Online sports betting has gotten out of hand. Over the past few months the FBI has arrested a handful of professional basketball players who have faked injuries to withdraw themselves from games and two professional baseball pitchers who told betting syndicates when they would throw a ball. Their tampering might not have thrown whole games, but it has a huge effect on the proposition or “prop” bets that are popular with online sports bettors who put money on how many or how few points a player might score or whether or not a pitch will be a ball or a strike. The fix was in.
So is another. The shills that populate Canadian sports broadcasting have become increasingly brazen in pushing prop bets, joking about them to show just how fun it is to wager online. But prop bets are the riskiest form of online sports betting as well as the single most profitable form of betting for online sports gambling operators. Networks’ complicity in online sports gambling blurs the line between paid advertising and independent content, but what’s really jarring is the money at stake.
According to iGaming Ontario, in fiscal year 2023–2024, Ontario’s online gambling industry took in $63 billion in wagers for sports betting and digital casino games. That same year, Ontario spent $84.5 billion on healthcare.
Next time you see an ad for online sports betting or hear a network personality push a particular prop bet, give a thought to the wait lists for basic arthroscopic surgeries or the wait times in the province’s underserviced ERs. Those are real rolls of the dice.