Single-event betting is heading for home
‘Arguments for resisting the bill aren’t great,’ Canadian senator says
- Toronto Star
- STEVE MCALLISTER Steve McAllister is the editor-inchief of The Parleh sports betting newsletter.
GETTY IMAGES FILE PHOTOMajor League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred was speaking Wednesday during an online sports business summit when sports wagering popped up in the conversation. “We have moved with the NBA, the PGA Tour and the NHL on these sports betting issues,” said Manfred, appearing on SporticoLive’s MLB Valuations event. “The biggest issue is that sports betting is a massive opportunity for fan engagement.”
Paul Beeston, former president of the Blue Jays and MLB, wasn’t quite as enthusiastic about the prospect of legalized sports wagering when he appeared in front of the Standing Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs before Game 1 of the 2012 World Series.
“If large numbers of our fans come to regard baseball only or even partially as a gambling vehicle, the very nature of the sport will be altered and harmed,” said Beeston, expressing MLB’s opposition to amending the Criminal Code and allowing single-event betting by passing Bill C-290.
“We want fans to root for the home team to win. Likewise, we want our athletes to know that they are being cheered to win.”
Three years after Beeston’s visit to Ottawa, Bill C-290 died in the Senate when a federal election was called. In 2016, New Democrat MP Brian Masse saw his private member’s bill voted down in the House of Commons.
But times change, as is reflected by the contradictory opinions of two of baseball’s leading men over the past two decades. It’s why, barring the call of a federal election this spring, proponents of legal sports wagering believe a third time will be the charm with the Safe and Regulated Sports Betting Act (Bill C-218) getting overwhelming approval in the House of Commons and en route to the Senate for final approval.
“It’s a very different environment,” said Paul Burns, president and CEO of the Canadian Gaming Association.
“There’s more stakeholder support (today).”
That’s seconded by Kevin Waugh, the Conservative MP and former sports broadcaster from Saskatoon who introduced Bill C-218 as a private member’s bill. “Provincial and municipal governments want this bill passed, industry groups want this bill passed, advocacy groups want this bill passed, but most importantly Canadians want this bill passed,” Waugh said.
All that support has the value of a winning lottery ticket lost in a paper shredder if the bill doesn’t meet with the approval of the 105-member Senate. Waugh has asked David Wells, the Conservative senator from Newfoundland and Labrador (not the retired Blue Jays lefthander), to sponsor Bill C-218 in the Senate.
Brent Cotter, an independent representative who was sworn into the Senate just over a year ago, will second the bill and support it as a member of the same standing committee that Beeston addressed in the fall of 2012. In a best-case scenario for the bill’s proponents, the Senate will pass it late next month or in early June.
“The arguments for resisting the bill aren’t great,” said Cotter, a former deputy minister of justice and deputy attorney general in Saskatchewan who played lead for Alan Darragh’s Nova Scotia curling rink at the 1981 Labatt Brier in Halifax.
“There’s so much money involved in professional sports now, and having something exposed to sunlight is better than it not being exposed. We have a better sense of problem gambling. (Legal) entities are expected to address this issue ... organized crime doesn’t have a problem gamblers division.”
The former College of Law dean at the University of Saskatchewan is more than familiar with the Canadian gaming landscape. He was deputy attorney general in the 1990s when the province introduced gaming and casinos. And, as the law school dean, Cotter was lobbied regularly by students to introduce a course in sports and the law.
“When I stepped down as dean, I stayed on as a professor and put together a course,” he said. “Every second year a student would bring a proposal on sports betting, so for the past decade I’ve kept up to date on that world largely by supervising research on those papers.”