CV NEWS FEED // Amid March Madness basketball games and an uptick in sports betting, several states have issued cease-and-desist orders against financial platforms that recently offered users the option to bet on sports with portfolio funds.
Maryland, New Jersey, Illinois, Ohio, and Nevada have all taken legal action against Robinhood and two other companies, Kalshi and Crypto.com, iGamingBusiness reported. The states claim the platforms’ new option for wagering effectively turns stock trading apps into unlicensed sports betting platforms.
According to Statista, Americans bet an estimated $3.1 billion during this year’s March Madness.
While the states are more concerned about the platforms facilitating sports betting without a license, others are worried about the implications of betting beginning to infiltrate other areas of finance and the economy. Christian financial experts are raising concerns about the potential mental and spiritual damage, not to mention financial harm, that increased access to sports betting can cause.
“Robinhood is trying to blur, or more precisely, obliterate, the line between investments and sports betting,” Brian Mumbert, vice president of advisor relations at Timothy Plan, a Christian investment firm, stated in an emailed news release. “These platforms are becoming indistinguishable from online casinos.”
Kenneth Craycraft, a moral theologian at Mount St. Mary’s Seminary and School of Theology in Cincinnati, wrote for OSV News that while Church teaching does not condemn gambling and sports betting, Catholics would do well to take precautions to maintain financial responsibility and avoid addiction.
“The question of the relative moral status of gambling is a highly contingent one, requiring the application of principles of Catholic moral life to a variety of different scenarios, yielding varying answers. And these answers fall along a continuum, rather than on one side or the other of a bright line,” Craycraft wrote. “Rather than asking if it’s good or evil, we must ask whether (and if so, how) sports wagering can be part of a moral life ordered toward the good.”
The post Moral concerns rise as sports betting meets investment platforms appeared first on CatholicVote org.