Rant #3,117: Over My Head

… furthermore …

Nah, I am not going to talk about the sports names used by various school systems in New York State today ...

But I am going to talk about a much more serious problem related to the sports landscape, although this is not necessarily a sports story per se.

This story kind of went under the radar this week, and I do believe that that was done purposely by much of our nation’s media, which has a habit of deciding which news stories the public needs to read, and which should be given short shrift.

This was definitely one of the latter variety.

Barely covered, if at all, earlier this week, most of the nation’s major professional sports leagues, plus the media companies Fox and NBCUniversal, announced that they have created an alliance to ensure that sports betting advertising is presented responsibly and does not target minors.

The group, called in bombastic terms “The Coalition for Responsible Sports Betting Advertising,” was created on Wednesday, consisting of the National Football League; Major League Baseball; the NBA; the WNBA; the National Hockey League; NASCAR; Major League Soccer, and the aforementioned news outlets.

Ostensibly, the group is a voluntary alliance to oversee how sports betting advertising, which is ever-present on the airwaves, in print and online, is presented to consumers.

It includes a recommendation that what it calls “excessive” advertising be avoided.

According to news reports, formation of the group follows a move in March by the commercial casino industry through its national trade association the American Gaming Association to adopt a new and more responsible sports betting marketing code.

What exactly does this all mean in English?

What it means is that the sports leagues have formed this alliance to ensure that sports betting advertising is overseen with a supposedly strict hand, before the government gets involved in any regulation of these ads.

And don’t you think these sports leagues, all of which at one time quaked in their boots about sports betting on their respective teams but now wholly embrace it as a new advertising money stream, are worried that with the preponderance of these ads on TV and radio and seemingly everywhere else, that without any regulation—or at least without any supposed oversight—that these ads will eventually come under the scrutiny of the government?

The leagues look back to what some call ancient history, the Nixon Administration’s 1970 ban on cigarette advertising on TV and radio, as the template that they want to avoid for sports betting.

They feel that it could happen to the sports betting ads, which give the impression that anyone with a cell phone or another device can push a few buttons, and they can bet on just about any sport and non-sport aspect of given games in each of their leagues, everything from which team wins the coin flip to who comes out to present the lineup cards to baseball umpires.

And these ads often use high-profile retired but still-in-the news athletes—like the Mannings and Kevin Garnett—to get their message across about the “fun” that sports betting is, without much in the way of the fact that one can lose their shirt—and much more--participating in this activity.

It is no different than doing the same action in an actual casino or betting hall, but you can do this right on your phone or another device, making the whole thing as easy as sending a text message—

And yes, this does appeal to kids and the uninitiated, especially when you pair it all up with a flashy “Caesar” character and with Halle Berry as his queen.

So this group just wants to take hold of the Pandora’s Box it created before the government can scrutinize this industry, and based on what it did with cigarette advertising more than 50 years ago, there is a precedent for a ban, which would hurt these leagues’ pocketbooks tremendously.

So here, with the creation of this organization, the leagues are basically telling the government that they acknowledge that there could be a problem, and they are taking care of it internally.

But the fact that sports betting has been made so easy now for anyone to participate in, and if these leagues grab unwitting kids into wanting to participate if not now, then right when they become of age, then their money is as good as an old fogy’s money, even though these younger players not only don’t know what they are getting into, but don’t have the strength or knowledge about how to get out of it once they are buried in it.

Yes, this story kind of got buried in all the other news that we are seeing recently about school and other mass shootings, shootings of innocent people in situations that don’t warrant it, and the new regulations about the use of sports names related to indigenous people, but this latest action deserves major media coverage, but it won’t get it because I don’t really think that the overall media wants the public to know that such a regulatory organization exists—

Because once such an organization exists, it casts light on the fact that yes, sports betting is a problem overall … and yes, these ads are being touted to younger viewers to get in on the action now or when they reach the right age.

And like pushing cigarettes and vapes and other poisons on our youth, sports betting might be a fun thing to do for those that don’t really understand it, but it can lead up other avenues that none of them realized when they unwittingly got into it.

Have a nice weekend, and I will speak to you again on Monday.