Emmy Award-winning journalist Jemele Hill is one of the premier voices at the intersection of sports, race, gender, and culture. For her latest endeavor, Hill is hosting VICE TV’s “Out of Bounds: The Sports Betting Boom“, premiering on Thrusday (Jan. 29), the third installment of the series that examines the changing landscape of modern sports.
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In her episode, Hill takes a deep dive into the rise of sports gambling and how both fans and players participate in and consume professional sports against the backdrop of legalized gambling. Speaking with The Root, Hill shared how she became a part of the series, the unavoidable pitfalls of sports gambling, and how gambling has forever changed the economics of sports.
“I’ve written about sports gambling for The Atlantic, and I have a feeling that’s why Vice asked me to participate in the series,” Hill said. “I’ve seen the progression and the normalization of sports gambling.”
According to Hill, one of the dangers of sports gambling has been greatly accelerated by being widely accessible and targeting young people.
“The normalization of sports gambling in our culture has made it so that there’s no stigma attached to it anymore. We are ushering in and really promoting a problem that is just destined to be just as bad, especially for young people, as cigarettes,” Hill argued.
“We know they ain’t got no money, but the idea of gambling is really appealing to them. I think, 10 years from now, we’re probably going to hear some really awful stories about how this has destroyed a lot of people’s lives,” she said.
“Sports is capitalism on steroids now that private equity is involved. The association with gambling by the league are not even frowned upon anymore in part because the price to broadcast sports has gone way up,” she continued. “So as long as that price continues to escalate, it puts a lot of pressure on these leagues to find multiple streams of income and multiple ways that they can create fan loyalty.”
Hill also opened up about the investigation of Chauncey Billups, former head coach of the Portland Trailblazers and Basketball Hall of Famer, who is facing federal charges related to an illegal gambling scheme. He’s one of several former and current players who were arrested for their ties to sports gambling. Hill expressed her surprise that Billups was allegedly involved in the scandal that shook the NBA.
“Chauncey is a really stand-up guy who takes his reputation and his integrity very seriously. So I was very surprised to see him involved with this investigation. We still don’t know a lot of details about his involvement, but it was still surprising,” said Hill.
Hill also shared how she believes Black athletes and those close to the game are being made to be the sole representation of federal investigations and the detrimental aspects of gambling in professional sports.
“I think the Black players are unfairly being made the face of this. With Chauncey’s situation, it’s allegedly connected to some pretty well-known crime families,” Hill pointed out. “The attempts to make the atletes the face of investigations is low-hanging fruit. It seems like the players were used to drawing people into the games. They were not orchestrating or masterminding anything. That was done by people at a higher level.”
She added: “I think there are a lot of critical questions to be asked, like, ‘Why are the athletes being made the face of something when there’s clearly much larger fish to fry in this entire dragnet?” So you make the players the face of the investigations, even though it doesn’t seem like they’re the ones orchestrating and masterminding all of this.”
As Hill sees it, young Black athletes and young bettors are the most vulnerable when it comes to sports. Now that gambling is ubiquitous in sports culture, she hopes that the docuseries will shed light on why sports gambling needs more guardrails, or more lives will be destroyed.
“My position isn’t that we should ban gambling, but that there needs to be far more safeguards in place. If we continue down this path, we’re basically sanctioning the next public health crisis,” Hill explained.
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