• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, 5 hours ago

With all of the major sports in business with casinos and mobile-gambling apps, wasn’t it inevitable that in this environment, there would be a sports gambling scandal?

At the outset of this TV Blog, it is appropriate to note that the gambling charges leveled at NBAers Chauncey Billups (head coach of the Portland Trailblazers), Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier and former player Damon Jones were not linked in any news story on Thursday to the omnipresence of the gambling companies in major sports.

The arrests on Thursday stemmed from an FBI investigation of illegal gambling aimed primarily at four mafia crime families, according to reports. 

The investigation was a multi-year effort encompassing 11 states, the FBI said. In total, 34 people were arrested, but as of Thursday afternoon, only the names of the NBA players and head coach made headlines.

Still, in a world in which gambling has become mainstream thanks to mobile apps that are making money hand over fist, perhaps no one should be shocked in the manner of Capt. Renault that there is gambling going on here.

Governments encourage gambling, and for a number of years now, so do the NBA, MLB, NHL and NFL. 

How do they encourage gambling? They do it the old-fashioned way with commercials during televised games, ads billboarded all over arenas and stadiums, and trotting out sports legends such as the entire Manning family to shill for the casinos and apps.

Even outside of the actual games, TV’s promotion of gambling is all-in with a proliferation of shows serving as bettors’ guides to upcoming matchups. 

Here in New York, MSG Network -- Madison Square Garden’s TV channel for Knicks and Rangers games -- has had a slew of them, including “The Betting Exchange,” “The Bettor Half Hour” and “Odds with Ends.”

So, maybe Thursday’s arrests have nothing to do with gambling apps or legal casinos forming marketing and promotion partnerships with major-league sports. 

According to the news reports, the investigation was more about high-stakes, mafia-run poker games than game-fixing (although some of that was hinted at in news reports).

But gambling has taken over sports in such a way that it stands to reason that those who have the gambling habit might be encouraged to up their antes -- particularly those, like professional athletes, whose jobs bring them to arenas and stadiums for months at a time that are festooned with gambling come-ons.

The TV Blog makes no claims to being prescient (indeed, it is usually the opposite), but I wrote on the subject of the new close relationships between TV sports and betting three times in 2022.

One of the blogs was about a Gonzaga basketball player who was seen in commercials in the Pacific Northwest that had the player in uniform in a local casino endorsing the facility right in the middle of NCAA March Madness when Gonzaga was still alive in the Sweet 16.

“When a college basketball star is seen in TV commercials for a casino, that’s when you know the gambling fox is really in the sports henhouse,” said the TV Blog.