Minneapolis was the Mecca of sports betting

The stunning charges and arrests last month in two high-profile gambling cases of 34 individuals, including three personnel with the National Basketball Association (NBA), spotlighted the pervasive – and perverse – nature of sports betting.

One of the cases concerns alleged rigged card playing operations associated with the Mafia; the other pertains to alleged betting cabal on basketball games, aided by tips from insiders, including a Hall of Fame player and coach of the Portland Trail Blazers, Chauncey Billups, the 49 year-old Hall of Fame player and former Minnesota Timberwolf, and a pair of current and former players, Terry Rozier and Damon Jones, then  with the Miami Heat.

All of the charged parties are entitled to the presumption of innocence in the eyes of the law, although not necessarily in the view of the public.

Nor are the NBA and other professional and college organizations, which encourage sports betting, free from blame for the pernicious sports betting, which all started here in Minneapolis, the place  some would call the Garden of Eden, or others the Mecca, of gambling in sporting circles in this country, a practice that has gone from seedy backrooms in dens of iniquity to the mainstream of American Culture.

Downtown Data

The scandal that has already expanded to other players and sports may be the tip of the proverbial iceberg developed in the frigid climate of Minneapolis, which in the post-World War II era became Ground Zero of sports gaming, that is now omnipresent and filling the multi-sports betting apps on the internet.

The saga started here in the backroom of a cigar store on the corner of 4^th and 1^st Avenue, in what is now referred to as the Warehouse District of Minneapolis, about two blocks from where the Target Center stands. It was initially created by Leo Hirschfield, the slightly-built but highly sharp son of a Minneapolis physician. A Marine in World War I, the betting guru to be  gravitated to New York City for a while in the Roaring Twenties and into the Depression years of the 1930s. Moving back to his hometown in 1940, he purchased a small nondescript  publication known as the Gorham Press, which he morphed into Athletic Publications, Inc., located in that cigar shop.

But its sobriquet was somewhat of a misnomer, as its main source of revenue was data provided to clients who subscribed for $25 a week to get odds on sporting events consisting of college football and major league baseball, the two most popular team sports of the day, along with various minor leagues, too. It later expanded to pro football and basketball as those became more popular pursuits.

The odds were published in a brief document on green paper naturally entitled the “Green Sheet,” which established what was known as the “Minneapolis Line.” The figures, derived from data in  dozens of newspapers, were disseminated by a small staff of four handicappers, which grew over the years to 15 oddsmakers and others who then distributed them to customers, many of them consisting of sports fans, sports writers, and broadcasters.

That’s what Hirshfield, known as “the Wizard of Odds,” and his staff of four did: Setting odds. But they made no wagers, nor accepted them, and had no financial stake in the outcomes of the games they had handicapped. The “Green Sheet” merely provided information on the odds of a team winning (and losing) to subscribers to use as they wished. Hirschfield’s “Green Sheet” model was emulated by a number of other entities, selling their predictions through long distance phone calls, or Western Union wire service, the predecessor of the Internet.

The Minnesota-born “Green Sheet” evolved into other formats, one popular one known as “the Cold Sheet,” run by a former Hirshfield staffer and still is operated by his son in different formats.

Many variations occurred over the years as technology advances and other forms of sports gambling arose. One was the more popular “point spread” used in football and basketball  to try to equalize the playing field, so to speak, by giving the inferior team a number of points to add to its total score for gambling purposes.  This innovation that stemming  from the downtown Minneapolis  cigar shop turned sports gambling into the phenomenon these days of approximately $14 billion annual revenue derived from some $150 billion wagers made annually by an an average of  $3,000 per bettor.

Oddly, despite its history as the Ground Zero of sports gambling, Minnesota has been surpassed in gambling by other states that have not legalized sports betting.  The Attorney General’s office in the early days of the Internet fought against off-shore sports betting operations in a 1997 case entitled State v. Granite Gate Resorts, Inc., which kept those operations outside of the reach of Minnesota bettors.

Joust & Join 

In line with that decision, Minnesota has declined to join some 40 other states that allow various  forms  of legalized sports betting, owing to the heavy lobbying of multiple interest groups, including Native American tribes.

Meanwhile, professional leagues in football, now the heaviest betting athletic activity, baseball, and basketball (hockey draws much less activity in the betting parlors) initially were adamantly opposed to betting on their sporting events, even jousting  in court through litigating aimed at limiting  or preventing  it  for fear that it may corrupt their games.

Major League baseball, supported by other professional leagues, sued a baseball fantasy league promoter to try to stop it from portraying  the names and statistics of its players, which was used for gambling, but lost the case in 2007 in a ruling by the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, the Federal appellate court that oversees Federal litigation in Minnesota and six surrounding states, in a case entitled CBC Distribution & Marketing  v. Major League Baseball. The court reasoned  that the First Amendment right to freedom of expression allows that usage, a decision that  conflicted with a ruling in 1970 by a Federal court judge in Minneapolis in a case entitled  Uhlaender v. Henrickson, which prohibited  a board game manufacturer from unauthorized use of the names and statistics without compensating them under the doctrine of “the right of publicity.”

But the professional leagues, including the NBA, have retreated from that position and joined the gambling crowd. After a series of litigation losses trying to stem the tide of sports gambling, they decided if you can’t beat them, bet on them.

They have, in fact, become among the largest facilitators of that practice. They accept advertising for gambling operations and promote them on television and in the sporting venues themselves. They do so, in part, because they’re aware that betting is one of the major attractions for individuals to follow the games and they elevate television ratings, and corresponding advertising revenue, boost ticket sales at the box office, and generally stimulate interest in the games leading to more sales of merchandise and tapping into other revenue sources.

That trend is likely to accelerate with the deal reached this fall by the National Hockey League (NHL) selling the rights to a pair of gambling platforms to use the names and trademarks of their 32 teams, including the Wild here in Minnesota.

Spread Shoulder 

As long as blame is being spread, the Supreme Court can shoulder some of it, too.  The High Court’s decision in 2018 in the case entitled Murphy v. NCAA opened the flood gates for legalized gambling by invalidating a Federal law prohibiting approval of gambling operations by states. That came three decades after the High Court, in a 1976 case from Minnesota entitled Bryan v. Itasca County, barred states from taxing personal property on Native American land, which paved the way for  the development of gambling casinos on tribal property, including some seventeen in this state.

Eight years later, the Minnesota  electorate approved a state constitutional amendment allowing pari-mutuel horse race betting, leading to establishment of the Canterbury Park racetrack in Shakopee, and later the Running Aces harness racing site in Columbus Township, now both making large sums from  their card-playing casino operations.

President Trump wailed last week that college sports have become a “disaster” due to the huge amounts of compensation flowing to many of the top athletes, as  permitted by the 2020 ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court in the Alston v. NCAA case ushering in the now familiar feature Name, Image and Likeness (NIL). But the President has been uncharacteristically silent about sports betting.

Gladiators & Goliath

Betting on sporting events has been around for a long time, since the days of the gladiators battling each other and animals at the Colosseum during the era of the Roman Empire and perhaps even before then when young David overcame the odds to defeat the heavily favored Goliath and the Philistines in the Battle in the Bible.

But it has now risen to new heights, aided by sophisticated technology, that makes it a hazard to members of the public, most of whom lose substantial amounting money on the activity. The amount of sports betting is likely to reach reach record levels  as the college and professional football seasons head  into their post-season modalities, culminating in Super Bowl LX (60) in early February in the San Francisco Bay area.

Rather than bemoaning that reality,  a remedy is needed. Some type of legislative restraint is in order to curb the prevalence of sports betting, beyond the ones currently on the books. One prophylactic might be a prescribed warning in all advertisements of the hazards of gambling, much like those that have been mandated for tobacco products 60 years, which has helped contributed to the sharp decline in smoking.

Or, better yet, the professional sports leagues and television stations should exercise some control and decline to accept or limit betting advertisements and commercials. But because that would result in a large loss of revenue, the likelihood of that occurring is, as they say in President Trump’s native New York City: “fuggedaboudit.”

In the absence of external controls limiting or ceasing to gamble on sports ought to be done as a matter of self-restraint by individuals who indulge in that pastime, even casual ones like me.

Adoption of any of these restrictions could curb the scourge of sports gambling.

But don’t bet on it.