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If Canada legalizes betting on single sports events, it could claw billions of dollars from the shady world of organized crime. Cash would be pumped into health care, education and other social programs. Authorities would be better equipped to sleuth out incidents of match-fixing by athletes. Yet making the vice more readily available would also come with a social cost. It may well create new problem gamblers, those whose habits spiral out of control and cost them their homes, their families, and their health. The boosted profile of gambling might represent a hard-to-resist temptation for pro athletes looking for one final big score. Those are the main arguments on either side of a polarizing issue that may come to a head in weeks. After several years of debate, Bill C-290, a private members bill that seeks to make legal single sport event gambling, is poised to go to a deciding vote in the senate as soon as January, the bills senate sponsor Bob Runciman said in an interview with TSN. If the bill passes, it would turn sports gambling in Canada on its head. As Canadian law now stands, bettors who want to place a legal wager on any pro or college game must also predict the winner of one or two other games. These so-called parlay bets arent popular with gamblers because it is more difficult to predict the outcome of multiple games. Some fans who want to place wagers on single games turn to illegal bookies, who often have ties to organized crime. Police last year raided a banquet hall in north Toronto to shut down an illegal sports book run by the Hells Angels motorcycle gang. In one case in Windsor, we watched as a guy who owed about $30,000 to a gang for sports debts had a van driven up to his home, said Sergeant Bill Sword, a detective with the Ontario Provincial Police who commands a joint-force organized crime enforcement bureau. They basically went into this guys house and took everything but a mattress. In Canada alone, an estimated $10 billion is bet through illegal booking operations by organized crime, according to the Canadian Gaming Association, and another $5 billion goes to offshore online sports books. Legal sports lottery wagering is worth about $500 million. A regulated system would allow you to monitor increased activity on any particular game so you can find out somethings wrong here, something smells, said Runciman, who represents Brockville, Ontario, one of the several cross-border Canadian cities close to casinos that might benefit from legalized sports betting. None of its been monitored to look for illegal activity, and the biggest downside in my view is that organized crime are the folks who are the benefactors of this, and it helps them support other illegal activities in our society. A recent case study estimated Fallsview Casino in Niagara Falls could earn an annual gaming profit of as much as $12 million if sports gambling is legalized. Casinos in Windsor could generate an additional $24 million. The pending Canadian senate vote on legalized sports betting comes with major professional sports leagues at odds over the issue. The NBA said in November that it would invest in a fantasy sports betting website called FanDuel, which allows players to bet against one another. The NBAs commissioner Adam Silver has endorsed the repeal of a 1992 U.S. federal prohibition on sports betting. The NFL allows bets on the games it plays in London, where sports betting is allowed. The NFL has also approved players to sign endorsement deals with fantasy websites and the league runs season-long, pay-to-enter fantasy leagues that offer team apparel and memorabilia as prizes. The Canadian Soccer Association wants legalized sports betting, a move it and FIFA argue would help authorities to more easily catch match-fixing. My fear, says Earl Cochrane, an executive with the Canadian Soccer Association, is that if sport betting continues to operate in the shadows, continues to operate in place where we dont want it to operate in… young elite athletes get caught up into some sort of sport betting, get caught up in the wrong crowd, suddenly position themselves into a place they cant get out of and now suddenly find themselves in an elite environment and a knock comes on their door suggesting… we remember back when, when you were doing this, you owe us a favour. But not every league supports legalized sports gambling. Major League Baseball and the NHL both are resistant to the concept, even though some teams, such as the New Jersey Devils, have partnered with online gaming companies. MLB and the NHL, as well as the NCAA, contend sports betting would tarnish their image and might make it more appealing to athletes to engage in match fixing. When gambling is permitted on team sports, winning the bet may become more important than winning the game, Blue Jays president Paul Beeston testified in February 2013. The point spread or the number of runs scored may overshadow the games outcome and the intricacies of play. If large numbers of our fans come to regard baseball only or even partially as a gambling vehicle, the very nature of the sport will be altered and harmed. Its possible that Bill C-290 wont pass a vote in the senate. It won unanimous approval from all parties in the house of commons, but has been stalled in the Senate for nearly two years. Leagues have legitimate reasons to be cautious about sports gambling. Baseballs Pete Rose was banned for life in 1989 for gambling on his own sport. In football, coaches have been known to tell their teams the point spreads on games. NFL most valuable player Paul Hornung was suspended for the entire 1963 season after he admitted he gambled on NFL and college football games. Nearly a decade later, Jerry Sturm, a former player with the Houston Oilers, said he was offered $10,000 to try to throw a game in 1971 against the Pittsburgh Steelers. In basketball, four players at Northwestern University conspired to fix their final game of the 1995 season against the University of Michigan. An associate of the players, a Notre Dame football player named Kevin Pendergast, travelled to Las Vegas and bet $20,150 at Caesars Palace that Michigan, 25-point favourites, would beat Northwestern by at least 26 points. Michigan didnt cover and the scheme unraveled. The NBAs reputation was tarnished in 2007 after the revelation that referee Tim Donaghy for four years conspired to fix the outcome of games. Donaghy advised professional gamblers on which teams to pick through phone calls and coded language. Donaghy was paid $5,000 to make correct picks on games and after he was caught, he served 15 months in detention, split between federal prisons and a halfway house. Even hockeys reputation has taken repeated blows. In 1948, NHL stars Billy Taylor and Don Gallinger was banned for life for gambling on games. (In an act of forgiveness, he was pardoned 22 years later). In the 1960s, Montreal police probed a scandal at the Forum after it was discovered that the timekeeper was manipulating the official game clock to change the time goals were scored, a move that affected payouts in city lotteries. In 2006, former NHL player and coach Rick Tocchet pleaded guilty to operating an illegal sports book and was suspended for a year by the NHL for organizing a betting ring that took in millions of dollars. Even this year, authorities in Europe uncovered a match-fixing scheme in Danish hockey. Then theres soccer, a frequent and seemingly easy target for match fixers. In 1986, Canadian World Cup veteran Paul James said he and other members of the national team were involved in match fixing during the Merlion Cup in Singapore. James said that he was playing cards with four fellow members of the national team when they approached him with the scheme. The five would divide a bribe worth a total of $100,000. In exchange, Canada would throw the semi-final against the North Koreans, which they were favoured to win. Canada, which had conceded one goal to that point in the tournament, lost 2-0. But James had already given his share back to the other four and had reported the affair. In 2011, police wiretaps in Germany revealed that a criminal organization was fixing games in the semi-pro Canadian Soccer League. Court documents showed that one match fixer traveled to Canada and allegedly offered a bribe of $18,000 to one of the leagues players. The International Ice Hockey Federation recently signed an agreement with Sportradar, a London-based company that monitors the betting patterns of more than 30,000 games each year across Europe. Sportradar officials believe around 300 soccer games a year are fixed in Europe. The companys computers use information from 450 bookmakers to look for unusual betting patterns that could indicate match fixing. The players, the coaches, the referees are infiltrated by match fixers in many different ways, said Sportradars Darren Small, adding that match fixers convince players to participate through financial gain, through bribery, through fear factor. Sportradar will monitor the world junior hockey championships, the Under-18 championships and the world championships for evidence of match-fixing under its contract with the IIHF, said a spokesman for the federation. J. D. Martinez Jersey .The ruling takes effect on Jan. 1 and stems from the debate surrounding Paralympic champion Markus Rehm, an amputee who won the national long jump title competing with a carbon-fiber prosthesis. Ted Williams Jersey .S. routed Sweden 7-0 Sunday to win its fourth straight title and seventh overall under-18 world championship. Olson earned his third shutout of the tournament and the Americans allowed only four goals in six games to set an International Ice Hockey Federation under-18 record. https://www.cheapredsox.com/1311z-hanley-ramirez-jersey-red-sox.html Babe Ruth Jersey . But last years runner-up Jarkko Nieminen crashed out despite winning the first set against Denis Istomin. Istomin fired 10 aces and won 6-7 (5), 6-3, 6-2 to even his career record against Nieminen at 3-3. Rod Beck Jersey . But Josh Bailey scored the shootout winner to lead the Islanders to a 3-2 win over the Montreal Canadiens in a battle of the Eastern Conferences two worst teams.MONACO, Monaco - Thomas Bach never thought it would be this easy. In rapid fashion and without a single vote against or even an abstention, the International Olympic Committee on Monday overwhelmingly approved its presidents 40-point reform package — the biggest shake-up of the organization in decades. Even in my wildest dreams I would not have expected this, Bach said after the delegates unanimously backed his plans for a more affordable bidding system, creation of an Olympic television channel and a more flexible sports program. That it would go this way was a very, very positive surprise. Bach moved decisively since his election in September 2013 to put his stamp on the presidency and rally support for his Olympic Agenda 2020 reforms, marking the most sweeping changes since the Salt Lake City bid scandal in 1999. A vote scheduled to take place over 1 1/2 days was wrapped up in just one day. The only thing that didnt pass unanimously was a suggestion for a coffee break I hope in 20 years I can look back to this day with satisfaction and happiness and maybe a little bit of relief, Bach said. Among other measures approved was the rewording of the IOCs non-discrimination policy to include sexual orientation — a move that followed the controversy over Russias law against gay propaganda ahead of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. The IOC abolished the cap of 28 sports for the Summer Games to move to an events-based system that would allow new competitions to come in, while keeping to about 10,500 athletes and 310 medal events. Host cities will also be allowed to propose the inclusion of one or more additional events for their games. The new rules clear the way for Tokyo organizers to request that baseball and softball be included in the 2020 Games. Both sports, dropped after the 2008 Beijing Games, are highly popular in Japan. Today, there is excitement circulating around the baseball and softball world and there is great hope that our athletes will now have a real opportunity ... to play for their country, aiming to win an Olympic gold medal, said Riccardo Fraccari, president of the World Baseball Softball Confederation. Other sports like squash and karate are also hopeful of joining the Tokyo program. In addition, new disciplines and evennts within existing sports could also be considered.dddddddddddd Some events may need to be dropped to make room for new ones. This is a major breakthrough, senior Canadian member Dick Pound said. We were at a dead-end situation with 28 sports. This provides the flexibility we need. The new bidding process, meanwhile, is aimed at making the system cheaper and more flexible to attract future candidates — including the option of holding events outside the host city or country. The votes came at a time when many countries have been scared off by the costs of hosting the Olympics, including the reported $51 billion associated with the Sochi Games. Several cities withdrew from the bidding for the 2022 Winter Olympics, leaving only Beijing and Almaty, Kazakhstan, in the running. The new system makes the process more of an invitation and allows prospective candidates to discuss their plans in advance with the IOC to tailor games to their own needs. In the most radical change, the reforms open the door to possible joint bids by cities, neighbouring countries or regions. Bach said joint bids or events held in different countries would be allowed only in exceptional cases. The IOC backed the launch of a digital TV channel — possibly as early as next year — to promote Olympic sports between the games and engage with young viewers. The channel will feature material from the IOCs archives, transmit some international sports competitions and offer a promotional platform for bid cities. The IOC said the channel — to be run by the Madrid-based Olympic Broadcasting Services — will cost $600 million to operate over the first seven years, with the goal of breaking even in the first decade. The new Principle 6 clause says the Olympics should be free of discrimination of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, sexual orientation, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Former Olympic diving gold medallist Greg Louganis said the new wording removes all doubt about the interpretation of the clause. Todays move will make it clear about open hearts and open minds in the spirit of the Olympic Games, he said. ___ Follow Stephen Wilson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/stevewilsonap ' ' '