AP-NORC Poll: US divided on college vs pro sports betting

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AP-NORC Poll: US divided on college vs pro sports betting

2019-03-21 01:27 Last Updated At：01:40

Scrambling to fill out a March Madness bracket? Betting lunch money that you can pinpoint the Final Four better than co-workers or family?

Good luck! You're among about one-third of Americans who at least occasionally bet on sports among friends or through an office pool, according to a poll released Wednesday by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Still, with all the action on the NCAA men's basketball tournament, the survey finds less support for legal betting on college sports than on the pros. Six in 10 in the survey want betting on professional sports to be legal in their state, far more than the 42 percent who feel that way about college athletics.

This is the first college basketball championship since the Supreme Court cleared the way last year for states to offer legal sports betting if they choose. Eight states currently allow the wagers: Delaware, Mississippi, Nevada, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, West Virginia and New Mexico, where sports bets are done through a tribal compact.

Many more states are considering sports betting.

Eilers & Krejcik Gaming, which tracks sports gambling legislation, estimates that sports betting will be legal in 39 states by the end of 2023. The company estimates $15.2 billion in sports bets would be made on the NCAA tournament alone if sports betting was legalized across the country.

Among those who say they're very interested in sports, 69 percent think betting on professional sports should be legal and 52 percent say the same about college sports. Among those who are not very interested in sports, 50 percent favor betting on pro sports and 38 percent support wagers on college sports.

Men are somewhat more likely than women to support gambling on professional sports, 65 percent to 56 percent. Forty-five percent of men and 40 percent of women think betting on college sports should be legal.

Support for legal sports betting appears to cross political party lines: 65 percent of Democrats and 59 percent of Republicans want legal betting on professional sports, while only 47 percent of Democrats and 41 percent of Republicans think it should be legal to bet on college sports.

"People should be able to do what they want with their money," said Karen Warnshuis of Clovis, California, where sports betting is not legal. "If they want to bet on sports, then they should be able to."

The 57-year-old co-owner of a construction business also favors allowing legal wagers on collegiate athletics, although she worries about possible cheating.

"The one thing I don't like about sports betting is it becomes questionable whether teams or individual players might do something bad," she said. "But then, that could have been happening before legal sports betting, too."

Shelley Matthews, a 70-year-old from Dallas, Texas, is against betting on any level of sports.

"Gambling is not a good idea," he said. "I don't gamble, and I don't know anybody who does."

He, too, worried about the possibility of games being fixed if large amounts of money were riding on them, and said many people gamble more than they can afford, harming their families and communities.

Arturo Isla, a 69-year-old banker from Jacksonville, Florida, opposes wagering on any level of sports, due in large part to the experience of a family friend whose marriage broke up. He said the friend's husband was a heavy gambler.

Isla said he understands the rationale of legalizing, taxing and regulating sports betting to help reduce control of the activity by organized crime and offshore internet sites.

"That's valid, but just because something is legal doesn't mean there aren't negative aspects to it," he said. "People can get addicted, and it can affect their personal lives and their families."

Betting among friends or through office pools is currently the most popular form of sports betting, according to the survey. Thirty-six percent of Americans say they do that at least occasionally, while 20 percent say they've at least occasionally placed bets at casinos and 10 percent through betting or fantasy sports websites or apps.

But the poll also found most people say they currently never gamble on sports, including online (89 percent), at casinos (79 percent) or among friends (63 percent). No more than 5 percent of Americans say they frequently take part in any of those forms of sports betting.

In general, the poll found, most Americans consider gambling to be a problem, but not a major one. About 2 in 10 think gambling is a major problem in the U.S. now, 6 in 10 think it's a minor problem, and about 2 in 10 think it's not a problem.

The AP-NORC poll of 1,063 adults was conducted March 14 to 18 using a sample drawn from NORC's probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 4.1 percentage points.

Respondents were first selected randomly using address-based sampling methods and later were interviewed online or by phone.

For more polling information, AP-NORC Center at http://www.apnorc.org and for more AP sports, https://apnews.com/apf-sports and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports

Follow Wayne Parry at http://twitter.com/WayneParryAC

Venice tests a 5-euro entry fee for day-trippers as the Italian city grapples with overtourism

2024-04-26 00:14 Last Updated At：00:20

VENICE, Italy (AP) — Under the gaze of the world’s media, the fragile lagoon city of Venice launched a pilot program Thursday to charge day-trippers a 5-euro ($5.35) entry fee that authorities hope will discourage visitors from arriving on peak days and make the city more livable for its dwindling residents.

Visitors arriving at Venice's main train station were greeted with large signs listing the 29 dates through July of the plan's test phase that also designated separate entrances for tourists, and residents, students and workers.

“We need to find a new balance between the tourists and residents,’’ said Simone Venturini, the city’s top tourism official. “We need to safeguard the spaces of the residents, of course, and we need to discourage the arrival of day-trippers on some particular days.”

Not all residents, however, are persuaded of the efficacy of the new system in dissuading mass tourism, insisting that only a resurgence in the population will restore balance to a city where narrow alleyways and water buses are often clogged with tourists.

Hundreds of Venetians protested against the program, marching festively though the city's main bus terminal behind banners reading “No to Tickets, Yes to Services and Housing.” Protesters scuffled briefly with police with riot gear who blocked them from entering the city, before changing course and entering over another bridge escorted by plainclothes police officers. The demonstration wrapped up peacefully in a piazza.

Tourists arriving at the main station encountered almost as many journalists as stewards on hand to politely guide anyone unaware of the new requirements through the process of downloading the QR code to pay the fee.

Arianna Cecilia, a tourist from Rome visiting Venice for the first time, said she thought it was “strange” to have to pay to enter a city in her native country, and be funneled through separate entrance ways for tourists. She and her boyfriend were staying in nearby Treviso, and so downloaded the QR code as required. But she was still caught off-guard while soaking in her first view ever of Venice's canals by the sight of the entrance signs and her boyfriend telling her to get out the ticket.

On the other side of the entrance ways, workers in yellow vests carried out random checks at the train station. Transgressors face fines of 50 to 300 euros ($53 to $320), but officials said “common sense” was being applied for the launch.

The requirement applies only for people arriving between 8:30 a.m. and 4 p.m. Outside of those hours, access is free and unchecked.

Venice has long suffered under the pressure of overtourism, and officials hope that the pilot project can help provide more exact figures to better manage the phenomenon.

The city can track the number of hotel visitors, which last year numbered 4.6 million and is down 16% from pre-pandemic highs. But the number of day visitors, which make up the majority of the crowds in Venice, could only be estimated until recently.

A Smart Control Room set up during the pandemic has been tracking arrivals from cellphone data, roughly confirming pre-pandemic estimates of 25 million to 30 million arrivals a year, said Michele Zuin, the city’s top economic official. That includes both day-trippers and overnight guests.

But Zuin said the data is incomplete.

“It’s clear we will get more reliable data from the contribution” being paid by day-trippers, he said.

Venturini said the city is strained when the number of day-trippers reaches 30,000 to 40,000. On peak days, local police set up one-way traffic for pedestrians to keep the crowds moving.

Residents opposing the day-tripper tax insist that the solution to Venice's woes are to boost the resident population and the services they need, limiting short-term rentals to make available more housing and attract families back from the mainland.

Last year, Venice passed a telling milestone when the number of tourist beds exceeded for the first time the number of official residents, which is now below 50,000 in the historic center with its picturesque canals.

“Putting a ticket to enter a city will not decrease not even by one single unit the number of visitors that are coming,’’ said Tommaso Cacciari, an activist who organized a protest Thursday against the measure.

“You pay a ticket to take the metro, to go to a museum, an amusement park. You don’t pay a ticket to enter a city. This is the last symbolic step of a project of an idea of this municipal administration to kick residents out of Venice,” he said.

Venice Mayor Luigi Brugnaro declared the launch day, coinciding with an Italian holiday, a success, registering 15,700 paying visitors, 50% more than anticipated.

More than 97,000 others had downloaded a QR code denoting an exemption, including to work in Venice or as a resident of the Veneto region. Hotels in Venice, including in mainland districts like Marghera or Mestre, provided a QR code for visitors to attest to their stay, which includes a hotel tax — accounting for 40,000 of those.

Venturini, the tourist official, said that interest in Venice’s pilot program has been keen from other places suffering from mass tourism, including other Italian art cities, and municipalities abroad such as Barcelona, Spain, and Amsterdam.

But Marina Rodino, who has lived in Venice for 30 years, doesn't see the fee as the cure-all. Neighboring apartments in her residential building near the famed Rialto Bridge once inhabited by families are now short-term apartment rentals.

The corner butcher shop closed. Yet she noted that the new entrance fee requirement will still allow young people to flood the city in the evening for the traditional aperitivo, which can grow rowdy.

She was passing out mock European Union passports for “Venice, Open City,” underlining the irony of the new system, and challenging its legal standing with citations from the Italian Constitution guaranteeing its citizens the right to “move or reside freely in any part of the national territory."

“This is not a natural oasis. This is not a museum. It is not Pompeii. It is a city, where we need to fight so the houses are inhabited by families, and stores reopen. That is what would counter this wild tourism,’’ Rodino said.