The recent death of Pete Rose, baseball’s inveterate gambler, provided opportunity for an unofficial referendum on his penalty (a lifetime ban from the game) and exclusion from the Hall of Fame in light of Major League Baseball’s current embrace of sports betting. One of the commentators to weigh in a day after Rose’s passing was Fay Vincent, who in 1989, as MLB’s deputy commissioner, helped Commissioner Bart Giamatti craft Rose’s penalty.

Several years later, while Baseball Commissioner, Vincent testified before Congress against the evils of sports betting and colluding: “Protecting the integrity of the game is our primary job.” His testimony helped secure passage of the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act of 1992 that banned the legalization of sport betting beyond Nevada. Having worked for Vincent during the Rose scandal, I knew his staunch anti-sports betting stance.

But his comments in a New York Times interview the day after Rose died caught my eye. “I don’t think gambling in this country on sports is going to survive,” he started, “because I think the corruption element — and we’ve seen it already — is going to grow. There’s so much money, and the gambling people are overplaying their hand… I think that the corruption element that is brought into baseball and sports is a really negative one. And I think the dollars involved are going to become enormous, and we’re going to have corruption in college basketball, almost certainly… And as all that unfolds, it’s going to take a while. I’m certainly not going to be around when it changes. But there’ll be a time down the road when the country is going to say, ‘We have to clean it up, it’s just too messy.’”

Sports betting in the U.S. won’t survive? I, too, predict that sports betting will not survive in the U.S., but unlike Vincent, I don’t think corruption will be what kills it (like Vincent, I don’t envision being around to witness it either).

For open thing, corruption in various forms has become normalized in our society (politics being ground zero). For another, the corruption rooted out in the past year alone (NBA and MLB suspending players for life; suspension of Notre Dame men’s swimming season; nine NFL players suspended in a matter of months; and the firing of Alabama Crimson Tide head baseball coach, to name a few) barely registered as a blip on the collective conscience, psyche or soul of U.S. sports fans, leagues and media.

So what’s going to ultimately kill sports betting in the U.S.?

In the early stages of researching a book on sports betting globally, I soon came across a strange phenomenon. Countries where sports betting has been baked into the culture, in some cases for generations – where kids grow up with betting slips in their hand – are seeing a crisis in public health resulting from the normalization of sports betting. From the United Kingdom, across Europe, and into Australia, proactive efforts are underway to start addressing what public health advocates, politicians and citizens are now starting to admit: the ubiquitous and unregulated advertising, promotion of and participation in sports betting has resulted in a crisis of addiction and its attendant socio-economic ills that have fallen especially hard on young males within these countries. One U.K. report of official data recently found that 85,000 children between the ages of 11 and 17 have a gambling problem. That sounds like a bit of a crisis to me.

As a result, various efforts are currently underway to at the very least restrict sports betting advertising (i.e,, no ads an hour before or hour after any sporting event; ad bans in sports broadcasts; ad bans between 9 a.m.-10 p.m.; complete ban of online/digital ads; no ads within children’s programming), to a complete ban of all sportsbook advertising in the U.K. in three years. The U.K. has banned sportsbook logos from the front-of-shirts in the Premier League beginning in 2026, following the lead of other European countries including Spain, Belgium and the Netherlands (and wiping out a huge revenue source for these teams). It’s a small step; however, the short and long term strategies for combating Great Britain’s growing public health crisis remains on Parliament’s debate floor.

Australians lose more than $25 billion annually on legal gambling, the largest per capita losses in the world. As a result, Australia has been the most active in its efforts to combat the medically-recognized “gambling disorder,” which is not just a matter of personal financial ruin but a catalyst for profound mental health crises including depression, anxiety and suicide. Its efforts, particularly fueled by concerns over “child grooming,” are informed by a 2023 report (The Murphy Report) that outlined 31 recommendations to address the normalization of gambling in Australian society that has been particularly harmful to Aussie youth. Among these was a phased three-year plan to eliminate all forms of gambling advertising – cold turkey. Last week, a partial ad ban that would have constituted a small step forward was tabled until 2025. As in Great Britain, those who enjoy the huge revenues from sports betting will continue to push back.

The government of New South Wales (NSW) in Australia has even launched a public awareness campaign for netball, the country’s’ most popular participation sport, titled “RECLAIM THE GAME” to educate the fans about gambling harm. The netball clubs are relinquishing sponsorships from sportsbooks. The message: “You can enjoy a game without having money on it.”

Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, we in the U.S. are being sold that having money on the game is what will increase one’s enjoyment of it. Still in its infancy, the U.S. sports betting market bores full-speed ahead – a wild, wild west as sportsbooks and sports properties engage in a billion-dollar money grab – with virtually no federal guardrails or regulation. Meantime, the rest of the world is going in the opposite direction, as gambling harm has blown up to crisis levels.

Just last month, an international medical journal published a new report by experts ranging from gambling studies, public health, global health policy, risk control and regulatory policy. The 45-page Lancet Public Health Commission on Gambling, which can be found here (https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpub/article/PIIS2468-2667(24)00167-1/fulltext) issues a rather dire warning while estimating that about 80 million adults experience a gambling disorder or problematic gambling: “Our conclusion is clear: gambling poses a threat to public health, the control of which requires a substantial expansion and tightening of gambling industry regulation…. Specific groups face an elevated risk of gambling harms. These include children and young people, now routinely exposed to gambling product advertising and industry messaging and sponsorship, in ways that were unprecedented before the digital revolution,” the report said.

All of the research shows that sports betting in this country is growing exponentially in numbers of bettors. What is also up (if it’s even possible) is ad spending by sportsbooks (13.5% higher than last year, per iSpot), most of it targeting young, single, educated, employed or studying full-time males. This demo is, according to the research, the ideal target to begin betting on sports. It’s also, per the research, the demo at risk of gambling addiction.

Soon after becoming NCAA President, Charlie Baker commissioned a study on college students and sports betting. The survey of 3,500 18-to-22-year olds found that sports betting is pervasive among this demographic (58% of respondents have engaged in at least one betting activity; 67% of students living on campus are betters). These figure suggest that the U.S. will take the same path to a public health crisis that so many European countries and Australia are now confronting generation into legalized sports betting.

However, I predict the crisis in this country will arise much quicker. The demographic group identified above is the first to be bet en masse on sports since it was legalized a mere seven years ago. The ease of mobile phone betting, sportsbooks’ algorithms and promotions designed to keep bettors coming back for more, and the sheer volume of opportunities to surrender one’s paycheck (micro betting, for instance) will speed things up. It’s impossible to envision a scenario where addiction levels don’t increase annually and exponentially until we reach crisis levels (yes, even with all those “Hope is here” 1-800 lawyer-mandated ads you hear at the end of sports book ads touting a free $2,000!).

For now, sportsbooks, leagues, teams, media outlets and bettors (who somehow always think they’re “up”) should enjoy the revenue-infused honeymoon. Eventually – pardon the pun -- the “bloom will be coming come off the rose.”

Steve McKelvey, J.D. is a Full Professor in the Mark H. McCormack Department of Sport Management at the University of Massachusetts. He is a former Department Chair and Graduate Program Director, and can be reached at mckelvey@isenberg.umass.edu