As the article said, sports betting is becoming a huge problem in the US and the country in general isn't prepared for ramifications. Whenever I talk negatively about sports betting with friends,...
As the article said, sports betting is becoming a huge problem in the US and the country in general isn't prepared for ramifications. Whenever I talk negatively about sports betting with friends, they all look at me like I'm crazy, and my friends aren't dumb, but they genuinely have zero clue how addicting gambling can be, even as I watch some of them get addicted in real time.
My biggest problem with it currently is that it's being dressed up to attract even more people, like the Taylor Swift betting lines for the super bowl. It's not even about sports at this point, it's casinos blatantly exploiting people (which has always been true, but it's even more obvious now).
There really needs to be more regulation in place against sports betting, but I don't think anybody with the power to make regulations actually cares. Tons of commercials during a sports game now are for betting, you can't escape it and it's being normalized. Many people don't understand how predatory it is when a new app offers you $100 of "free bets" and they blow through that "free money" immediately and start putting in their own money. People can bet on sports if they want, but there needs to be some crack down on the level of advertising, sportsbookers partnering with athletes, etc. There are too many people getting into it that genuinely have no clue what they're about to get into. The stat of how 26% of American adults are projected to bet on the super bowl in some way is just soul crushing to me.
It is a lot further along in some other anglophone countries such as Australia and the UK and The Guardian runs plenty of articles about the problems. For one thing there is a lot of outrage about...
It is a lot further along in some other anglophone countries such as Australia and the UK and The Guardian runs plenty of articles about the problems.
For one thing there is a lot of outrage about the sheer prevalence of gambling messaging. Advertising works differently in the other kind of “football” (aka Soccer) in that the game is uninterrupted by ads except the halftime but there are screens around the sides of the field as well as on the player’s jerseys such that a Premier League game contains more than 1000 images promoting gambling.
You could say gambling is good clean fun for some people but for other people it is a dangerous addiction and it’s terrible that a person who is keeping away from gambling will be exposed to so much messaging if they want to enjoy a game. Similarly there are a lot of young people who haven’t developed good judgement and could be very quick to get over their heads.
On the other side, it's gotten exceptionally bad in third world countries in Africa and South/East Asia where governments are far slower to enforce any protections. It feels like almost ad break...
On the other side, it's gotten exceptionally bad in third world countries in Africa and South/East Asia where governments are far slower to enforce any protections. It feels like almost ad break on TV, radio and even YouTube seems to be shilling increasingly suspect companies.
And they have teams of lawyers and contacts to skirt through any existing regulations. They'll get a gambling license through some backwater gambling board or have a layer of slippery fine print before a mountain of T&Cs.
And even if the professional international games have some level of authenticity, gambling at this scale puts smaller and local games in a tight spot. I'm more familiar with cricket and it's crazy how many points of fixing there is. You can bet on the entire game. But you can also hedge your bet against each innings with a predicted score range. But some can even go as granular as betting on every ball played.
So what's there to stop someone from "persuading" a player to make a certain, unlikely action at a spesific time. And if a player does it once, what percentage of their plays are pre-planned. On top of that, how many players are comprised. Or entire teams.
Isn't exercising restraint and taking responsibility for your actions part of being an adult? I don't gamble and I find the ads annoying, but obviously it's popular or it wouldn't be making money...
Isn't exercising restraint and taking responsibility for your actions part of being an adult? I don't gamble and I find the ads annoying, but obviously it's popular or it wouldn't be making money and you wouldn't see the services being heavily marketed. Deciding to gamble is a choice, just like it's a choice to take up smoking or invest in the stock market. People should be taking responsibility for their own decisions, not blaming service providers.
In general, people should take responsibilities for their own decisions, but it's a bit different when gambling is known to be addictive and where some people literally cannot help themselves and...
In general, people should take responsibilities for their own decisions, but it's a bit different when gambling is known to be addictive and where some people literally cannot help themselves and will destroy their life unless someone is able to intervene. In cases like this, the person isn't choosing to destroy their life, they have an addiction just like someone addicted to alcohol, drugs, etc. Gambling can destroy lives of both individuals and families and the consequences can expand past one's self. I don't think it should be illegal (though I do think gambling ads should be illegal) but I think it's just as wrong to have a sports betting ad every commercial break in a basketball game as it would be to have a tobacco ad every commercial break.
The sports betting industry also preys on younger people who don't know better and it gets them addicted young, which can be a huge problem (the article goes into a bit of detail on this).
I get that people can't help themselves, and I won't disagree that gambling is potentially dangerous if you (as the gambler) let it get out of hand. I'm overall bothered by society having to cater...
I get that people can't help themselves, and I won't disagree that gambling is potentially dangerous if you (as the gambler) let it get out of hand. I'm overall bothered by society having to cater to the 5% of people who just wont't/can't control themselves or take responsibility for themselves. It's why we end up with stupid laws, stupid warning signs, and silly safety railings all over the place.
As I've traveled around the world, I've visited all sorts of beautiful places with no guardrails, safety barriers or other obnoxious obstructions and thought to myself "wow, this would never fly in the US, Someone would get hurt and sue". People refusing to take responsibility for their own actions has made our culture stuffy and boring for everyone else.
…and every single attempt to use restraint and responsibility on a large scale has been met with failure—failure that still manages to splash back onto the people who did exercise such...
exercising restraint and taking responsibility for your actions part of being an adult?
…and every single attempt to use restraint and responsibility on a large scale has been met with failure—failure that still manages to splash back onto the people who did exercise such responsibility and restraint.
Exactly. Tons of people gamble religiously in the stock market without even realizing it. In the U.S. it's advertised as a 401(k). You get a good job somewhere and they hand you a form to fill out...
Deciding to gamble is a choice, just like it's a choice to take up smoking or invest in the stock market.
Exactly. Tons of people gamble religiously in the stock market without even realizing it. In the U.S. it's advertised as a 401(k). You get a good job somewhere and they hand you a form to fill out saying that if you make a consistent, bi-weekly bid into the market, and you'll have more money later.
A smaller portion of people even put on a suit and sit at a desk to gamble professionally. This is called Wall Street.
People should be taking responsibility for their own decisions
imo we allow people to do a heaps of dangerous things like sky diving and amateur MMA fighting. It's all about risk management.
Taking risks in general is not the same thing as gambling. Sure, investing can be gambling, but putting your money in a 401k is not the same thing. Gambling is an inherently irrational act. Most...
Taking risks in general is not the same thing as gambling.
Sure, investing can be gambling, but putting your money in a 401k is not the same thing.
Gambling is an inherently irrational act. Most somewhat informed people know that the house will always have an edge such that no matter what, if you gamble enough you will lose. They do it anyway because they get a thrill out of it.
That’s different than investing, where you consider the potential risk, then decide that you have a pretty good chance to increase your wealth over the long term and decide to put your money into financial instruments. One is a logical decision making process involving the consideration of risks and loss, the other is an irrational decision made out of pure emotion with no basis in reality.
If you regularly gamble, you will lose money. If you regularly invest, you may lose money, but chances are you won’t, as long as you’re rational about it.
There’s a reason why “investor” is a legitimate career that people can and do make long term livings off of, and “gambler” is just what people call themselves themselves when they want to cover for illegally acquired income.
My personal take is that having chart and the latest Goldman CPI report doesn't make an investor any less of a gambler, even if they want to call themselves so. This feels more true as you get...
My personal take is that having chart and the latest Goldman CPI report doesn't make an investor any less of a gambler, even if they want to call themselves so.
This feels more true as you get into less liquid markets, like private venture investing. Your odds of making money on a seed round investment are extremely low, and odds of losing that money are extremely high. It's a gamble.
I can also play games at the casino based on what has the best odds and lowest house edge. Just because I throw dice based on the data doesn't mean it's investing.
The house is a casino. The market is also casino, just with more complicated plumbing.
Very few people really have the data they need to win at market investing from skill and information (there is a joke in macro economics that only five people in the world really understand money.) But many people have recency bias, and it looks like if you consistently bid in the market based on most of the last century you will probably make money (and right now, hopefully that money has been parked in the magnificent seven rather than the bottom 1000 of the Russell 2000), so that makes it feel like a reasonable bet to make. But a lot of the market participants also operate sans reason; people who don't understand what their retirement accounts even are, they just religiously put some of their money in it on a regular cadence.
Yes, you can adopt gambling strategies to minimize your losses, but they will always be losses. There is no strategy where the house doesn't win in the long term. It's not a viable way to make...
I can also play games at the casino based on what has the best odds and lowest house edge
Yes, you can adopt gambling strategies to minimize your losses, but they will always be losses. There is no strategy where the house doesn't win in the long term. It's not a viable way to make money over the long term unless you're cheating. Investing doesn't have the same problem. Sure, private venture capital firms may take on very risky investments, but those investments also have a huge profit potential, and the successful firms are able to manage that risk such that the few winners make it worth taking on the many losers.
Betting on numbers in roulette is also very high risk, but the reward doesn't justify that risk, and it never will, because there's always a house edge.
One of those things, if done properly, is a viable strategy for making money by managing risk, the other is not.
Is this not the same for the successful gamblers at the casino? I think the large difference is the VC can survive on management fees from their LPs, even if they suffer a large drawdown or...
the successful firms are able to manage that risk such that the few winners make it worth taking on the many losers
Is this not the same for the successful gamblers at the casino?
I think the large difference is the VC can survive on management fees from their LPs, even if they suffer a large drawdown or haven't generated much carry. Eventually those LPs will redeem what little subscription they have left from the unsuccessful VC.
Imagine how much longer people would last at the casino if they could call up capital from LPs and then charge them a fee.
"Hey I'm pooling $20M to take to the casino. I'll give you back 80% of the winnings from your deposit as long as you pay me a 2% management fee of the pool size. Its high-risk but we'll eventually hit a 30-to-1."
Well the thing is that there really aren't successful gamblers at the casino. In games where there's a slight element of skill like poker, an extremely skilled played can eliminate the house edge,...
Well the thing is that there really aren't successful gamblers at the casino.
In games where there's a slight element of skill like poker, an extremely skilled played can eliminate the house edge, but that has less to do with being a successful gambler and more to do with being a good game player, knowing how to read people, and keeping track of board state. Poker players are also notoriously boastful liars, and I'd guess that 95% of the successful ones are massively overstating their success.
In basically every other casino game where it's purely a game of chance, there are no long term successful gamblers. It's not impossible of course, but it's just so statistically improbable that it functionally is.
There are some cheaters, who can figure out a way to cheat long enough to make a living before the casino figures it out, and there are people who say they're successful, but really most of their income comes from drug sales or prostitution or some other shady business, and they use gambling as a convenient cover for social money laundering.
The market doesn't work that way. The market isn't owned by any single entity, it doesn't have a house edge. People can, and routinely do beat the market, and they can do it for long careers. More importantly though, you don't have to beat the market to make a living once you're past a certain point of capital. You can just make 8% a year off the s&p 500.
That's not possible with gambling. There are no "safe" gambles. No matter what game you play in a casino, if you play it for long enough, you will lose everything.
Keep in mind that gambling is also a major avenue for money laundering. Regardless of anyone's political views on personal responsibility, money laundering is still a serious issue that needs to...
Keep in mind that gambling is also a major avenue for money laundering. Regardless of anyone's political views on personal responsibility, money laundering is still a serious issue that needs to be addressed.
There are ways to deter organized crime while still permitting responsible, legal gambling. Many of these have the added benefit of making it easier for gambling addicts to control their impulses (e.g., a cashless system where gamblers pre-pay into a digital wallet, which in theory should make it easier for them to budget and place hard limits on themselves).
I think all the advertising is the biggest issue. Aside from the fact that I hate how annoying it is, it obviously works on people. Since we banned advertising cigarette usage has steadily dropped...
I think all the advertising is the biggest issue. Aside from the fact that I hate how annoying it is, it obviously works on people. Since we banned advertising cigarette usage has steadily dropped in Canada. Still plenty legal to smoke, just way less people doing it. I realize it's possible that those realities are unrelated. I still think banning sports betting ads would reduce the amount of sports betting.
Your comment got me morbidly curious so I wound up clicking one of these ads....turns out there are way more horse tracks near my city than I ever would have guessed. Upsetting!
Your comment got me morbidly curious so I wound up clicking one of these ads....turns out there are way more horse tracks near my city than I ever would have guessed. Upsetting!
I've found this silly for decades. While sports betting expanding the way it has IS a problem and something there should be better regulation on, it's not like it was ever that hard to find a...
I've found this silly for decades. While sports betting expanding the way it has IS a problem and something there should be better regulation on, it's not like it was ever that hard to find a middleman to do your betting for you (in the case of worrying about players/refs/coaches betting on games).
As for sports betting apps and things like that, yeah that's where I think there needs to be much better regulation, but I also think the same thing needs to apply to mobile games, which are arguably worse. In general society hasn't adapted well to tech making regional issues available on the touch of your phone screen.
I feel like in today's society by the time a problem is identified with technology X, a lot of regulatory options are already off the table because the political cost has become huge from buy-in....
In general society hasn't adapted well to tech making regional issues available on the touch of your phone screen.
I feel like in today's society by the time a problem is identified with technology X, a lot of regulatory options are already off the table because the political cost has become huge from buy-in. E.g. see TikTok, sports gambling apps, predatory mobile games etc. etc.
That’s black and white thinking though. A similar argument pops up all the time with countless other things that are debated over. “What’s the point of banning drugs, it’s so easy to buy them now...
That’s black and white thinking though. A similar argument pops up all the time with countless other things that are debated over. “What’s the point of banning drugs, it’s so easy to buy them now anyway”, “what’s the point of banning guns, they’re already so easy to buy illegally”
Making something illegal will never eliminate it, but combined with effective enforcement, it does make it harder and more expensive to acquire.
Sure, 20 years ago if you really wanted to bet on a football game it wouldn’t be that hard to find someone willing to take the bet. It certainly wasn’t as easy as putting an app on your phone though. The bookies edge would also be a lot higher because running an illegal business is riskier and more expensive than running a legal one. You also weren’t getting blasted in the face with ads for it all the time.
I’m not saying that betting should/shouldn’t be illegal, just that when it was illegal, it was definitely less popular and harder to come by, which was the whole goal.
The issue is not just "Well they can get it illegally". The issue is you create a massive black market that causes a ton of crime and turn previously law abiding citizens into criminals....
That’s black and white thinking though. A similar argument pops up all the time with countless other things that are debated over. “What’s the point of banning drugs, it’s so easy to buy them now anyway”, “what’s the point of banning guns, they’re already so easy to buy illegally”
Making something illegal will never eliminate it, but combined with effective enforcement, it does make it harder and more expensive to acquire.
The issue is not just "Well they can get it illegally". The issue is you create a massive black market that causes a ton of crime and turn previously law abiding citizens into criminals. Prohibition and the War on Drugs have both had massive negative effects on the average person, while those with any sort of wealth or power are completely immune, and those with less morals benefit tremendously.
Why? Just because you can do crimes through other means doesn't mean that the easiest and most obvious ways to do them should be legal?
I've found this silly for decades. While sports betting expanding the way it has IS a problem and something there should be better regulation on, it's not like it was ever that hard to find a middleman to do your betting for you (in the case of worrying about players/refs/coaches betting on games).
Why? Just because you can do crimes through other means doesn't mean that the easiest and most obvious ways to do them should be legal?
How is preventing match fixing (by banning players, coaches, refereees, etc from placing bets where they have an obvious conflict of interest) in any way the same thing as "making vice squads and...
How is preventing match fixing (by banning players, coaches, refereees, etc from placing bets where they have an obvious conflict of interest) in any way the same thing as "making vice squads and disproportionately arresting the poor instead"? NFL players aren't exactly impoverished.
They already are banned from betting on nfl games. Edit: To be clear everyone but the players are and they can’t bet on their teams and there’s other rules in place. Again though no really sure...
They already are banned from betting on nfl games.
Edit:
To be clear everyone but the players are and they can’t bet on their teams and there’s other rules in place.
Again though no really sure how much you’re going to accomplish when almost every possible illicit bet is going through middle men anyways
As the article said, sports betting is becoming a huge problem in the US and the country in general isn't prepared for ramifications. Whenever I talk negatively about sports betting with friends, they all look at me like I'm crazy, and my friends aren't dumb, but they genuinely have zero clue how addicting gambling can be, even as I watch some of them get addicted in real time.
My biggest problem with it currently is that it's being dressed up to attract even more people, like the Taylor Swift betting lines for the super bowl. It's not even about sports at this point, it's casinos blatantly exploiting people (which has always been true, but it's even more obvious now).
There really needs to be more regulation in place against sports betting, but I don't think anybody with the power to make regulations actually cares. Tons of commercials during a sports game now are for betting, you can't escape it and it's being normalized. Many people don't understand how predatory it is when a new app offers you $100 of "free bets" and they blow through that "free money" immediately and start putting in their own money. People can bet on sports if they want, but there needs to be some crack down on the level of advertising, sportsbookers partnering with athletes, etc. There are too many people getting into it that genuinely have no clue what they're about to get into. The stat of how 26% of American adults are projected to bet on the super bowl in some way is just soul crushing to me.
It is a lot further along in some other anglophone countries such as Australia and the UK and The Guardian runs plenty of articles about the problems.
For one thing there is a lot of outrage about the sheer prevalence of gambling messaging. Advertising works differently in the other kind of “football” (aka Soccer) in that the game is uninterrupted by ads except the halftime but there are screens around the sides of the field as well as on the player’s jerseys such that a Premier League game contains more than 1000 images promoting gambling.
You could say gambling is good clean fun for some people but for other people it is a dangerous addiction and it’s terrible that a person who is keeping away from gambling will be exposed to so much messaging if they want to enjoy a game. Similarly there are a lot of young people who haven’t developed good judgement and could be very quick to get over their heads.
On the other side, it's gotten exceptionally bad in third world countries in Africa and South/East Asia where governments are far slower to enforce any protections. It feels like almost ad break on TV, radio and even YouTube seems to be shilling increasingly suspect companies.
And they have teams of lawyers and contacts to skirt through any existing regulations. They'll get a gambling license through some backwater gambling board or have a layer of slippery fine print before a mountain of T&Cs.
And even if the professional international games have some level of authenticity, gambling at this scale puts smaller and local games in a tight spot. I'm more familiar with cricket and it's crazy how many points of fixing there is. You can bet on the entire game. But you can also hedge your bet against each innings with a predicted score range. But some can even go as granular as betting on every ball played.
So what's there to stop someone from "persuading" a player to make a certain, unlikely action at a spesific time. And if a player does it once, what percentage of their plays are pre-planned. On top of that, how many players are comprised. Or entire teams.
Isn't exercising restraint and taking responsibility for your actions part of being an adult? I don't gamble and I find the ads annoying, but obviously it's popular or it wouldn't be making money and you wouldn't see the services being heavily marketed. Deciding to gamble is a choice, just like it's a choice to take up smoking or invest in the stock market. People should be taking responsibility for their own decisions, not blaming service providers.
In general, people should take responsibilities for their own decisions, but it's a bit different when gambling is known to be addictive and where some people literally cannot help themselves and will destroy their life unless someone is able to intervene. In cases like this, the person isn't choosing to destroy their life, they have an addiction just like someone addicted to alcohol, drugs, etc. Gambling can destroy lives of both individuals and families and the consequences can expand past one's self. I don't think it should be illegal (though I do think gambling ads should be illegal) but I think it's just as wrong to have a sports betting ad every commercial break in a basketball game as it would be to have a tobacco ad every commercial break.
The sports betting industry also preys on younger people who don't know better and it gets them addicted young, which can be a huge problem (the article goes into a bit of detail on this).
I get that people can't help themselves, and I won't disagree that gambling is potentially dangerous if you (as the gambler) let it get out of hand. I'm overall bothered by society having to cater to the 5% of people who just wont't/can't control themselves or take responsibility for themselves. It's why we end up with stupid laws, stupid warning signs, and silly safety railings all over the place.
As I've traveled around the world, I've visited all sorts of beautiful places with no guardrails, safety barriers or other obnoxious obstructions and thought to myself "wow, this would never fly in the US, Someone would get hurt and sue". People refusing to take responsibility for their own actions has made our culture stuffy and boring for everyone else.
…and every single attempt to use restraint and responsibility on a large scale has been met with failure—failure that still manages to splash back onto the people who did exercise such responsibility and restraint.
Exactly. Tons of people gamble religiously in the stock market without even realizing it. In the U.S. it's advertised as a 401(k). You get a good job somewhere and they hand you a form to fill out saying that if you make a consistent, bi-weekly bid into the market, and you'll have more money later.
A smaller portion of people even put on a suit and sit at a desk to gamble professionally. This is called Wall Street.
imo we allow people to do a heaps of dangerous things like sky diving and amateur MMA fighting. It's all about risk management.
Taking risks in general is not the same thing as gambling.
Sure, investing can be gambling, but putting your money in a 401k is not the same thing.
Gambling is an inherently irrational act. Most somewhat informed people know that the house will always have an edge such that no matter what, if you gamble enough you will lose. They do it anyway because they get a thrill out of it.
That’s different than investing, where you consider the potential risk, then decide that you have a pretty good chance to increase your wealth over the long term and decide to put your money into financial instruments. One is a logical decision making process involving the consideration of risks and loss, the other is an irrational decision made out of pure emotion with no basis in reality.
If you regularly gamble, you will lose money. If you regularly invest, you may lose money, but chances are you won’t, as long as you’re rational about it.
There’s a reason why “investor” is a legitimate career that people can and do make long term livings off of, and “gambler” is just what people call themselves themselves when they want to cover for illegally acquired income.
My personal take is that having chart and the latest Goldman CPI report doesn't make an investor any less of a gambler, even if they want to call themselves so.
This feels more true as you get into less liquid markets, like private venture investing. Your odds of making money on a seed round investment are extremely low, and odds of losing that money are extremely high. It's a gamble.
I can also play games at the casino based on what has the best odds and lowest house edge. Just because I throw dice based on the data doesn't mean it's investing.
The house is a casino. The market is also casino, just with more complicated plumbing.
Very few people really have the data they need to win at market investing from skill and information (there is a joke in macro economics that only five people in the world really understand money.) But many people have recency bias, and it looks like if you consistently bid in the market based on most of the last century you will probably make money (and right now, hopefully that money has been parked in the magnificent seven rather than the bottom 1000 of the Russell 2000), so that makes it feel like a reasonable bet to make. But a lot of the market participants also operate sans reason; people who don't understand what their retirement accounts even are, they just religiously put some of their money in it on a regular cadence.
Yes, you can adopt gambling strategies to minimize your losses, but they will always be losses. There is no strategy where the house doesn't win in the long term. It's not a viable way to make money over the long term unless you're cheating. Investing doesn't have the same problem. Sure, private venture capital firms may take on very risky investments, but those investments also have a huge profit potential, and the successful firms are able to manage that risk such that the few winners make it worth taking on the many losers.
Betting on numbers in roulette is also very high risk, but the reward doesn't justify that risk, and it never will, because there's always a house edge.
One of those things, if done properly, is a viable strategy for making money by managing risk, the other is not.
Is this not the same for the successful gamblers at the casino?
I think the large difference is the VC can survive on management fees from their LPs, even if they suffer a large drawdown or haven't generated much carry. Eventually those LPs will redeem what little subscription they have left from the unsuccessful VC.
Imagine how much longer people would last at the casino if they could call up capital from LPs and then charge them a fee.
"Hey I'm pooling $20M to take to the casino. I'll give you back 80% of the winnings from your deposit as long as you pay me a 2% management fee of the pool size. Its high-risk but we'll eventually hit a 30-to-1."
Well the thing is that there really aren't successful gamblers at the casino.
In games where there's a slight element of skill like poker, an extremely skilled played can eliminate the house edge, but that has less to do with being a successful gambler and more to do with being a good game player, knowing how to read people, and keeping track of board state. Poker players are also notoriously boastful liars, and I'd guess that 95% of the successful ones are massively overstating their success.
In basically every other casino game where it's purely a game of chance, there are no long term successful gamblers. It's not impossible of course, but it's just so statistically improbable that it functionally is.
There are some cheaters, who can figure out a way to cheat long enough to make a living before the casino figures it out, and there are people who say they're successful, but really most of their income comes from drug sales or prostitution or some other shady business, and they use gambling as a convenient cover for social money laundering.
The market doesn't work that way. The market isn't owned by any single entity, it doesn't have a house edge. People can, and routinely do beat the market, and they can do it for long careers. More importantly though, you don't have to beat the market to make a living once you're past a certain point of capital. You can just make 8% a year off the s&p 500.
That's not possible with gambling. There are no "safe" gambles. No matter what game you play in a casino, if you play it for long enough, you will lose everything.
Keep in mind that gambling is also a major avenue for money laundering. Regardless of anyone's political views on personal responsibility, money laundering is still a serious issue that needs to be addressed.
There are ways to deter organized crime while still permitting responsible, legal gambling. Many of these have the added benefit of making it easier for gambling addicts to control their impulses (e.g., a cashless system where gamblers pre-pay into a digital wallet, which in theory should make it easier for them to budget and place hard limits on themselves).
Ads work.
I think all the advertising is the biggest issue. Aside from the fact that I hate how annoying it is, it obviously works on people. Since we banned advertising cigarette usage has steadily dropped in Canada. Still plenty legal to smoke, just way less people doing it. I realize it's possible that those realities are unrelated. I still think banning sports betting ads would reduce the amount of sports betting.
Ever since they allowed gambling advertising in Ontario, it's become a flood of radio and YouTube ads for betting on horse racing. Drives me crazy.
Interesting, I'm bombarded with sports betting ads but cannot remember a single horse racing one. You must live close to a track or something.
Your comment got me morbidly curious so I wound up clicking one of these ads....turns out there are way more horse tracks near my city than I ever would have guessed. Upsetting!
Hah, kind of impressive considering how many have closed.
I've found this silly for decades. While sports betting expanding the way it has IS a problem and something there should be better regulation on, it's not like it was ever that hard to find a middleman to do your betting for you (in the case of worrying about players/refs/coaches betting on games).
As for sports betting apps and things like that, yeah that's where I think there needs to be much better regulation, but I also think the same thing needs to apply to mobile games, which are arguably worse. In general society hasn't adapted well to tech making regional issues available on the touch of your phone screen.
I feel like in today's society by the time a problem is identified with technology X, a lot of regulatory options are already off the table because the political cost has become huge from buy-in. E.g. see TikTok, sports gambling apps, predatory mobile games etc. etc.
That’s black and white thinking though. A similar argument pops up all the time with countless other things that are debated over. “What’s the point of banning drugs, it’s so easy to buy them now anyway”, “what’s the point of banning guns, they’re already so easy to buy illegally”
Making something illegal will never eliminate it, but combined with effective enforcement, it does make it harder and more expensive to acquire.
Sure, 20 years ago if you really wanted to bet on a football game it wouldn’t be that hard to find someone willing to take the bet. It certainly wasn’t as easy as putting an app on your phone though. The bookies edge would also be a lot higher because running an illegal business is riskier and more expensive than running a legal one. You also weren’t getting blasted in the face with ads for it all the time.
I’m not saying that betting should/shouldn’t be illegal, just that when it was illegal, it was definitely less popular and harder to come by, which was the whole goal.
The issue is not just "Well they can get it illegally". The issue is you create a massive black market that causes a ton of crime and turn previously law abiding citizens into criminals. Prohibition and the War on Drugs have both had massive negative effects on the average person, while those with any sort of wealth or power are completely immune, and those with less morals benefit tremendously.
Why? Just because you can do crimes through other means doesn't mean that the easiest and most obvious ways to do them should be legal?
Yes, you can ban sports betting and go back to making vice squads and disproportionately arresting the poor instead.
How is preventing match fixing (by banning players, coaches, refereees, etc from placing bets where they have an obvious conflict of interest) in any way the same thing as "making vice squads and disproportionately arresting the poor instead"? NFL players aren't exactly impoverished.
They already are banned from betting on nfl games.
Edit:
To be clear everyone but the players are and they can’t bet on their teams and there’s other rules in place.
Again though no really sure how much you’re going to accomplish when almost every possible illicit bet is going through middle men anyways
You seem to be arguing that things shouldn't be crimes if people can not get caught doing them?