By Greg Ganske

April 5^th, 2026

Sports are much more important than just football entertainment on a fall afternoon, the World Series, Superbowl, or March Madness. All aspects of sports are threatened by the existential threat of betting and gambling in sports. The possibility of cheating with increased financial corruption of sports hangs over it like a sword of Damocles.

On the individual level, sports are crucial for the mental, social, and physical development of young men and women. Sports strengthen the body and promote mental health, wellbeing and self-esteem. They help develop communication skills and teach individuals how to work toward shared goals. Sports teach discipline, resilience, leadership and how to balance school and personal life with training. There is a positive link between sports and higher GPAs and college attendance.

The lessons learned on the playing fields translate to later career success. In ancient times, Plato (originally Aristocles) was a skilled wrestler who competed in the Isthmian Games. His wrestling coach nicknamed him “Platon” which means “broad-shouldered.” Plato viewed sports as necessary for balancing the body and the mind and for cultivating courage, discipline and emotional control as well as physical strength. The Duke of Wellington famously said, “The battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton.”

On a social level sports acts to foster community by bringing together people of different backgrounds. They unite people through shared passion and identity and provide a sense of belonging when rooting for a common team or athlete. Sports bridge divides in race, class, and culture. Nelson Mandela said, “Sport is more powerful than governments in breaking down racial barriers…it has the power to unite people in a way that little else does.”

In regions like Iowa without professional teams, college sports provide a vital community identity. College sports like basketball and football generate huge revenue from TV, tickets to games, and merchandise. These revenues help to support our universities. College scholarships cover high tuition costs and provide opportunities for elite training and academic support. Student-athletes learn to work in teams and develop relationships that benefit them in later life socially and in work.

Professional teams have deeply loyal fans that help people share a sense of community pride and local identity. The fans are entertained by the highest levels of skill and competition. The economic impact is enormous not just for the players and owners but for the surrounding businesses. The Super Bowl, for instance, typically brings between $300 million and $1 billion in gross economic impact to host cities and surrounding areas. The host cities get a significant boost in their tax revenue as well.

The upcoming 2026 FIFA World Cup is expected to generate over $30 billion in total economic output and add around $17 billion to U.S. GDP. This soccer tournament is projected to support about 200,000 jobs with 4.5 million fans attending. The 2026 winter Olympics brought about $6 billion to Italy. The 2026 summer Olympics will bring up to $18 billion to Southern California.

The benefits of sports hinge on its integrity. When the trust between athletes, fans and governing bodies collapses, fair and honest contests turn into doubted spectacles. When fans suspect match-fixing, doping, or corruption they lose faith in the validity of results. If cheating occurs, the competition becomes a sham. Viewers lose that “dopamine hit” of genuine anticipation and lose interest. This leads to declining viewership and decreased sports network contracts. The golden goose gets cooked because sponsors and investors often withdraw.

When youth and adults lose trust in the honesty of sports, they are less likely to participate in “us vs them” thinking and this leads to less community-oriented activity. When individuals think the system is rigged, they lose faith in the lessons of discipline, hard work, and fairness.

We’ve had examples of cheating in sport all our lives. Pete Rose was banned from baseball for betting on his own team. Rosie Ruiz did not run the whole course in the Boston Marathon. East Germans doped their athletes in the 1970s and 1980s. Lance Armstrong was stripped of seven Tour De France titles for the same. The NBA had betting scandals in 2002 and 2007.

Soccer scandals in 2005, 2006 and in 2025 led to Juventus being stripped of titles and demoted. Olympic boxing referees and judges were dismissed in 2012 when a boxer was knocked down 5 times and still won. This winter Olympics French skating judge Jezabel Beaudry was accused of giving lopsided scores that favored the French skaters and kept the American pair from winning a gold.

Why is the danger of cheating and corruption now so much more worrisome? Why are so many people now saying that they just don’t trust sports anymore? The answer is the explosion of gambling ensnaring the sports world that is catching so many young men in its web of bets, bankruptcy and mental illness issues.

Gambling is available on their cell phones continuously. The October 2025 FBI investigation of multiple individuals including NBA coach Chauncey Billups and player Terry Rozier exposed a sprawling illegal gambling and fraud scheme. Mafia associates used insider information to manipulate NBA bets. Over 30 individuals were charged.

Now every time an NBA player misses an easy shot, a baseball player throws a pitch into the dirt, or an NFL wide receiver drops an easy pass the fans wonder if someone got paid off. It isn’t just in major games. Point shaving may be easier and more prevalent in the mid-major games where the players aren’t making the big dollars on NIL and aren’t likely to play in the pros. They are told to just shave the points in the first half so that bets on the first half scores can be fixed but then told they can play a regular game the rest of the way. That way they can feel that they didn’t tank the whole game.

The future where everything—politics, sports and entertainment– is bet on is here. DraftKings and FanDuel are now competing with Kalshi and Polymarket which, under the banner of predictions markets, found a way to take bets on sports, indeed anything, even where betting is even banned. Iowa is involved in a suit with Kalshi about it evading state gambling laws.

Traditional casinos are bound by guardrails to limit addictions, but the online gambling industry is not. Gambling apps should at a minimum be regulated to require time limits and cooling off periods. Controls should be placed on youth gaming. Credit card bans or limits should be enacted. We should ban bets on individual player performance.

The real problem is that the leagues, networks and sports books try to convince the public that gambling is just another way to energize fans. A good bet would be that the number of scandals will increase dramatically, threatening the whole issue of whether sports competitions are free of fixing. If this isn’t corrected, we will lose one of the last places where fairness is possible. Sports are too important to lose to gambling.

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Greg Ganske, MD, is a retired Member of the U.S. Congress who represented Iowa from 1995-2003.