Jack Anderson: Why the odds on an Irish gambling crisis are growing
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At the launch of the revived 'The Epic Origins of Hurling' by alumni of St Joseph’s Fairview, Brendan McGrath, a former pupil of the original author Brother Ó Caithnia, noted that in the 17th and 18th centuries, hurling in Ireland was the plaything of landlords. McGrath highlighted that the landed gentry would regularly wager 300 guineas on a game (roughly €80,000 today).
Similarly, the origins of sports as diverse as boxing, baseball, cricket and, of course, horse racing were all predicated on the punt.
The most significant development of recent years in sports wagering was the decision by the US Supreme Court in 2018 to allow states to legalise gambling. Prior to that legalised gambling was limited largely to racing or places such as Las Vegas. Since 2018, 38 states in the US have legalised gambling, and sports wagering has boomed.
On the Super Bowl alone in 2019, 22.7 million adults in the US wagered $6billion on the game. Earlier this year, 67.8 million wagered $23.1billion on Super Bowl LVIII.
That record wagering meant that Flutter Entertainment, the world's largest online betting company, with Irish roots, saw revenues at its US subsidiary grow by 56% in the first 11 weeks of 2024. In 2023, Flutter, for the first time, made a profit on its US operations ($167 million). This year it projects a staggering US core profit of $635 million to $785 million.
Acute social problems have accompanied the sudden intensity of wagering in the US with unrestricted advertising and increased levels of addiction. In the absence of federal legislation, some state jurisdictions appear more enthusiastic about the taxes and levies they can generate from wagering, and less so about licensing and regulation.
The integrity of sports has also become an issue.
Organised crime in the US has long seen the benefit of laundering money through the liquidity of gambling markets with the bonus of being able to wager on games they have fixed in advance.
The deep cultural awareness of the links between organised crime and sport in the US can be seen in the fact that two of the greatest gangster movies ever made, Godfather II and Goodfellas, have strong gambling themes. Godfather II is about control of the emerging market in Reno, Nevada as Cuba (then an offshore gambling hub) fell to Castro. Goodfellas is based on a real-life mob that fixed college basketball games.
Today when such concerns are raised, the riposte by sports in the US, as with the Premier League, is that such competitions are unlikely ever to be fixed because the players are simply paid too much.
This is patently untrue. Last month, major league baseball, for the first time in a century, banned an active player for life for betting violations. Tucupita Marcano of the Pittsburgh Pirates bet $87,500 over 387 games, some of which he played in. His wagering win rate was 4.3% and he was easily caught online. He will lose out on an estimated US$15 million in earnings and pension.
In December, Japan’s Shohei Ohtani signed the largest contract in sport - a 10-year, $700 million contract with the LA Dodgers. This year he has had to spend much of his time distancing himself from his personal interpreter who has just pleaded guilty to multi-million dollar fraud charges relating to illegal betting.
In April, the NBA banned Jontay Porter for life for agreeing to facilitate “prop” betting. A prop bet is, in essence, a side wager on specific parts of a game or a player’s performance, usually separate from the outcome of the game.
An example of a prop bet in football would be a wager on who might get a yellow card. The odds offered on such bets are low, but if the player colludes in advance with others, it can lead to what is called a spot fix.
It is exactly that type of fix that, last month, the FA accused West Ham’s Lucas Paqueta of facilitating i.e., deliberately attempting to receive a booking in four Premier League games, and doing so for the purpose of manipulating the betting markets.
Paqueta denies the charges and has not been accused of placing any bets himself. If sustained, the charges could however end his career. In 2018, a FA tribunal ruled that Bradley Wood had, for pre-determined betting purposes, intentionally got two yellow cards while playing for Lincoln during their 2016‑17 FA Cup run.
West Ham’s jersey, as with the shirts of so many Premier League clubs, is emblazoned with a betting sponsor, some of which are based in Asia and many of which English punters cannot even access.
In May 2023, Brentford and England striker Ivan Toney's was suspended for eight months for 262 breaches of FA betting regulations. His sentence was mitigated in part because of is gambling addiction. When he returned for Brentford earlier this year he did so in a betting company-sponsored kit.
Gamblification is a gathering sporting storm on both sides of the Atlantic.
Shadowing the legal betting market is an illegal market worth, according to a recent UN report, US$1.7 trillion annually and which is a haven for transnational economic crime.
Criminal syndicates target jurisdictions where gambling is poorly regulated.
Is Ireland a well-regulated gambling jurisdiction? The answer is no. Our legislation is dated to a time when you could only bet in cash at your local bookie, and the idea of a casino was one for the movies. Now everyone, via their smartphone, has a bookie and casino pinging in their pocket.
In July 2013, then then Minister for Justice Alan Shatter introduced a Bill seeking to reform Irish gambling law. Over a decade later we await the enactment of the Gambling Regulation Bill.
Prior to the Bill’s reintroduction to the Oireachtas in late 2022, the Department of Justice announced the appointment of a gambling regulator.
Anne Marie Caulfield has no experience of the wagering industry but is an experienced civil servant. Since her appointment she has done what she can in the legislative vacuum. She is taking an evidence-based approach and in October last year she commissioned an ESRI review which reported that the prevalence of problem gambling in Ireland was much higher than previously thought, affecting an estimated 130,000 citizens.
The legislative delays since 2022 are inexplicable. The public want reform. The industry accepts it. It has cross party support. Key regulatory issues have been well debated and foreshadowed.
Fifty years ago, Barney Curley sent a horse called Yellow Sam to be trained by Liam Brennan. A year later in June 1975 at Bellewstown, Yellow Sam won, facilitating a betting plunge that retains legendary status.
A key to that affair was a Curley associate delaying access to the one public telephone box on the track to the consternation of awaiting bookies desperate to lay their liabilities.
The Bellewstown phone box symbolises the Department of Justice’s unhurried approach to gambling reform. If the Department and the relevant Minister James Brown, exacerbate their dilatoriness by not giving the gambling regulator sufficient resources to do her job then ultimately, as with the wagers on Yellow Sam, the associated gambling liabilities will have to be paid out for many more years to come.