Ted Barris

You’ve probably seen it. The now ubiquitous advertisement shows Connor McDavid allegedly focused at practice. The Edmonton Oilers’ star forward is firing pucks at a goaltender. Cut to just off the ice where a coach turns to Wayne Gretzky and says: “Connor’s just finishing up. He’s pumped you’re here.”

“No rush,” Gretzky says as he looks down at his cellphone and shouts at it, “Come on! Drain that three.” He’s clearly encouraging some other athlete for some other purpose. But he’s become a distraction to McDavid.

“Trying to practise here, Wayne,” McDavid admonishes Gretzky.

“You need it!” Gretzky shoots back.

The cutesy advertisement finishes with a big logo splashed across the screen and a call to action, “It’s on!” Clearly, two of the NHL’s most prolific goal scorers – the former still active on the ice, the latter enjoying life universally recognized as “the Great One” – endorsing the betting application BetMGM.

How much their agents and private bank accounts are profiting from such open shilling for a gambling corporation isn’t known. That doesn’t matter. I get it. Both they and their professional game are all about business.

What does matters is that I think it tarnishes the most beautiful game on the planet. And worse, it preys on the most vulnerable social media addicts – young people – drawing them into online gambling.

All of a sudden last spring, when the Stanley Cup finals began (and following provincial legislation in 2021 that allowed single-event sports betting), the betting ads began popping up everywhere.

It seemed on every other commercial spot, there was one of hockey’s greatest models for the purity of the game, Wayne Gretzky, strolling through the massive fountains in front of the Bellagio gambling resort in Las Vegas.

“With every tap,” he says with smartphone in hand, “a legend is born. A chance to grab destiny, defy the odds. Because every bet with BetMGM has the potential for greatness.” With that, he clicks on “bet” on his phone.

All this contrasts Gretzky’s response to alleged gambling back in 2002. That winter in Salt Lake City, as Canada won Olympic gold in men’s hockey for the first time in half a century, Gretzky as Team Canada’s executive director deflected accusations that his wife, actress Janet Jones, had allegedly bet $5,000 on the 2002 Super Bowl.

Reporters put the question to the Great One then, and he said, “I wasn’t involved and I consider it over and done with.” According to the Guardian newspaper, which broke the story, Gretzky was never allegedly involved, but frequently decried the evils of gambling in sport.

Last week, the CBC’s Fifth Estate broadcast “The Gamblification of Canada” featured reporter Bob McKeown approaching Gretzky, McDavid and Leafs’ star Auston Matthews who told McKeown he’s “proud” of his “partnership” as spokesman for Bet99, suggesting to fans that they “stay tuned for more.”

This, I fear, is the crux of the problem. The sports stars refuse to answer questions from the media, but boy are they eager to show young hockey fans how easy it is with their product to gamble on the game. According to the Canadian Gaming Association, the betting industry now generates $14 billion annually, mostly from people who shouldn’t/couldn’t/don’t know any better.

In the United Kingdom, sports betting (and advertising it) became legal in 2007. The result? According to the U.K.’s Gambling Commission, a survey determined that 55,000 children aged 11 to 16 are now “problem gamblers.”

I lived in Edmonton and covered Gretzky and the Oilers (for CBC Radio) as the team emerged as an NHL dynasty in the 1980s. Wayne Gretzky epitomized innocence, the kid next door.

At the time, the only off-ice endorsement he ever agreed to, was promotion of an Edmonton pizza franchise. And because both the team and their arena, the Northlands Coliseum, were locally owned and operated, the whole franchise seemed pure as Alberta driven snow.

But now there’s the former kid next door kibitzing with Connor McDavid enticing us all to sign up with BetMGM. The punch line for the ad with McDavid practising and Gretzky betting on his phone says it all.

Apparently frustrated by the Great One’s shouting at his phone in the ad, McDavid fires a puck at the glass where Gretzky’s standing at the boards.

“The net’s that way,” Gretzky says, pointing at the net.

“Shouldn’t you be on the golf course?” McDavid says.

Better, shouldn’t he be on the right side of our game (and his public image)? That is, not encouraging gambling in professional hockey and to the most impressionable people in sport – young fans – and their allowances, their part-time job paycheques or their tuition savings.