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Congress has long-recognized the potential harms posed by sports betting to the integrity of sporting contests and the public confidence in these events.
This topic stems from the suspension of Jameson Williams for 6 games because he violated the gambling policy. I dug a little and found out the reason for the policy. My understanding of this is that there are two sides to sports betting, the gambler's side and then sports contest games. But this is the first time I am reading that sports betting can affect the game negatively and results in reduced public confidence. Does this apply to the NFL only? What about soccer and other sports? Are they exempted? Let's talk about this.
If you think about how much these sporting superstars get paid, then it is not too much to ask of them that they do not place any bets on related sports events. Conflict of interests can be very serious and there are plenty of opportunities to gamble on unrelated sports or in casinos, so you have to assume that they are engaged in malicious activity if they do this. I'm sure sports betting companies are often looking out for dangerous and suspicious patterns in their customers behavior, but rigging can be very difficult to spot if done in a low key manner. That's why the penalties should be so high and whistleblowers should be well compensated (maybe from a fund set up by gambling companies which would save them money in the long term)
