Universities, online sports betting, and giving the profit to DEI

[lfromnj]

In September 2021, an official in Michigan State University’s athletic department sent an email to his boss with exciting news: An online betting company was willing to pay handsomely for the right to promote gambling at the university.

“Alan, if we are willing to take an aggressive position, we have a $1 M/year deal on the table with Caesar’s,” Paul Schager wrote to Alan Haller, the university’s athletic director.

The offer from Caesars Sportsbook turned out to be even bigger than that, according to emails obtained by The New York Times. In the end, the company proposed a deal worth $8.4 million over five years. It was, a member of the negotiating team said in another email, “the largest sportsbook deal in college athletics.”

Other schools, too, have struck deals to bring betting to campus. After Louisiana State University signed a similar deal in 2021 with Caesars, the university sent an email encouraging recipients — including some students who were under 21 and couldn’t legally gamble — to “place your first bet (and earn your first bonus).”

Some faculty members were upset that the university had a financial incentive to encourage gambling among its students. Mr. Hornstein, the professor who leads the school’s Intercollegiate Athletics Council, said the council eventually persuaded university officials not to pour the proceeds from the $30 referral bonus into the athletic department.

“We came up with the idea that the money from the referral bonus could actually go toward diversity and inclusion and equity efforts at the university, in particular because a lot of the money in athletics are made from underrepresented minorities,” Mr. Hornstein said. A spokesman for the university’s chancellor, Philip DiStefano, confirmed that some of the money will be used to expand mental health and diversity initiatives.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/20/business/caesars-sports-betting-universities-colleges.html


Can']t make this up.

[It’s so Joever]

Are you more concerned by the fact that kids under 21 are being encouraged to gamble illegally, or the fact the money was used for DEI and not the athletics department? Personally I am more concerned about the first.

[lfromnj]

Are you more concerned by the fact that kids under 21 are being encouraged to gamble illegally, or the fact the money was used for DEI and not the athletics department? Personally I am more concerned about the first.

I just find this hillarious.

[It’s so Joever]

Are you more concerned by the fact that kids under 21 are being encouraged to gamble illegally, or the fact the money was used for DEI and not the athletics department? Personally I am more concerned about the first.

I just find this hillarious.

Ah, well still bad that kids are being encouraged to gamble.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Are you more concerned by the fact that kids under 21 are being encouraged to gamble illegally, or the fact the money was used for DEI and not the athletics department? Personally I am more concerned about the first.

I just find this hillarious.

It's a Category 5 American Higher Education Moment all around, yeah. It's all here: sports, money, a reverse-Ahab "flight from whiteness" paid for by actively bilking the poor. Classic.

[DaleCooper]

Universities are out of control.

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

Criminal behaviour.

[Del Tachi]

Gambling and sports betting should be illegal.

[T0rM3nTeD]

Gambling and sports betting should be illegal.

So you don't believe in Freedom. Got it.

[Associate Justice PiT]

Are you more concerned by the fact that kids under 21 are being encouraged to gamble illegally, or the fact the money was used for DEI and not the athletics department? Personally I am more concerned about the first.

I just find this hillarious.

Ah, well still bad that kids are being encouraged to gamble.

     Indeed it is. I am deeply concerned that nobody at Michigan State or Louisiana State pumped the brakes on this and suggested that this might be a bad thing to do. California actually got this right, with a recent proposition to legalize online sports betting failing by an overwhelming margin and being rejected in every county.

[Del Tachi]

Gambling and sports betting should be illegal.

So you don't believe in Freedom. Got it.

Freedom to what?  Lay waste to yourself financially or exploit the poor?  Is this the "freedom" you want? 

[Santander]

Gambling is one of the most debilitating addictions because of the way it permanently alters your brain and leads to criminal behavior like fraud and theft. A state university actively promoting gambling is simply outrageous.

[beaver2.0]

I'm going to give a Dalecooperian response here.  Execute the officials responsible for this.  How much of a scumbag must you be to, as an employee at a public college, attempt to encourage gambling among students?

[It’s so Joever]

Gambling and sports betting should be illegal.

So you don't believe in Freedom. Got it.

Freedom to what?  Lay waste to yourself financially or exploit the poor?  Is this the "freedom" you want? 

They must have mixed you up with Dule.

[Sprouts Farmers Market ✘]

Gambling is at the very heart of the college experience. One of the two best ways to fund your lifestyle at that time of life, along with selling NBA jerseys that fell off a truck.

[lfromnj]

Are you more concerned by the fact that kids under 21 are being encouraged to gamble illegally, or the fact the money was used for DEI and not the athletics department? Personally I am more concerned about the first.

I just find this hillarious.

Ah, well still bad that kids are being encouraged to gamble.

     Indeed it is. I am deeply concerned that nobody at Michigan State or Louisiana State pumped the brakes on this and suggested that this might be a bad thing to do. California actually got this right, with a recent proposition to legalize online sports betting failing by an overwhelming margin and being rejected in every county.

Well some guys said its bad but just like church indulgences 500 years ago they absolved themselves of their sins to their woke god.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Gambling is one of the most debilitating addictions because of the way it permanently alters your brain and leads to criminal behavior like fraud and theft. A state university actively promoting gambling is simply outrageous.

Gambling is the one addiction that actually does work more or less the way bored DARE officers working from reflexively rightist curricula present all addiction as working--"gateways", legalization leading almost inevitably to normalization and then exploitation, escalation to other (seemingly unrelated) antisocial and self-injurious behaviors, etc. The moralizing and censorious approach is, for once, actually more in touch with reality when it comes to this particular vice.