Presidents: Keep Mass. colleges out of sport betting

Photo | Grant Welker College of the Holy Cross in Worcester

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By State House News Service

If Massachusetts legalizes sports betting and allows wagers on college contests, it will lead to "unnecessary and unacceptable risks to student athletes, their campus peers, and the integrity and culture of colleges and universities in the Commonwealth," the presidents and athletic directors of the eight Massachusetts colleges and universities that have Division I sports programs told legislative leaders this week.

The schools made their thoughts known in a letter to House Speaker Robert DeLeo, Senate President Karen Spilka and the six legislators who have been negotiating a compromise economic development bill since late July. House lawmakers voted to include legal sports betting, including on college games, in its economic development bill but the Senate did not authorize any betting.

"We recognize that during the current difficult economic climate, the Legislature desires to develop new sources of revenue, including sports wagering. But like other states, Massachusetts can gain those benefits without legalizing college sports betting," officials from Boston College, Boston University, Harvard University, Northeastern University, The College of the Holy Cross, Merrimack College, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Lowell wrote in a letter. "Such a limitation is necessary to safeguard the longstanding distinctive role and contribution of student-athletes as well as to preserve the integrity of intercollegiate athletics in the Commonwealth."

Massachusetts lawmakers have been considering whether to legalize sports betting since the U.S. Supreme Court in May 2018 ruled that the nearly-nationwide prohibition on sports wagering was unconstitutional and gave states the ability to legalize the activity. Eighteen states -- including neighboring Rhode Island, New Hampshire and New York -- have already authorized some form of legal sports betting, according to ESPN.

The college presidents and athletic directors said allowing wagers on NCAA games "will increase temptations and pressures on student athletes to influence the outcome of games or point spreads in return for financial reward or other benefits from betting interests." College students who are not athletes "could be enticed by gambling interests to provide seemingly innocuous items of information regarding the health and playing status of friends or classmates who may be varsity athletes, and of importance to individuals or groups engaged in betting."

"Finally, legalizing bets on college sports will almost inevitably generate major challenges and expense for institutions so they can ensure that student athletes, the general student body, alumni, and others do not knowingly or unknowingly violate NCAA and institutional policies and thus create problems regarding compliance and negative press coverage," the higher education officials wrote. "Should sports betting become a reality in Massachusetts, college and university leaders will also have to devote more scarce time and resources to protecting the brand, values, image, and reputation of their schools."

Whether bettors should be allowed to place wagers on collegiate sporting events and whether legalization would be successful without collegiate betting emerged as a key consideration during Committee on Economic Development and Emerging Technologies hearings on sports betting last year.

"It's a huge piece of the market, so if you prohibit college betting you are ignoring an active black market," Gaming Commission Associate Counsel Justin Stempeck told the committee last year. "On the other hand, if you allow college betting on sports, you have to be cognizant of the added pressures it puts on student athletes and they're perhaps the most susceptible to these pressures because they're not making millions of dollars on a professional league contract."

Gov. Charlie Baker filed a bill to legalize sports betting in 2019 and has included millions of dollars of assumed sports betting revenue in each of his last two budget proposals. But Baker's proposal would not permit betting on any college contests, a decision his secretary of housing and economic development said was made in an attempt to take a "measured approach" to introducing betting.

The letter of opposition from college officials came as bettors around the United States were preparing to place their bets on the first week of the NFL's season. Sara Slane, a consultant who advises teams, leagues and gaming companies, said "outdated views of sports betting" are being shed and betting is now a critical component for the NFL.

"Legal betting has never been a more critical driver of fan engagement with the NFL as it will be this season. More than 18 states will offer legal betting on games, and teams across the league are partnering with gaming operators to attract bettors," Slane said. "We saw betting help to drive interest in the NFL Draft earlier this year. Now, with many fans still stuck at home and football likely to own the sports calendar for most of the next few months, this will be a landmark season for the NFL and sports betting."

When the economic development bill and the House's sports betting proposal went into conference committee negotiations, the Senate appeared far less interested in the idea than the House. Senate leaders omitted the legalization of sports wagering from its version of the jobs bill and suggested they thought it would be more appropriately dealt with on its own, without offering a timeline for action on a bill.

Asked last month whether sports betting could see new life before the end of the year, Spilka said, "We'll have to see."

The House has also held up something Spilka, an Ashland Democrat with several craft breweries in her district, would like to see done. The House has not voted on a bill that was agreed to by small brewers and beer distributors regarding the ability of craft brewers to switch wholesalers.