UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — A panel of experts, including media members and faculty, will address the potential impact of legalized sports gambling on the landscape of athletics during a free public session at Penn State.
The discussion, titled “The New World of Sports Gambling,” will be conducted at 6 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 3, in 121 Sparks Building.
Participants include: Oskar Garcia, the deputy sports editor for storytelling and presentation at the Associated Press, who previously covered Las Vegas and the gaming industry; Bill King, a senior writer at Sports Business Journal; and Stephen Ross, director of the Penn State Institute for Sports Law, Policy, and Research, and the director of the Center for the Study of Sports in Society.
John Affleck, the Knight Chair in Sports Journalism and Society and director of the John Curley Center for Sports Journalism, will moderate the discussion.
“There is no question that one of the most profound changes in American sports this year was the Supreme Court decision allowing states to legalize sports betting,” Affleck said. “Already, we are seeing changes in the way sports are being covered and there is certainly more to come. Student journalists, and anyone involved in sports, need to understand how this will affect the industry.”
Those changes and their impact, as well as lessons that can be learned from gambling in other countries, will drive the discussion. In addition, the session will allow ample time for questions from those in attendance.
“The global experience with covert gambling and corruption in countries like China and India and legalized gambling in countries like the UK and Australia should guide the American experience. The devil is in the details, and our guests are experts in this regard. Anyone interested in sports should have some familiarity with these issues,” Ross said. “They affect not only integrity but the nature of competition, new revenue sources, how sports are marketed, ethical issues with problem gambling, and other ways in which sports affect society.”