Yahoo News ran an interesting article the other day about the growth of illegal online sportsbooks and the supposed corrupting effect they are having on sports.  The article starts off with some background on the issue:

The rapidly mushrooming number of illegal sports betting websites is heightening concerns among authorities about global corruption, money laundering and gambling addiction.

There are now an estimated 15,000 such sites on the World Wide Web, including some 13,000 illegal ones, shuffling around 15 billion euros (23.6 billion dollars) a year, according to the authorities.

The author then goes on to detail how the illegal sportsbooks are causing all sorts of problems for sports federations who are eager to wipe them out.  At the same time these very same federations are vying for a piece of the gambling pie from the so-called legitimate sports betting channels:

Sports federations — notably for tennis, football and cricket, the pioneers in the fight against harmful effects of illegal gambling — have become increasingly worried about the issue.

But, apart from fears about the tarnished image of their sport, at the same time they are trying to secure a financial stake for themselves from the booming phenomenon.

Each year, French gamblers place sports bets worth more than 510 million euros on the Internet.

Of this, only around 12 million euros is believed to be legal, by means of the French National Lottery, the only authorised online sports betting operator in the country.

Following the example of the French Tennis Federation, a number of sports bodies are trying to claim part of the lucrative Internet betting industry on the model of television broadcasting agreements.

It seems to me that the issue here is not the evils of online sports betting, but the problems caused when a government tries to monopolize a market and suppress all competition to the detriment of the consumer.  I hope one day that the various governments will realize that they can’t have it both ways – decrying the immorality of sports betting while simultaneously trying to corner the market.

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