In this session we're going to talk about social policy in sports gambling. Basically, this is about how governments choose to regulate the sports gambling activities. There's a very wide range of treatments depending on which country you're in. In some countries, for example, like Australia, there's a very liberal attitude toward sports gambling sanctioned by the government, whereas in countries like China, sports gambling is to a large extent prohibited. This is also an area in which government policies have been changing a lot in recent years, largely because of the advent of gambling on the internet. As gambling on the internet has become easier and easier, it's become more and more difficult to control gambling on sports and that's led many governments to decide that it might be wiser to control it legally rather than try to suppress it by making it illegal when suppression is so difficult to achieve, this has an added bonus for governments because it's possible to tax legal activities and tax revenues from gambling can be very, very large indeed. As we will discuss here in a later session, legalization of sports gambling has an additional benefit because it does tend to limit problems such as match fixing. Match fixing is something that really works most naturally in the context of illegal gambling. Gambling legalization can help to perhaps not eliminate, but certainly mitigate or reduce the impact of match fixing on sports. The approach taken by most governments, and we're going to look at some specific elements in a moment. But in general, most governments take the view that gambling is a negative kind of activity. They're worried about negative effects. That's why you either get prohibition one extreme or if you get acceptance with regulation, it tends to be somewhat reluctant. Governments try to balance their views on gambling with which as I say, are typically negative against both the enforcement capacities which are typically limited, and the potential tax revenues that they stand to gain. Since countries have different regulatory schemes, let's look at some of the different cases. It's natural to start with the UK, since both gambling in its modern forms really developed in the UK in the 19th century and sports gambling in various forms has been widespread firsts for some time in the United Kingdom. Gambling on soccer, for example, has long been popular. Nowadays it's very easy for fans to place a bet on the outcome of the game they're attending at the stadium. It's also very easy to bet online and while watching football on television. Moreover, bookmakers have also become significant sponsors of clubs. One example, actually, a bookmaker has been the owner of a club for some time now that's Stoke City FC, which is owned by the family, which also owns the bookmaker bet 365. UK government has also instituted a national lottery, which has been going since the 1990s and the national lottery has a heavy tax on it and that tax is allocated to what the government describes as good causes and one of these good causes, is sport. Many people argue that the money that came through the National Lottery to sport was what helped the British Olympic team, which in the 1990s was struggling to win any gold medals at all to reaching a position of third or second in the Olympic medal table, a position that great Britain had seldom achieved in its entire history. In the USA, sports gambling has also been very popular for a long time, but most forms of gambling were illegal and that covers sports gambling and this led to numerous scandals. The most famous of which perhaps is the fixing of the 1919 baseball World Series, often referred to as the Black Sox scandal. As the 20th century continued, gambling in many forms was legalized, but sports gambling was specifically placed outside of the law in 1992, when Congress passed the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act PASPA and this formally outlawed sports gambling except in places where it was already established and the main place where sports gambling was already established with Las Vegas. The US was in the strange position where many people gambled on sports illegally in their local area. You could travel to Las Vegas and bet on sports legally but there was no national acceptance of sports gambling in general. In 2018, the Supreme Court ruled PASPA was unconstitutional, and as a result, many states have now legalized sports gambling, unregulated it and out-generating tax revenues from it. It's expected that within a few years, probably almost every state in the union will have legalized sports gambling in one way or another. The European Union represents an interesting example. The European Union, member states, countries such as France, Germany, Netherlands, Sweden, Italy, Spain. These countries typically had a very negative view of sport gambling in general, and sports gambling in particular. Although some particular very restricted forms of betting are what were known as the football pools, was permitted an unpopular. Again, the EU was put in a difficult position by the advent of Internet gambling and as a result, has largely deregulated, sports betting with allowing, particularly online sport betting to become a major force, but of course, again it is heavily taxed, and so it does generate revenue for member states. Australia, as I mentioned at the beginning has always been one of the most liberal, countries in terms of the attitude towards sports gambling. This is perhaps not surprising, since gambling, in general, is very popular in Australia, and Australia as a nation is completely sports-mad. It's quite natural that, the Australian government took the view that, they tried to outlaw gambling, they would just run into huge problems with illegal gambling. In Australia, they've even gone so far as to allow, the some sports governing bodies to receive, a share of the revenue that is generated from sports gambling. This is something that, has been an argument that's been growing in popularity in many countries, quest sports gambling is now permitted, the sports leagues, the authorities argue that since they generate the activity which brings in revenue for the bookmakers should pay them a fee, in the form of a share of all revenue that is generated. Not surprisingly the bookmakers don't think this is a good idea, and in the end, it comes down to government legislation, and political decisions as to whether such subsidies are paid or not, within Australia, they happen. In the case of India, gambling is a highly restricted activity although it is permitted in some limited cases at racetracks, casinos, and width state lotteries. But the most popular sporting injuries cricket, and gambling on cricket is also extremely popular, and it's widely believed that the illegal gambling market and cricket in India is worth billions of dollars. This is also led to the widespread view that match-fixing is a major problem in Indian cricket, and often one that spreads over into cricket in other countries as well, with many criminal gangs being involved in the sport. It seems reasonable to argue that India could do much, to limit this problem by legalizing sports gambling, and in the process generate tax revenue which would no doubt be of great use to the Indian government. As we observed in, one of our earlier sessions, the history of gambling in China, is a very long history, but also the regulation of gambling by the government has a long history as well, and these two things have tended to go hand in hand. When the Communist Party took power in 1949, almost all forms of gambling were made illegal situation which largely persists to the present day. Except in the territory of Hong Kong and Macao which in 1949 were under the control of foreign powers, and when these territories returned to Chinese sovereignty, they were allowed to continue with gambling activities making them popular destinations, for gamblers from the mainland. Lotteries are permitted on the mainland since these are not defined as gambling, but there is a very large off-shore gambling market which is technically illegal but is largely tolerated by the government. Much of this, offshore betting market is connected to sport betting. Now, these illegal markets have been the source of many kinds about match-fixing, and corruption just as the case with cricket in India. As with India, it's reasonable to think that a good solution to this problem, would be the legalization of sports gambling in China itself. With this brief survey, we've looked at the difference in government policies around the world, and which range from the very liberal, as in countries like the UK, and Australia, or either fairly or entirely prohibitive approaches such as those in India and China. We are seeing rapid changes in the government treatment of sports gambling in recent years largely because of the development of online betting on the Internet. As we've seen in the USA there has moved towards, liberalization at the end of prohibition and the design of regulatory schemes which enables the governments take taxes, and for people to gamble legally on sports.
