Gambling Is Coming, So Get Ready to Hate Sports

How the welfare state leads to legalized betting on the national pastime.

New Jersey, one of the most impecunious states in the union, was behind this week’s Supreme Court ruling overturning a federal ban on sports gambling. Not sport fans or sport leagues: It was the work of a leading avatar of the blue-state governance model, in which public-sector unions and politicians join together to ratchet up unsustainable spending and debts.

In the days since New Jersey got the legal go-ahead to bulk up its coffers with sports betting, the urgent job of the major sports leagues has been to simulate pained...