Capitol Hill, Washington DC – The Launch of Family and Friends of Gamblers

Capitol Hill, Washington DC. The major announcement of a new group in the fight for proper regulation of gambling.

Senator Richard Blumenthal, Representative Paul Tonko, hosted the event.

I spoke about the widespread sports gambling addiction among athletes. Below – the text of my speech:

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It is a silent plague.

A disease that-none-dare-mention-its-name is hitting American athletes.

Gambling addiction is sweeping our athletes from the very top leagues down to high school students.

Over the last six years, US sports leagues have, largely, walked down a long, dark corridor to dance with the devils of disorganized, unregulated bookmaking and sports gambling.

Over the last two decades, my doctoral research at the University of Oxford and research/teaching at the University of Haven and international best-selling books into match-fixing and the threats to sports integrity by gambling have taken me around the world.

In Hungary, I walked the long, dark corridor that one their professional soccer coach ran down. He was also the league’s official against match-fixing. There was a police investigation. He was, in some way, implicated in the unsuccessful fight against corruption. So he ran down the dark corridor at the top of a tall building in downtown Budapest. There was only one door at the end of the hallway. He opened it and threw himself off.

In South Korea, there were other suicides of players feeling shame and dishonour after match-fixing linked to gambling.
But the pain of corruption and addiction linked to sports gambling does not begin or end with self-harm. It involves threats and killings from organized crime mobsters.

In Belgium, a father – a former policeman – face ran with tears as I interviewed his son. He had been one of the goalkeepers of their national team. Now, his whole sporting career was over because he had followed the orders of some of his coaches and fixed soccer games. His father, who drove his son to his practices, wept as he listened to his son talking about being threatened by pistol-waving mobsters, his eventual arrest and conviction.

Here in America, we have had Major League Baseball, NBA and NCAA players and coaches caught up in alleged under-performance because of gambling addiction.

The time has come to speak about the silent plague.

It is time to stop that national run down the long, dark corridor of sports gambling addiction…

It is time to begin the discussion of the pain that the betting tsunami has brought to America. Because it’s not just the person who is addicted that has problems but their families/friends/colleagues whose money is taken, relationships crumble and trust disintegrates.

Two days ago, in the media we read yet another story of a young woman whose savings were drained as she dated an alleged gambling addicted NHL player. If true, she joins a wide number of ex-lovers of gambling addicted athletes.

The silent plague also has a wider set of victims: the sporting public. If you are staring at a sports event and you cannot be certain that what you are watching is the glorious uncertainty of sports or a piece of theatre orchestrated by organized crime mobsters and their gambling addicted athletes then you begin to lose the joy of those sports.

This is why I am here this morning to support the work of Harry Levant, his colleagues and the people – the survivors – at Family, Friends of Gamblers. (#FFOG).

This is not a campaign against legalized, well-regulated sports gambling but rather a campaign for legalized, well-regulated sports gambling.

This is our moment. This is our time to say that this will not happen on our watch in this great sporting nation. The plague will be named. We will be silent no longer.