Sports Gambling is Everywhere. How Might it Affect Your Business?

 

Sports gambling has become legal in many states. In many places, you can even gamble via phone apps. In Houston, Mattress Mack (Jim Mackingvale), the owner of a prominent furniture store, is famous for subsidizing giveaways through sports betting.

Side note: while Mattress Mack has become more controversial lately with an increased willingness to engage in politics, he'll always have a warm spot in my heart for his absolute dedication to helping Houstonians in times of crisis, including flooding and during holidays. These acts stand in direct contrast with the biggest piece of shit in Houston.

A Story Sure to Be Repeated

What does sports betting have to do with your business? Hopefully nothing. But, unfortunately, stories like this will likely increase.

An executive with the Jacksonville Jaguars, Amit Patel, has been accused of stealing more than $22 million from the NFL team.

Why did Patel steal the money? You guessed it: he claims that he is addicted to gambling.

According to Patel's attorney, "approximately 99% of the funds misappropriated from the Jaguars' [accounts] were gambling losses." His attorney further stated that Patel primarily used the money to bet on football gambling websites.

Same Story, Different Characters

As we wrote back in August, there are generally three (3) risk factors for employees:

1. Pressure - also may be described as financial need
2. Rationalization - also may be described as treatment perceived as unfair
3. Opportunity - this prong is almost universally referred to as "opportunity"

Read the article for a full discussion, but the salient points here is risk factor 1 - Pressure. In this environment, sports gambling (and gambling in general) are becoming ubiquitous. I am not surprised that gambling addictions are on the rise. I am also concerned that the most at-risk population for gambling addition is the young.

In other words, this problem isn't going away. It's going to get worse. Potentially much worse.

What Can Be Done?

We got you fam! We wrote about this very topic in late August 2023 in a post titled" 5 Ways to Reduce Employee Fraud or Embezzlement." Check out that article - it's a 3 minute read - for easy-to-implement ways to reduce employee fraud or embezzlement.

We Can Help

We've been doing this for a while now. In addition, I've been working on issues like these as an in-house counsel for over 15 years. We can help you set up processes to avoid these situations, or catch them quickly!

This is a cross-post with Linkedin.