9 ms·

I was a big proponent of legalizing sports gambling before it happened here in the US. After that, one of my best friends lost 5 figures on sports gambling that

by lumb63 2y ago

I was a big proponent of legalizing sports gambling before it happened here in the US. After that, one of my best friends lost 5 figures on sports gambling that he really couldn’t afford to lose. I’ve also watched sports talk shows degrade to simple betting tips, and TV is now borderline unwatchable due to the pharmaceutical and gambling ads. To me, a few regulations/restrictions seem useful. I think broad legalization went too far. One regulation would be banning gambling advertising, for the same reason why smoking ads are (I think?) banned. It is especially nefarious how companies lure in new customers with free bets, often with unscrupulous cash-out conditions, in order to get people hooked. It’s the equivalent of ads providing someone a coupon code to get several boxes of free cigarettes, at which point they get hooked. Another change I’d like to see is the end of mobile gambling. I’ve never done it, but from watching friends do it, it was far too easy to deposit money, or borrow money on credit, and bet it frivolously. At least if such behavior is confined to a casino, there is some larger barrier to entry for people. I do not know if this is true in other states, but certain states have the ability for an individual to self-institute a gambling ban at all facilities in the state. I’m not sure if this applies to gambling online. If not, then it should. And if other states don’t have it, then they would greatly benefit from it. It also seems somewhat fair to me to tax the casinos and other companies profiting from gambling and using that money to fund services for people who become addicted. If you’re going to help create a problem, you should have to help clean it up.

bombcar 2y ago
Requiring gambling to be done at established facilities or even the sports facility itself and limiting the bets to five dollars or some nominal amount would solve 99% of the problems.
- verdverm 2y ago
  Limiting it to a licensed location, instead of app or website, and requiring cash instead of credit would likely be sufficient.
  - gosub100 2y ago
    I'm pretty sure the owners of the licensed locations were principals in getting the online betting scene going. I am guessing here, but it seems likely they saw that it's inevitable that off-shore online sports books will exist, so they were driven to capitalize on it legally (from the US).
- acdha 2y ago
  The other thing I’d add is a mandatory system where people can tell the company not to allow them to bet with a lengthy time delay (say 90 days) to remove themselves from the list. Most people with problems know they have them at least some of the time and it’s important to give them tools to prevent moments of weakness.
  - seaal 2y ago
    Self exclusion is something that is handled by each states gaming enforcement department. All 34 states that have a self-exclusion program also have wildly different policies.
    - 8note 2y ago
      Is this mitigated by time to get between states?
  - mnahkies 2y ago
    They have a system for this in the UK https://www.gamstop.co.uk/ https://www.gamstop.co.uk/ - though I only know it exists from TV adverts (presumably they are legally obligated to run these)
- piltdownman 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - aidenn0 2y ago
    The state I grew up in prohibited distilled spirits from being sold at non-State run stores.
    - piltdownman 2y ago
      Which is a methanol related health and safety measure grandfathered in as a holdover from the Volstead Act. All first world control have significant hazard analysis and supply chain integrity measures for food and drink.
      - ericbarrett 2y ago
        Tangential—methanol poisoning from an improper brewing or distilling process is largely, maybe completely, a myth. Where toxicity events have occurred they are almost always deliberate or accidental adulteration, e.g. fortifying moonshine with industrially "denatured" (deliberately poisoned) alcohol. There has been a lot of sloppy journalism in such cases that doesn't question the myth, as well as Prohibition-era propaganda that lives on to this day. Great Reddit discussion about this: https://old.reddit.com/r/firewater/comments/9p1fwe/methanol_myths_realities_etc/ https://old.reddit.com/r/firewater/comments/9p1fwe/methanol_...
        piltdownman 2y ago
        TIL. That said, I hadn't anticipated much rational in Prohibition rationale. The thread did support my suspicion that grappa hangovers are their own special category of hell though!
      - aidenn0 2y ago
        I'm not sure that's the entirely the case, given that, when I was a kid, you couldn't buy non-distilled beverages at the grocery store either. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcoholic_beverage_control_state https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcoholic_beverage_control_sta...
- Fauntleroy 2y ago
  It would also result in way less profits, so we'd need something truly incredible to happen to see it through.
  - marcosdumay 2y ago
    > something truly incredible That's one interesting way to say "government regulation".
    - Petersipoi 2y ago
      Government regulation that results in the government having less money is truly incredible.
      - Xylakant 2y ago
        Examples are not particularly hard to come by: All government regulations to reduce smoking, all regulations to reduce petrol cars. All regulations to ban drugs. All of those aim to reduce the sale of some item the government could or does tax. I’m sure more can be found.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
- andy800 2y ago
  The only actual problem casino gambling, lotteries, and sports betting has been intended to solve is to generate revenue for state and local governments. Limiting bets to $5 would ensure failure for that purpose. Gambling addiction, crime, cheating, game fixing, etc are unfortunate side effects, but not real problems, in the eyes of lawmakers.
- ipaddr 2y ago
  Why not just ban it? I fail to see the point of spending all of this money administering an industry with such a low total income. That would lose money every year and keep increasing.
  - dredmorbius 2y ago
    A total ban ... on legal gambling ... would likely lead to at least some increase in illegal gambling, which of necessity allies itself to organised crime. That's not an iron-clad argument, as legal gambling can still have mob ties, and tacit permission of some illegal gambling might still permit some level of oversight. And of course, legal gambling doesn't ensure reasonable or effective oversight or regulation. By establishing known, legal, and possibly even bettor-favourable facilities or systems, gaming becomes something which might have some level of oversight. The increase in online gambling does severely cut into this argument though. Another challenge, in the U.S., comes in the form of reservation casinos which can operate independently of other state prohibitions on gambling, which means that total eradication is at the very least difficult. But that is an argument which might be made in answer to your "why not just..." question. (I'm generally not a fan of gambling in any of its various forms. I'm cognisant of its pervasiveness and some of the worse aspects of it.)
    - doetoe 2y ago
      According to the article, the other way around didn't happen: the legalization didn't decrease illegal gambling
      - dredmorbius 2y ago
        That would put a damper on things. Though the pre-2018 situation was that personal (that is, not intermediated by a company) gambling was legal, which provided an out. Again: I'm positing the argument, I'm not advocating for it. And it does appear to be counterfactual.
      - ThunderSizzle 2y ago
        It's a lot easier for the IRS to track your betting earnings when it's reported to them directly by the broker. Of course doing it in a way so it can't be tracked keeps the IRS ignorant, which is a big deal to many people
- WeylandYutani 2y ago
  Yeah but how do you do that when you have online casinos who are conveniently placed on some tropical island state?
parineum 2y ago
> One regulation would be banning gambling advertising, for the same reason why smoking ads are (I think?) banned. Generally, a law that made it illegal to advertise age-restricted activities to audiences where a significant portion of the audience would be under-age should be a workable solution. Let the courts decide what that gray area of "significant portion" is on a case by case basis.
- digging 2y ago
  Sure, but I think that falls a bit short of what's really at play here. Advertising anything which tugs at our animal weaknesses is unreasonably manipulative. Images of food (especially marketing images, which are photos of inedible objects masquerading as food), ads for sex, drugs, gambling - these are vices for a reason. Humans, generally, are weak to these things. Adults shouldn't really be exposed to these advertisements either.
  - smeej 2y ago
    We're also susceptible to bright colors and certain screen movement patterns and topic sequences, as practical the entire internet industry has figured out and has been using against us with competing degrees of success for about 20 years. Humans are weak and easy to manipulate, and some more so than others. It seems like the question is always about the degree to which the governments ought to intervene to protect us from each other...and ourselves.
    - NemoNobody 2y ago
      https://patents.google.com/patent/US6017302A/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US6017302A/en
      - smeej 2y ago
        Wow, I'm glad I clicked this. Feels kind of like you buried the lede not giving the title: "Subliminal acoustic manipulation of nervous systems"
      - 2y ago
pests 2y ago
> I do not know if this is true in other states, but certain states have the ability for an individual to self-institute a gambling ban at all facilities in the state In Michigan this is part of the Responsible Gaming program. You can opt out for certain lengths of time and they will not let you back for any reason. It's on a per-casino basis though, not some global list. You can also get restricted if you ever claim to support that you need the money, have to pay bills, can't wait on the withdraw, etc. I made a mistake once, while upset at some promo conditions not being clear, that I was "counting" on it. I meant I was counting on using it to gamble more (lmao) but they thought I meant for bills and ended up having to go through a special process to get my account back.
- PoignardAzur 2y ago
  Honestly, if the employees were that trigger-happy, it sounds like the system was working well.
xemdetia 2y ago
I think that one of the issues that really hurts the advertising is that the sports betting adverts will pay above and beyond what anyone else pays and it prices everyone out. It's the same problem we had with crypto and cigarettes. They need to spend infinite money to normalize their desired behavior. I feel like advertising for casinos around there being interesting non-gambling activities (e.g. concerts) is the right kind of indirect advertisement, but by necessity the online slots and online sports betting is monotone towards the outcome.
- panarky 2y ago
  Sports betting is a market. Like any market, those with knowledge and power systematically enrich themselves by extracting wealth from those without. If sports betting should be banned because it exploits those without wealth or knowledge, then other markets with many naive participants should also be banned, such as markets for stocks and crypto.
  - chipsrafferty 2y ago
    So every market should be banned?
  - dumah 2y ago
    Sports betting is a negative EV zero-sum game motivated by an addiction, for a significant fraction of the population. Investment in equities is principally a non-zero-sum positive EV game motivated by rational expectations for preservation and growth of wealth. The fact that some financial actors have very good sharpe ratios or dominate capture of trading profits on millisecond horizons isn’t a significant detriment to the larger good resulting from retail investment.
    - panarky 2y ago
      If you support banning sports betting because it's a zero-sum game that is generally -EV for non-professionals in aggregate, and if short-term trading of stocks is also zero-sum and -EV for non-professionals in aggregate, then do you support also banning short-term stock trading for non-professionals?
swoorup 2y ago
So save people from their own irresponsibility?
- mtlguitarist 2y ago
  This is an unfair framing of it. Addiction is a mental illness and these companies are preying on the mentally ill to make money. They rely on them ruining their own lives and others' to make a profit.
  - swoorup 2y ago
    It seems more like a problem that should be solved elsewhere? Are there cases where the company forces you to gamble? How do you draw the line between someone who wants to gamble recreationally and someone who does it because they are addicted without harming the recreational parties?
ItsBob 2y ago
> I’ve never done it, but from watching friends do it, it was far too easy to deposit money, or borrow money on credit, and bet it frivolously. A data point for you... I was on a train earlier this year and I was standing behind someone out with their wife/girlfriend. He had his phone in his hand the whole time with a gambling app opened (the green one, PaddyPower maybe?). I couldn't read the screen exactly but there was a list of fixtures for football matches and a button next to each one. From memory, I think each button was odds for the game, e.g. 10:1 Luton win vs Exeter or something. Anyway, the point is that (again, from memory) at least 8 times in the journey, he opened and closed the app and clicked on 10+ of these odds buttons, while in conversation with his girlfriend who had put her phone away at the start of the journey. I vaguely recall him checking his balance at one point too. Anyway, I thought I'd back up your story by telling one of mine where I watched someone place 50+ bets on a 30 min train journey! It's frighteningly easy (emphasis on "frightening") Edit: This happened a while back and I remember telling this story to people at the time so the numbers may be off but they're in the ballpark!
nytesky 2y ago
Yeah there is so much gambling discussion on sports show, it’s a complete waste of time to actually hear about sports.

by lumb63 2y ago

bombcar 2y ago

Requiring gambling to be done at established facilities or even the sports facility itself and limiting the bets to five dollars or some nominal amount would solve 99% of the problems.

verdverm 2y ago
Limiting it to a licensed location, instead of app or website, and requiring cash instead of credit would likely be sufficient.
- gosub100 2y ago
  I'm pretty sure the owners of the licensed locations were principals in getting the online betting scene going. I am guessing here, but it seems likely they saw that it's inevitable that off-shore online sports books will exist, so they were driven to capitalize on it legally (from the US).
acdha 2y ago
The other thing I’d add is a mandatory system where people can tell the company not to allow them to bet with a lengthy time delay (say 90 days) to remove themselves from the list. Most people with problems know they have them at least some of the time and it’s important to give them tools to prevent moments of weakness.
- seaal 2y ago
  Self exclusion is something that is handled by each states gaming enforcement department. All 34 states that have a self-exclusion program also have wildly different policies.
  - 8note 2y ago
    Is this mitigated by time to get between states?
- mnahkies 2y ago
  They have a system for this in the UK https://www.gamstop.co.uk/ https://www.gamstop.co.uk/ - though I only know it exists from TV adverts (presumably they are legally obligated to run these)
piltdownman 2y ago
[flagged]
- aidenn0 2y ago
  The state I grew up in prohibited distilled spirits from being sold at non-State run stores.
  - piltdownman 2y ago
    Which is a methanol related health and safety measure grandfathered in as a holdover from the Volstead Act. All first world control have significant hazard analysis and supply chain integrity measures for food and drink.
    - ericbarrett 2y ago
      Tangential—methanol poisoning from an improper brewing or distilling process is largely, maybe completely, a myth. Where toxicity events have occurred they are almost always deliberate or accidental adulteration, e.g. fortifying moonshine with industrially "denatured" (deliberately poisoned) alcohol. There has been a lot of sloppy journalism in such cases that doesn't question the myth, as well as Prohibition-era propaganda that lives on to this day. Great Reddit discussion about this: https://old.reddit.com/r/firewater/comments/9p1fwe/methanol_myths_realities_etc/ https://old.reddit.com/r/firewater/comments/9p1fwe/methanol_...
      - piltdownman 2y ago
        TIL. That said, I hadn't anticipated much rational in Prohibition rationale. The thread did support my suspicion that grappa hangovers are their own special category of hell though!
    - aidenn0 2y ago
      I'm not sure that's the entirely the case, given that, when I was a kid, you couldn't buy non-distilled beverages at the grocery store either. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcoholic_beverage_control_state https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcoholic_beverage_control_sta...
Fauntleroy 2y ago
It would also result in way less profits, so we'd need something truly incredible to happen to see it through.
- marcosdumay 2y ago
  > something truly incredible That's one interesting way to say "government regulation".
  - Petersipoi 2y ago
    Government regulation that results in the government having less money is truly incredible.
    - Xylakant 2y ago
      Examples are not particularly hard to come by: All government regulations to reduce smoking, all regulations to reduce petrol cars. All regulations to ban drugs. All of those aim to reduce the sale of some item the government could or does tax. I’m sure more can be found.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
andy800 2y ago
The only actual problem casino gambling, lotteries, and sports betting has been intended to solve is to generate revenue for state and local governments. Limiting bets to $5 would ensure failure for that purpose. Gambling addiction, crime, cheating, game fixing, etc are unfortunate side effects, but not real problems, in the eyes of lawmakers.
ipaddr 2y ago
Why not just ban it? I fail to see the point of spending all of this money administering an industry with such a low total income. That would lose money every year and keep increasing.
- dredmorbius 2y ago
  A total ban ... on legal gambling ... would likely lead to at least some increase in illegal gambling, which of necessity allies itself to organised crime. That's not an iron-clad argument, as legal gambling can still have mob ties, and tacit permission of some illegal gambling might still permit some level of oversight. And of course, legal gambling doesn't ensure reasonable or effective oversight or regulation. By establishing known, legal, and possibly even bettor-favourable facilities or systems, gaming becomes something which might have some level of oversight. The increase in online gambling does severely cut into this argument though. Another challenge, in the U.S., comes in the form of reservation casinos which can operate independently of other state prohibitions on gambling, which means that total eradication is at the very least difficult. But that is an argument which might be made in answer to your "why not just..." question. (I'm generally not a fan of gambling in any of its various forms. I'm cognisant of its pervasiveness and some of the worse aspects of it.)
  - doetoe 2y ago
    According to the article, the other way around didn't happen: the legalization didn't decrease illegal gambling
    - dredmorbius 2y ago
      That would put a damper on things. Though the pre-2018 situation was that personal (that is, not intermediated by a company) gambling was legal, which provided an out. Again: I'm positing the argument, I'm not advocating for it. And it does appear to be counterfactual.
    - ThunderSizzle 2y ago
      It's a lot easier for the IRS to track your betting earnings when it's reported to them directly by the broker. Of course doing it in a way so it can't be tracked keeps the IRS ignorant, which is a big deal to many people
WeylandYutani 2y ago
Yeah but how do you do that when you have online casinos who are conveniently placed on some tropical island state?

parineum 2y ago

> One regulation would be banning gambling advertising, for the same reason why smoking ads are (I think?) banned. Generally, a law that made it illegal to advertise age-restricted activities to audiences where a significant portion of the audience would be under-age should be a workable solution. Let the courts decide what that gray area of "significant portion" is on a case by case basis.

digging 2y ago
Sure, but I think that falls a bit short of what's really at play here. Advertising anything which tugs at our animal weaknesses is unreasonably manipulative. Images of food (especially marketing images, which are photos of inedible objects masquerading as food), ads for sex, drugs, gambling - these are vices for a reason. Humans, generally, are weak to these things. Adults shouldn't really be exposed to these advertisements either.
- smeej 2y ago
  We're also susceptible to bright colors and certain screen movement patterns and topic sequences, as practical the entire internet industry has figured out and has been using against us with competing degrees of success for about 20 years. Humans are weak and easy to manipulate, and some more so than others. It seems like the question is always about the degree to which the governments ought to intervene to protect us from each other...and ourselves.
  - NemoNobody 2y ago
    https://patents.google.com/patent/US6017302A/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US6017302A/en
    - smeej 2y ago
      Wow, I'm glad I clicked this. Feels kind of like you buried the lede not giving the title: "Subliminal acoustic manipulation of nervous systems"
    - 2y ago

pests 2y ago

> I do not know if this is true in other states, but certain states have the ability for an individual to self-institute a gambling ban at all facilities in the state In Michigan this is part of the Responsible Gaming program. You can opt out for certain lengths of time and they will not let you back for any reason. It's on a per-casino basis though, not some global list. You can also get restricted if you ever claim to support that you need the money, have to pay bills, can't wait on the withdraw, etc. I made a mistake once, while upset at some promo conditions not being clear, that I was "counting" on it. I meant I was counting on using it to gamble more (lmao) but they thought I meant for bills and ended up having to go through a special process to get my account back.

PoignardAzur 2y ago
Honestly, if the employees were that trigger-happy, it sounds like the system was working well.

xemdetia 2y ago

I think that one of the issues that really hurts the advertising is that the sports betting adverts will pay above and beyond what anyone else pays and it prices everyone out. It's the same problem we had with crypto and cigarettes. They need to spend infinite money to normalize their desired behavior. I feel like advertising for casinos around there being interesting non-gambling activities (e.g. concerts) is the right kind of indirect advertisement, but by necessity the online slots and online sports betting is monotone towards the outcome.

panarky 2y ago
Sports betting is a market. Like any market, those with knowledge and power systematically enrich themselves by extracting wealth from those without. If sports betting should be banned because it exploits those without wealth or knowledge, then other markets with many naive participants should also be banned, such as markets for stocks and crypto.
- chipsrafferty 2y ago
  So every market should be banned?
- dumah 2y ago
  Sports betting is a negative EV zero-sum game motivated by an addiction, for a significant fraction of the population. Investment in equities is principally a non-zero-sum positive EV game motivated by rational expectations for preservation and growth of wealth. The fact that some financial actors have very good sharpe ratios or dominate capture of trading profits on millisecond horizons isn’t a significant detriment to the larger good resulting from retail investment.
  - panarky 2y ago
    If you support banning sports betting because it's a zero-sum game that is generally -EV for non-professionals in aggregate, and if short-term trading of stocks is also zero-sum and -EV for non-professionals in aggregate, then do you support also banning short-term stock trading for non-professionals?

swoorup 2y ago

So save people from their own irresponsibility?

mtlguitarist 2y ago
This is an unfair framing of it. Addiction is a mental illness and these companies are preying on the mentally ill to make money. They rely on them ruining their own lives and others' to make a profit.
- swoorup 2y ago
  It seems more like a problem that should be solved elsewhere? Are there cases where the company forces you to gamble? How do you draw the line between someone who wants to gamble recreationally and someone who does it because they are addicted without harming the recreational parties?

ItsBob 2y ago

> I’ve never done it, but from watching friends do it, it was far too easy to deposit money, or borrow money on credit, and bet it frivolously. A data point for you... I was on a train earlier this year and I was standing behind someone out with their wife/girlfriend. He had his phone in his hand the whole time with a gambling app opened (the green one, PaddyPower maybe?). I couldn't read the screen exactly but there was a list of fixtures for football matches and a button next to each one. From memory, I think each button was odds for the game, e.g. 10:1 Luton win vs Exeter or something. Anyway, the point is that (again, from memory) at least 8 times in the journey, he opened and closed the app and clicked on 10+ of these odds buttons, while in conversation with his girlfriend who had put her phone away at the start of the journey. I vaguely recall him checking his balance at one point too. Anyway, I thought I'd back up your story by telling one of mine where I watched someone place 50+ bets on a 30 min train journey! It's frighteningly easy (emphasis on "frightening") Edit: This happened a while back and I remember telling this story to people at the time so the numbers may be off but they're in the ballpark!

nytesky 2y ago

Yeah there is so much gambling discussion on sports show, it’s a complete waste of time to actually hear about sports.