Former MLB Commissioner Fay Vincent said he believes legal US sports betting is inevitable in a couple of recent articles. Fay Vincent was Major League Baseball’s commissioner (1989-1992) at the time the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA) was passed.
Fay Vincent wrote a letter to the editor in the New York Times suggesting that the federal ban will not last much longer. Vincent recently was cited in a Miami Herald article on the same subject.
What Is PASPA?
PASPA is the federal law which bans brick-and-mortar sports gambling in 46 states. With sports lotteries in 3 other states, PASPA created a legal bookmaking monopoly for Nevada in the United States. Fay Vincent joins a growing list of former and current sports commissioners who believe legalize sports betting will happen in the next few years.
At present, that list includes NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, former NBA Commissioner David Stern, Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred, and now ex-commissioner Vincent. Adam Silver and David Stern now actively advocate for the federal government to strike down the PAPSA ban and create new regulations. Rob Manfred has said he is open to discussions of legalization.
Fay Vincent’s New York Times Letter
Recently, Fay Vincent wrote a letter-to-the-editor of the New York Times, giving his opinion on the future of sports betting in the United States. The 79-year old former Securities and Exchange Associate Director, Columbia Pictures and Coca-Cola executive, and baseball commission mentioned matter-of-factly that sports gambling would be legal in the near future. He suggested the legalization of betting would make a positive impact on the price of a MLB franchise.
In regards to a NY Times sports page article about the Miami Marlins franchise being overpriced, Fay Vincent wrote, “‘For Sale: Team With Few Fans, Sweet Stadium’ (front page, July 5), about the effort to sell the Miami Marlins baseball team, doesn’t report the possibility that legal betting on all major sports is not far off. The anticipated flood of revenue to baseball team owners may explain the price being asked, $1.2 billion.”
Vincent Cited in Miami Herald Article
On July 29, Barry Jackson wrote in the Miami Herald of a conversation he had with Fay Vincent on the subject. Jackson said that the former commissioner appeared confident that legal sports betting was “likely to happen”.
The commissioner’s quote in the Barry Jackson article read, “Former MLB commissioner Fay Vincent told me that the only way the Marlins are worth $1.3 billion or close to that is if gambling is legalized nationally, which he believes would create a lot more revenue. He believes it’s likely to happen.”
Fay Vincent and Sports Betting
Fay Vincent’s viewpoint is important, because he was at the center of several key moments in Major League Baseball’s decades-long crusade against sports betting. Fay Vincent was the deputy commissioner of MLB in 1989, when Pete Rose’s lifetime ban for betting on baseball was imposed. MLB Commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti investigated Pete Rose for his conduct while the manager of the Cincinnati Reds, died only months after Rose’s sentence was imposed.
Barlett Giamatti convinced Fay Vincent, a friend of his, to take the position as deputy commissioner. After his friend’s sudden death — whom many thought was caused by the stress of the Pete Rose scandal — Fay Vincent agreed to become MLB commissioner. Vincent accepted the findings of the Dowd Report and refused to reconsider Pete Rose’s lifetime ban. Some believed he held a personal animus against Major League Baseball’s all-time hits leader, due to his friend’s untimely death.
Fay Vincent and PASPA
Though PASPA was signed into law in October 1992, a few months after Fay Vincent resigned as commissioner, it was Vincent’s league office which proposed the federal ban on sports betting. MLB was a key player in lobbying the U.S. Congress to pass the PASPA law, and it was Fay Vincent’s office which handled much of that task.
Given his close link to the two most important sports betting stories in Major League Baseball history these past three decades, Fay Vincent is an expert on the subject. To have him suggest that sports betting will soon be a thing of the past — and it will affect franchise values — is a major admission.
New Jersey Sports Betting Case
Sports betting could be legalized in one of two ways. One, the major sports associations and US states might lobby the United States Congress to repeal PASPA and replace it with legalization and regulations. That would be a tremendous legislative slog, like most acts in the US Congress these days. Even in 1992, lawmakers passed PASPA only after Nevada, Delaware, Montana, and Oregon received exemptions for their state-level sports betting regulations.
A more likely route to legalization exists, though.
Two, the U.S. Supreme Court might strike down PASPA in one fell swoop in the Fall or Winter of 2017. In early July, the US Supreme Court agreed to hear the appeal of New Jersey’s sports betting case. In October 2014, five sports associations sued New Jersey to keep them from opening a sportsbook at Monmouth Park: MLB, the NFL, the NBA, the NHL, and the NCAA. That lawsuit took three years to wind through the US court system, but the Supreme Court justices have agreed to hear arguments. Legal briefs will be filed by both sides in August, while arguments will be heard in October. Sometime after that (probably in this calendar year), the nine justice plan to rule on the case.
Striking Down the PASPA Sports Betting Law?
If the Supreme Court rules on behalf of New Jersey, then the PASPA law will be struck down. Sports betting would no longer be banned, though unregulated. The US Congress likely would write regulations, but it would not be able to ban sports gambling at the federal level in any case, due to the court decision. Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey has said the state would have legal sports betting by the summer of 2018.
Given the many losses New Jersey has seen in court on the issue, it might seem like a long shot that Chris Christie’s state will win the Supreme Court case. Yet a growing chorus of sports officials and reputed experts seem to believe legal sportsbooks are around the corner.
