot Lotto, Cashola, Midwest Millions, Wild Card 2, 2by2, Mega Millions and who knows what else is being contrived now?
Add in the Indian casinos and bingo parlors from coast to coast and their focus on earning enough to buy back Manhattan. Sitting Bull, Cochise, Chief Joseph, Red Cloud, Geronimo, Crazy Horse, Tecumseh and others of note are smiling down broadly from the great hunting grounds in the sky. Including Nevada, there are casinos of one sort or the other in 38 states.
How about the 73 or more poker rooms in California? How do you differentiate that $1,000 buy-in from “Dallas -3.5 for a nickel?”

Off-shore crimes

The distortion and hypocrisy is frightening. In other words, the US government approach is that you can rob the store for a pre-determined amount of money but asking for more than that is a crime. You can gamble at their house – the lotteries, race tracks (we won’t even go there), poker rooms, Indian casinos, bingo halls, church bazaars and Las Vegas nights that are held by them and the folks at the Pentagon can have a March Madness pool similar to the one at the Justice Department but placing a wager off-shore is akin to a clarion call for the anti-Christ to appear at any moment.
And, we have not even covered Europe or Asia. We are a society that gambles. The current laws in the US will be repealed and it is just a matter of time but some politician in St. Louis needed a cause celebre to draw attention to his otherwise less than exciting persona and this seemed like a good idea at the time. The heck with education, taking care of the poor, the pharmaceutical lobbies, the idiocy in Iraq, unemployment, depressed housing market and a million people or more about to lose their homes. Apparently that all paled by comparison to a wager on the St. Louis Rams.

Mickey Charles
mcharles@sportsnetwork.com
President & CEO
The Sports Network

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