14 ms·

Americans increasingly see legal sports betting as a bad thing for society

555 points by aloukissas 1y ago

fragmede 1y ago
For anybody suffering from a gambling addiction, Gamblers Anonymous is a valuable resource. https://gamblersanonymous.org/find-a-meeting/ https://gamblersanonymous.org/find-a-meeting/
SilverElfin 1y ago
Why is it any different than betting on the stock market? Buying a house is also a bet. Even if Americans view it as a bad thing, it should be allowed.
- bberenberg 1y ago
  Because the outcomes and demographics for sports betting vs the other two show different aggregate money movements and we make judgements about what we consider to be acceptably and unacceptably informed and consenting risk accepting behavior.
- Isamu 1y ago
  The odds are manipulated to give the gambling company the advantage. Big winners are identified and dropped. It is designed to drain money from gamblers. Stocks are not that, in general. A particular fraudulent investment could be that. Crypto investment comes to mind.
  - SJC_Hacker 1y ago
    I’m not sure what you mean by odds being manipulated. The bookmaker will generally adjust odds to where the money is being placed. Example, in American football if a team opens up as a 7 point favorite and betters put more money on the underdog than the favorite, the line gets smaller so more will take the favorite. Generally the opening line is what the book will think half the betters are willing to place on the favorite, and half on the underdog. Doesn’t always work out that way which is why you see lines move. Also not sure what you mean by winners
    - c6400sc 1y ago
      Listen to season 4 of Michael Lewis' podcast. He covers the downsides in detail. https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/against-the-rules https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/against-the-rules I think this is the ep that gets into the most detail, but I haven't read the transcript. https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/against-the-rules/vegas-sports-bookies-on-old-school-betting https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/against-the-rules/vegas-spor... IIRC, if you're too professional or too lucky, the betting apps will restrict you and then lock you out. They only want the dumb money playing.
    - TimorousBestie 1y ago
      > Also not sure what you mean by winners https://www.vegas-aces.com/articles/how-betting-sites-limit-winning-players/ https://www.vegas-aces.com/articles/how-betting-sites-limit-... Various forms of this have been practiced in traditional casinos for almost a century with increasing sophistication, it’s a well-established art by now.
  - Hamuko 1y ago
    You don’t need to even win to get banned (limited from making bets larger than a couple of dollars). You just need to make bets that look too smart and might result you winning in the future. https://youtu.be/XZvXWVztJoY?t=667 https://youtu.be/XZvXWVztJoY?t=667 Sports betting is just looking for chumps that have little to no chance of winning.
- pinkmuffinere 1y ago
  I think this is a good question, I’m sorry you’re being downvoted. I think the difference is that buying/betting on a house or stocks are not a zero-sum game. It is feasible for everyone to buy a house, all the houses to increase in real-world value, and everyone benefit. Likewise with stocks. And on top of that effect, the bets being made are useful for society at large to make better plans, because they are a measure of society’s best predictions. Sports betting on the other hand, is truly zero-sum (although I think you could make an argument that it's actually worse than zero sum). Additionally, it is not useful for society to predict which team will win some set of games. This is just wasted effort on a curiosity. There’s nothing wrong with that effort as entertainment, but it is bad to incentivize our minds to take up sports betting, as opposed to say finance, engineering, art, or anything productive.
  - SJC_Hacker 1y ago
    Options markets are zero sum.
    - RandomLensman 1y ago
      Why? Both sides could use hedging, both sides could derive economic benefits, etc.
      - SJC_Hacker 1y ago
        On a per transaction level, for every dollar someone makes on a put/call option, the other person has to lose equivalent. Even more when you factor in exchange fees Hedging is just an additional transaction that limits the damage if the bet doesn't pay off. You can do the same thing in gambling.
    - bob1029 1y ago
      The important distinction between gambling and options is that there are many additional information sources available to bias the outcome. Options are a Bayesian game. Jane Street is much more likely to win than I am, but there are still rare cases where I could come out ahead with very high certainty (I know something they don't). Card counting and being escorted out of the casino aside, there aren't any ways to acquire private information in a gambling context.
- fullshark 1y ago
  Stocks have positive expected returns: the risk premium. Sports bets have negative expected returns in aggregate and if you are good enough to only bet the ones you can spot with positive expected returns they ban you from the platform.
  - charcircuit 1y ago
    >they ban you from the platform Use a respectable platform that doesn't do that then.
    - jpk 1y ago
      There's no such thing. The house always wins or the business collapses.
      - charcircuit 1y ago
        Yet, Polymarket exists where no one takes a cut* as it all happens on a blockchain. *there are small gas fees for sending transactions on the blockchain
    - liquidise 1y ago
      Are you familiar with any? I know people who bet on sports for a living and one of their biggest operational challenges is keeping accounts unbanned long enough to make consistent income.
      - charcircuit 1y ago
        Polymarket.
  - skippyboxedhero 1y ago
    Stocks do not have positive expected return. The return on the average stock is 0% in the US which is negative after fees (this is a common misconception, market returns are positive only because large companies get larger and this is contextual, when this isn't true then even the market will lose money). This is to say nothing of 0DTE options. There is a risk premium but this premium can be positive or negative. It has been negative in many countries, do you suggest they ban stocks? I don't think stocks are the same thing as gambling btw. But it is significantly more complex in that they overlap, some financial products clearly exist in the US because gambling was illegal. A sports bet is clearly not an investment, but neither is a ODTE option. Both are entertainment, the former probably more logically so than the latter, I am not sure what appeal that latter can have other than to gambling addicts.
- WarOnPrivacy 1y ago
  > Why is it any different than betting on the stock market? We could honestly say gambling and investments were similar - if they typically had similar outcomes. In late 1990s, I set up two customers (in retirement) with PCs and internet. One was a day trader and the other did online casinos. After a year they were both about as good as their contemporaries. The day trader made more money than he lost but I don't know how much. The gambler hid his habit from his wife. He lost their entire retirement savings, maxed out their credit cards, got more cards and maxed those out - and took out 2 mortgages on their formerly paid-for house. It ended their marriage. These truly aren't similar outcomes.
- pjc50 1y ago
  Certain forms of stock market operations are indeed banned from retail - for example "binary options" in the UK.
- 48terry 1y ago
  I buy a house to live in it, WTF are you buying one for?
- tgv 1y ago
  > Why is it any different than ... Buying a house Because your money will at least get you a roof over your head. It's not a bet because it involves an element of chance. I can't believe you're seriously raising such an argument.
bravetraveler 1y ago
If you want to bet on your ball, do it at the counter like the rest of us degenerates. Something, something, water cooler chat.
thrown-0825-1 1y ago
[dead]
bruce511 1y ago
Is it bad for society? It's certainly bad for individuals, and by extension their families. I guess if it scales up such that a serious chunk of society is affected, then yes its bad for society. Let's start with the obvious- in all forms of gambling the gamblers make a net loss. The games are hosted by very sophisticated companies, that have better mathematicians, and make money. $x is pumped into the system by the punters, $y is extracted, $z is returned. The 'house' is the only winner. All those TV ads you see? Funded by losers. Is it light entertainment? Similar to the cost of a ticket to the game? For some sure. But we understand the chemistry of gambling- it's addictive and compulsive. If we agree it's generally bad, then what? Lots of things are known to be bad, but are still allowed (smoking and drinking spring to mind, nevermind sugar.) It could be banned. Would that stop it? Probably not. Perhaps ban advertising? Perhaps tax gambling companies way higher (like we do with booze and smokes.) Perhaps treat it as a serious issue? All of which is unlikely in the US. Business rules, and sports gambling us really good business.
- creato 1y ago
  > Let's start with the obvious- in all forms of gambling the gamblers make a net loss. The games are hosted by very sophisticated companies, that have better mathematicians, and make money. It's not impossible to beat them consistently, but if you do, they'll limit how much you can bet or just ban you.
  - katbyte 1y ago
    Seems like an easy solution is just to ban them from banning winners. Regulate them
    - skippyboxedhero 1y ago
      There is no reason why they have to provide a fair market to all users. The purpose of the product is entertainment, not financial risk. There are providers who specialise in providing action to sharps which then sets the prices that retail-facing customers use. If you want to make money, just bet with them. But limiting users is a way to provide a sustainable product. Again, it is an entertainment product, it is not a financial investment. Also, the quoted text is wrong...gambling companies do not employ lots of mathematicians, I am not sure why people think this...I am not even 100% sure why people think mathematicians are useful, most of the stats used are very basic. But retail providers don't, the prices you see for the biggest lines are provided by third parties, when you make a bet retail providers have no idea what price is being offered to you at that time. The only exception is parlays which are often priced in-house, these lines are very beatable but, again, retail providers limit because the purpose of the product is entertainment. Providers that do business with syndicates do not have lines on parlays because they are so beatable. The protection comes from all users being limited in the amount they can bet on parlays. A side note is that even in financial markets which are completely open, market makers avoid informed flow. If there was no uninformed flow, there would be no market makers. There has to be an ecosystem. Retail providers exist to buy advertising to win retail users every weekend, to do that they have to run their business in a certain way. There can't be a situation where they just lose money non-stop to fund someone else's business.
jacquesm 1y ago
That's always an interesting thing. Where does autonomy end and the right of the government to intrude into your private life begin. The bottom line, that something is bad for you seems to be so logical. But when you think about it a bit longer you see that there are so many things that are bad for you that it would be next to impossible to regulate all of them. Ok, so you only do it for the things that are really harmful. But then you're still left with smoking, alcohol, obesity, the state's lottery and casinos (always legal, for some weird reason, but just as bad as other forms of gambling), parachute jumping, social media, free climbing and a whole raft of other items that have the potential to massively ruin your (or even someone else's) life. And then there are the things you could do but that are illegal, such as speeding and drinking and then getting into the driver's seat of a vehicle. I find this one of the most difficult to answer questions about how you should run a society. In practice, we aim to curb the excesses and treat them as if they are illnesses but even that does not stop the damage. In the end it is an education problem. People are not taught to deal with a massive menu of options for addiction and oblivion, while at the same time their lives are structurally manipulated to select them for that addiction. In the UK for instance, where sports betting is legal (and in some other EU countries as well) it is a real problem. But the parties that make money of it (and who prey mostly on the poor) are so wealthy and politically connected that even if the bulk of the people would be against it I doubt something could be done about it. If it were made illegal it would still continue, but underground. It's really just another tax on the poor. Sports betting is problematic for the sports too. It causes people to throw matches for money and it exposes athletes to danger and claims of purposefully throwing matches when that might not be the case. This isn't a new thing ( https://apnews.com/article/sports-betting-scandals-1a59b8beee64e29c6283e521ad10e39d https://apnews.com/article/sports-betting-scandals-1a59b8bee... ), it is essentially as old as the sports themselves.
- Terr_ 1y ago
  > Where does autonomy end and the right of the government to intrude into your private life begin I think there are really three questions bundled in there: 1. At what point is it not really free-will anymore, and more like your brain being hacked? 2. At what point can the government step in to rescue you from #1? 3. At what point can the government step in to defend others from what you do, voluntarily or otherwise?
angarg12 1y ago
I left my home country over 10 years ago, and ever since I've travelled back once every 1 or 2 years. Since 4-5 years ago I started to notice these betting houses cropping up where my family and friends live. They are impossible to miss, with big pictures of different sports and no windows. The most important thing to notice is where these place are and are not. They proliferate in working class and less well off neighborhoods, while they tend to be absent from more affluent ones. These places get a lot of foot traffic, all the locals barely making ends meet, blowing a few tens of euros here and there, with the eventual payoff. It's not difficult to hear stories of people getting into the deep end and developing a real addiction with devastating consequences. And it's not only the business itself, but what they attract. All sort of sketchy characters frequent these places, and tend to attract drugs, violence... Legal or not these places make the communities they inhabit worse, not better. I personally would be very happy if family didn't have to live exposed to them.
- kriops 1y ago
  Guilt by association: If, e.g., violence is a problem, then one needs to deal with the violence. In general, law-abiding citizens are—and should—be free to congregate and partake in their bad habits wherever they please. And even though gambling is generally immoral, it does not infringe on anyone else's God-given rights and has no business being made illegal. Gambling is emphasized above to emphasize we are talking about individuals who are not sufficiently skilled to argue they are not essentially partaking in pure games of chance.
  - Retric 1y ago
    It’s not about the Gambling, it’s the fact these businesses are collecting a large number of easy victims in once place. Imagine you’re a loan shark. Which of the following seems like a good place to look for customers: upscale restaurant, movie theater, random bar, theme park, baseball stadium, city park, or a sports betting venue.
    - dist-epoch 1y ago
      Imagine you're a luxury watch thief. Which of the following seems like a good place to look for customers: upscale restaurant, ... or a sports betting venue. https://robbreport.com/style/watch-collector/luxury-watch-theft-on-the-rise-1236960557/ https://robbreport.com/style/watch-collector/luxury-watch-th...
Gunax 1y ago
I happen to enjoy sports gambling and would be sad to see it disappear. I'm writing this because I want you to know what you're depriving me of. Because _other_ people make poor decisions, we need to take that decision away from everyone.
- eggsandbeer 1y ago
  What an incredibly selfish attitude.
  - toasterlovin 1y ago
    It’s a completely legitimate question. It’s the same moral consideration behind whether drugs and alcohol should be legal. Banning them is good for people who can’t use them responsibly, but reduces the freedom of people who can. Given that we’ve flip flopped on the legality of alcohol, cannabis, and sports betting in the last 100ish years, it’s clear there is ambiguity about what is the best tradeoff.
  - Gunax 1y ago
    Yes. I know it's incredibly selfish to push your laws on my body because you don't have self control. How do you sleep at night, knowing you're a nosy fascist?
    - eggsandbeer 1y ago
      [dead]
- smt88 1y ago
  This is just the same social contract you agree to in every part of your life. Why can't you legally drive over 100 mph when you know you'd do it safely? Why can't you own certain kinds of weapons when you know you don't want to kill anyone or yourself? Gamblers going bankrupt is bad for all of us because they often have families and creditors who are harmed by the loss of the money, and the rest of us pay the price in the form of welfare, loss wages, etc.
Animats 1y ago
If only this had been figured out before the gambling industry became too big to fail.
_delirium 1y ago
I've found myself getting less interested in sports at all because of how pervasive sports betting has gotten. The announcers are always talking about odds and shilling gambling company sponsors, which is annoying and makes me not want to watch the games.
- a96 1y ago
  Adding advertising does indeed ruin most things.
wewewedxfgdf 1y ago
Sports betting once its in it's never leaving.
- sapphicsnail 1y ago
  It has before
eximius 1y ago
I mean, yes, but it's so far down the list of bad things for society we're facing right now. I'd rather we tackle the root problems leading to these. Increase education rather than reduce liberties. I'm not, like, strongly opposed to reducing this particular liberty, but man it's not my first priority.
- jimbob45 1y ago
  Where do you put drugs and alcohol on that list? Because gambling surely has an equivalent ability to wreck careers and families.
- watwut 1y ago
  Isnt the root problem a company being able to A/B test the most addictive product? They spent huge amount of money to find all the psychological tricks, to identify who has gambling potential and then target those people. Education wont beat that. Gambling is not a rational decision in the first place. But, young men gambling (they are the primary target demographic) will make them into desperate and hopeless group. And not just financially, marrying or dating gambler is even bigger mistake then partnering with an alcoholic. Their lives will go down the drain in all aspects.
- squigz 1y ago
  I don't think we have to take any liberties away to help reduce this issue - just banning gambling advertising would help a lot.
pavlov 1y ago
The role of gambling in society has massively expanded in the past 25 years. Legalization of sports betting, online poker, and meme cryptocurrencies are all highly visible examples of normalized gambling. Young people increasingly seem to believe that they need to gamble to get anywhere in life.
- RataNova 1y ago
  When traditional paths to financial security feel increasingly out of reach (housing, stable jobs, etc.), it's not surprising that high-risk/high-reward thinking becomes more normalized...
  - hobs 1y ago
    You can also see it as the more we let corporations bend and break the rules of our society the more we will see the monetization of things that harm us directly for some small group's material gain.
keiferski 1y ago
The legalization and popularity of gambling is more than just an immoral activity that has negative societal effects. It’s reflective of people losing hope in the system’s ability to make their lives better. Gambling thrives in contexts where a ladder to success doesn’t exist or is perceived as not existing. If hard work or time doesn’t make your life better, then fate is just chance, and you might as well throw your money at something that has the possibility of making your rich, no matter how tiny that likelihood.
- dist-epoch 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - ayatollah 1y ago
    The stock market is gambling only for fools, while sports betting is gambling for everyone. False equivalence.
    - swarnie 1y ago
      It really depends how you use it. Put your 401k in to a global index and come back in 45 years? Yeah that's a false equivalence. Take out a bank loan and roll 0DTE options? That's 99% the same as sports gambling for me.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - keiferski 1y ago
    That's a completely false equivalence, and an uncharitable interpretation of what I wrote.
  - d4mi3n 1y ago
    Let's keep this conversation productive. I don't read OP's comment anything like your response seems to imply. While I don't think OP's point about morals is relevant here (they vary widely from culture to culture), equating the stock market to gambling misses out on a lot of nuance. Your average 401k retirement fund is going to outperform your average gambler 100% of the time over one's lifetime. Long term investments also tend to not prey on addictive patterns of behavior. I personally think for a society to function well, it behooves ourselves to recognize when there are certain patterns or behaviors that are self destructive if left unchecked. I feel addictive drugs and gambling fall into this category. That's not to say banning this behavior is the right call, but there's a lot of space to explore productive policies between full on bans and anything-goes.
spike021 1y ago
It's become very toxic in baseball. just google "baseball player", "threats", and "gambling" and you'll see what I mean. edit for examples: * https://www.newsweek.com/sports/mlb/red-sox-pitcher-confronts-commissioner-about-gambling-social-media-threats-2102617 https://www.newsweek.com/sports/mlb/red-sox-pitcher-confront... * https://www.sfchronicle.com/sports/giants/article/mlb-threat-social-media-18349040.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/sports/giants/article/mlb-threat...
- Balgair 1y ago
  NCAA women's sports too. These young women don't have the money to hire security and are especially vulnerable as a result
  - Spivak 1y ago
    I mean if we're going cut back on the worst offenses of sports gambling it seems like "you can only gamble on professional sports" could be a potential easy win. The next step would probably be eliminating betting on individual players, you can still bet on weird stuff but it would have to be $team does $thing. It wouldn't work for solo sports but given the most popular sports are all team sports it would cover a lot.
- wmeredith 1y ago
  It's awful when watching sports. I don't think I can get five minutes in an NFL game without seeing something about sports betting. It's in the commercials, sponsored segments, graphic placements, apps, etc. It's fucking gross.
- Shocka1 1y ago
  This kind of stuff is repulsive to me. I'm sure it's similar elsewhere too, but my local radio stations in the Midwest have been running ads about not harassing athletes over sports betting. The whole thing is comical to me, since they are collecting massive amounts of tax revenue from the whole thing to begin with and paying for the ads with it. They are great things coming from it, like school funding, but the whole concept doesn't really sit well with me. https://casinocontrol.ohio.gov/home/news-and-events/all-news/more+than+a+bet https://casinocontrol.ohio.gov/home/news-and-events/all-news...
RataNova 1y ago
Honestly, it's starting to look more like social media 2.0... like built on engagement, dressed up as entertainment, and slowly warping how people relate to something that used to just be… fun
ksec 1y ago
Interesting, Horse Racing and Football in UK doesn't seems to have that effect at all. I wonder why is it specifically US?
arlattimore 1y ago
Wow, took them a while.
Tade0 1y ago
I'm happy to hear that. By my (short) experience working for this industry, some companies seem to forget they're a legitimate business now.
gverrilla 1y ago
The USA is gambling it all away. Dangerous and dumb.
Synaesthesia 1y ago
China just straight banned it. Not a terrible idea IMO
elliotto 1y ago
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/tHiB8jLocbPLagYDZ/the-online-sports-gambling-experiment-has-failed https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/tHiB8jLocbPLagYDZ/the-online... This less wrong piece by a libertarian who examines the numbers and struggles to reconcile them with his beliefs is one of the best indictments on sports betting. There is a small proportion of the population who cannot handle this. And they become prey to the predators in the sports betting industry. These guys make money off destroying their lives.
- eep_social 1y ago
  Good read, thanks! I was surprised that the author brushed by restrictions around marketing while concluding that limited access would be an improvement. The normalization of betting and odds via inclusion in broadcasts, celebrity endorsements, etc strikes me as a narrow precursor to harm that would be relatively easy to target and puts the onus and focus on the providers to find a sustainable business model.
  - elliotto 1y ago
    The author approaches the topic from a libertarian perspective with some prior beliefs about the futility of regulation. These restrictions are not permitted within their ontology, which in my opinion makes the damning conclusion more powerful. I strongly disagree with the authors political stance, which makes the fact that we agree on the problem / solution a nice bipartisan result
rf15 1y ago
I wonder when they see legal betting on a company's future success as a bad thing for society. For now one can only dream, unfortunetaly.
walthamstow 1y ago
What I find most sad about this is the symbiosis between the USA and the UK and how corporations (or politicians) in each one will look to see the most profitable (or divisive) in the other and copy it. This is how the US ended up with rampant sports gambling/advertising, something the UK has had most of this century. It's also how we ended up with voter ID in the UK despite having near-zero problems with voter impersonation.
bentt 1y ago
Sports gambling is perverting sports. When ESPN has special segments on good bets you know we have lost our way.
Throaway152 1y ago
What I'd like to know is why did legalizing sports betting = complete change of the sports media landscape? Like the question asked doesn't seem to be around how sports betting has been integrated. it's just "is sports betting good or should we ban it." Im fine with sports betting, what Im not fine with is my hockey games being saturated with ads, odds, and commentary about something that they keep telling us is tangential and not supposed-to-be-taken-seriously! The whole thing is pathetic and I don't see how it's sustainable. There's going to be a Mothers Against Gambling movement or something after enough lives get wrecked. And I'd like to add that most of the people throw the term around "lives get wrecked / ruined" flippantly around this, but that's exactly what it is. Your life is wrecked, you can't fix it, nothing can fix it. If only you never started gambling...
- michaelcampbell 1y ago
  > What I'd like to know is why did legalizing sports betting Financial interests.
swydydct 1y ago
I see adds for these companies all the time on Muni buses. It’s very frustrating, and I wish the city would be more choosy about who they let advertise.
- brikym 1y ago
  The system is run so that the corporations are #1 and people just there to feed the economy. That's why sports betting is allowed. Advertising in public spaces is another thing as you've noticed. Those bright electronic billboards are a net negative to society but still allowed. Guess who needs advertising come election time?
supportengineer 1y ago
[flagged]
- michaelcampbell 1y ago
  One person's "support" is another's "overreach".
JumpinJack_Cash 1y ago
Everything is gambling . You are either gambling money or time or a combination or both to end up ahead in a particular metric that interests you However gambling time is seen as virtous and to be celebrated, whereas gambling money is the devil. At least if you lose money you can make it back, when you gamble time good luck getting back your 4 year studying for a gender studies degree. Also here on HN gambling on a startup which most likely go to 0 is seen as amazing, whereas betting on the Jacksonville Jaguars to win the SuperBowl is seen as bad and to be condamned , even though the Jaguars bet is at least an order of magnitude more likely to generate profits than the startup one.
- RhysU 1y ago
  If I gamble by joining a startup, I am trying to provide something of value to someone. Otherwise, my startup will fail. The bet is not societally zero sum in expectation. Long odds, sure, but possibly value creating. If I gamble on a sporting event, the outcome of the sporting event does not change. Someone wins. Someone loses. No value created. The outcome is societally zero sum in expectation.
  - JumpinJack_Cash 1y ago
    > > If I gamble on a sporting event, the outcome of the sporting event does not change. Someone wins. Someone loses. No value created. The outcome is societally zero sum in expectation. If your net worth is less than 100M you have no business concerning yourself with societal value creation in the U.S. The only reason to create a startup instead of betting on a sporting event is that in the startup although your odds are longer you get to learn a field that presumibly you like and forage in an environment of similarly thinking individuals Nowadays where the startup world is all about networking and performance art and chasing the wave and all sorts of KPI BS, and sell out to VC firms...give me the sport bet every day of the week and twice on Sunday. Either that or 100M and then I can start worrying about societal outcomes, Also don't forget that one of the many ways in which for that sport bet windfall could be spent might be donating it to charity The sport bet is the MVB (minimum viable bet) whereas the startup is this complicated megabet with hundreds moving parts in which you also have to act to either impress your boss or investors (or both)
kqr 1y ago
[flagged]
- bethekidyouwant 1y ago
  slot machines generally pay out 90 to 95%
- Pulcinella 1y ago
  "When commenting, I suggest being clear about what sort of gambling you mean. Confusion easily arises otherwise." When commenting, I suggest you read the article first. It would be extremely, extremely clear to you what people mean in this thread when they say "gambling."
  - kqr 1y ago
    I disagree. There have been many other forms of gambling discussed in these comments.
JumpinJack_Cash 1y ago
Gambling on aggregators and platforms is bad because you are the new kid on the block betting against experts, people with enormous computing power and of course win or lose you have to give a cut to the aggregator or the platform. Gambling and betting should be 1v1 , as soon as you introduce a pool or an aggregator the wise advice is to stay away if such pool or aggregator has more than say a certain amount of bettors (100k-1M), because you become the new kid on the block and the new kid on the block gets skinned. Thing is the implication of all the above is that we should stay away from every stock market and that would be quite right considering how it produces such loopsided outcomes, not unlike the gambling platforms or even worse
tqi 1y ago
It's been fascinating to see how outlets like the NYT (which owns The Athletic) have largely given sports gambling companies like Kalshi and BetMGM a pass on this, given the amount of pearl clutching animosity that typifies rest of their tech coverage. Guess sponsoring 90% of all sports related content has it's benefits...
macinjosh 1y ago
You should be able to make a friendly competitive bet with your mates or coworkers or even strangers without getting in trouble. I am even fine with businesses facilitating this with apps or whatever. But I don't think anyone should be able to bet so much that it could make it hard for their social financial obligations to be met (taxes, rent/mortgage, utility bills, child support, etc). Otherwise society ends up having to help feed, house, clothe, rehab these people. You are giving people the choice to substantially wealth and at worst be saved by the social safety net, many people would take that bet.
diogenescynic 1y ago
It's a tax on dumb people and addicts. It's bad for society because it's just draining resources from people who probably can't afford to lose them.
obscurette 1y ago
I've seen gambling destroying more lives than alcohol in my lifetime. And I live in the area which is rather on top of the world by alcohol consumption per capita.
- welcome_dragon 1y ago
  Wisconsin? Lol
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
deadbabe 1y ago
One day some athlete is gonna get shot in the head by a crazed gambler who lost a lot of money on a bet because of them.
IAmGraydon 1y ago
I'm not sure why we're talking about sports betting as if the "sports" part is relevant. The gambling industry in general is the business of selling hope to hopeless people. All of it is bad, and as long as we have the states themselves selling hundreds of millions of dollars of lottery tickets primarily to those living in poverty, this is never going to go away. It should not be legal to make money off of other people's suffering, which is exactly what this is.
nekusar 1y ago
I remember when gambling was actually just illegal in most of the USA. In my state, it was the state run lotto that was used to sell the idea "Hey we'll take lottery proceeds and fund education with it!!!!!". Of course, state-run lottery was legalized, and yes, the proceeds did run schools. The next funding session, they CUT the existing funding to schools and had the lottery run the bulk of the funding. They naturally never said that part out loud. And riverboat gambling was a quazi-legal thing. Then casinos were legalized. Then normalized gambling everywhere. Even the local groceries have state-run lotto vending machines that gobble 20's and 50's for a chance to strike it rich, or more likely, get poorer. I prefer when gambling was decriminalized individually, but not endorsed for the state or companies to run. I also don't want cop squads cracking down on the penny or quarter games in peoples' houses.
- idopmstuff 1y ago
  I honestly think we had a pretty good middle ground with people having to go to Vegas/Reno/AC to gamble. It can be fun, but you have to go out of your way to do it. If you have a fun Vegas weekend and blow a bunch of money once in a while, that seems pretty okay relative to being able to constantly bet on anything from your phone.
- linehedonist 1y ago
  Sounds like Illinois
  - nekusar 1y ago
    Indiana, but yeah, close for sure. I think it was Illinois' state lotto that encouraged Indiana to also unrestrict it initially for government based gambling ($1 scratchoffs and weekly lotto drawing). Pretty sure they also did the "school budget scam" by transferring tax proceeds from the lotto instead of adding it as well. Again, though, news in the 1980's didnt have as much traveling power, unless it showed up in the NY Times or other national level papers. And the local papers actuually did local news then.
christophilus 1y ago
Reminds me of the quote: “Count on Americans to do the right thing… after they’ve exhausted all other options.”
layer8 1y ago
…as opposed to illegal sports betting? ;)
black_13 1y ago
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animitronix 1y ago
Should never have been allowed in the first place, but no one learns from history
- brikym 1y ago
  It's working as intended. Politics is setup to take from plebs and transfer to lords.
basisword 1y ago
The problem isn't gambling. It's America's obsession with excess. There are always going to be people that get addicted but most people can enjoy it with limited downside if it's regulated properly, as it is in lots of other countries that have had legalised sports gambling for decades and more. Instead, sports in American have made gambling part of the broadcast and almost the point of playing the game.
manchicken 1y ago
I don’t think there’s anything intrinsically awful about sports betting. I do think that the way American corporations have set it up, though, has made it a lot more predatory than many fans want to admit.
Unearned5161 1y ago
I'm surprised at the lack of mentioning the effects of gambling on the thing being gambled on! Sure gambling will always happen wherever there's something with uncertainty. But to make it fully legal opens the doors wide open for growth, leading to the only possible outcome of "more money being bet". I think it would be naive to assume that the integrity of any sport stays stable when such a large amount of money is staked on it.
kazinator 1y ago
Just wait how outraged they will be when they learn of this thing called the stock market.
deafpolygon 1y ago
Gambling, in general, has a net negative effect on society. In my mind, it's an obfuscated version of the MLM pyramid scheme.
- rkomorn 1y ago
  How do you see it as a MLM type scheme? It seems more direct to me: either you lose to the house, or you lose to someone else while the house gets a cut. Is that second part what you see as MLMish?
emptyfile 1y ago
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addicted 1y ago
I think eliminating online sports betting, and requiring it be done within the physical confines of a casino may help mitigate most of the concerns around this. After all, sports betting was legal in several states such as NJ, Nevada, as long as they were taking place in the casinos in Atlantic City/Las Vegas, and we didn't see any major negative impacts like we do now.
casey2 1y ago
Does society not have real problems? Why do we keep legalizing and recriminialize the same ~5 or so behaviors, just make some lawless or lawlite zones and be done with it. This is just political theater.
CraigRo 1y ago
When banks created derivatives that could only be fairly valued by the bank, with 5% profit margins built in, it got them a trip to Congress. SGPs have margins that would make options traders blush and were sold to people with no financial sophistication whatsoever. These things turn your phone into a vampire, and have no socially redeeming value. Please ban them!
rjon39570 1y ago
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Rodriguez22 1y ago
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555 points by aloukissas 1y ago

For anybody suffering from a gambling addiction, Gamblers Anonymous is a valuable resource. https://gamblersanonymous.org/find-a-meeting/ https://gamblersanonymous.org/find-a-meeting/

SilverElfin 1y ago

Why is it any different than betting on the stock market? Buying a house is also a bet. Even if Americans view it as a bad thing, it should be allowed.

bberenberg 1y ago
Because the outcomes and demographics for sports betting vs the other two show different aggregate money movements and we make judgements about what we consider to be acceptably and unacceptably informed and consenting risk accepting behavior.
Isamu 1y ago
The odds are manipulated to give the gambling company the advantage. Big winners are identified and dropped. It is designed to drain money from gamblers. Stocks are not that, in general. A particular fraudulent investment could be that. Crypto investment comes to mind.
- SJC_Hacker 1y ago
  I’m not sure what you mean by odds being manipulated. The bookmaker will generally adjust odds to where the money is being placed. Example, in American football if a team opens up as a 7 point favorite and betters put more money on the underdog than the favorite, the line gets smaller so more will take the favorite. Generally the opening line is what the book will think half the betters are willing to place on the favorite, and half on the underdog. Doesn’t always work out that way which is why you see lines move. Also not sure what you mean by winners
  - c6400sc 1y ago
    Listen to season 4 of Michael Lewis' podcast. He covers the downsides in detail. https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/against-the-rules https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/against-the-rules I think this is the ep that gets into the most detail, but I haven't read the transcript. https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/against-the-rules/vegas-sports-bookies-on-old-school-betting https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/against-the-rules/vegas-spor... IIRC, if you're too professional or too lucky, the betting apps will restrict you and then lock you out. They only want the dumb money playing.
  - TimorousBestie 1y ago
    > Also not sure what you mean by winners https://www.vegas-aces.com/articles/how-betting-sites-limit-winning-players/ https://www.vegas-aces.com/articles/how-betting-sites-limit-... Various forms of this have been practiced in traditional casinos for almost a century with increasing sophistication, it’s a well-established art by now.
- Hamuko 1y ago
  You don’t need to even win to get banned (limited from making bets larger than a couple of dollars). You just need to make bets that look too smart and might result you winning in the future. https://youtu.be/XZvXWVztJoY?t=667 https://youtu.be/XZvXWVztJoY?t=667 Sports betting is just looking for chumps that have little to no chance of winning.
pinkmuffinere 1y ago
I think this is a good question, I’m sorry you’re being downvoted. I think the difference is that buying/betting on a house or stocks are not a zero-sum game. It is feasible for everyone to buy a house, all the houses to increase in real-world value, and everyone benefit. Likewise with stocks. And on top of that effect, the bets being made are useful for society at large to make better plans, because they are a measure of society’s best predictions. Sports betting on the other hand, is truly zero-sum (although I think you could make an argument that it's actually worse than zero sum). Additionally, it is not useful for society to predict which team will win some set of games. This is just wasted effort on a curiosity. There’s nothing wrong with that effort as entertainment, but it is bad to incentivize our minds to take up sports betting, as opposed to say finance, engineering, art, or anything productive.
- SJC_Hacker 1y ago
  Options markets are zero sum.
  - RandomLensman 1y ago
    Why? Both sides could use hedging, both sides could derive economic benefits, etc.
    - SJC_Hacker 1y ago
      On a per transaction level, for every dollar someone makes on a put/call option, the other person has to lose equivalent. Even more when you factor in exchange fees Hedging is just an additional transaction that limits the damage if the bet doesn't pay off. You can do the same thing in gambling.
  - bob1029 1y ago
    The important distinction between gambling and options is that there are many additional information sources available to bias the outcome. Options are a Bayesian game. Jane Street is much more likely to win than I am, but there are still rare cases where I could come out ahead with very high certainty (I know something they don't). Card counting and being escorted out of the casino aside, there aren't any ways to acquire private information in a gambling context.
fullshark 1y ago
Stocks have positive expected returns: the risk premium. Sports bets have negative expected returns in aggregate and if you are good enough to only bet the ones you can spot with positive expected returns they ban you from the platform.
- charcircuit 1y ago
  >they ban you from the platform Use a respectable platform that doesn't do that then.
  - jpk 1y ago
    There's no such thing. The house always wins or the business collapses.
    - charcircuit 1y ago
      Yet, Polymarket exists where no one takes a cut* as it all happens on a blockchain. *there are small gas fees for sending transactions on the blockchain
  - liquidise 1y ago
    Are you familiar with any? I know people who bet on sports for a living and one of their biggest operational challenges is keeping accounts unbanned long enough to make consistent income.
    - charcircuit 1y ago
      Polymarket.
- skippyboxedhero 1y ago
  Stocks do not have positive expected return. The return on the average stock is 0% in the US which is negative after fees (this is a common misconception, market returns are positive only because large companies get larger and this is contextual, when this isn't true then even the market will lose money). This is to say nothing of 0DTE options. There is a risk premium but this premium can be positive or negative. It has been negative in many countries, do you suggest they ban stocks? I don't think stocks are the same thing as gambling btw. But it is significantly more complex in that they overlap, some financial products clearly exist in the US because gambling was illegal. A sports bet is clearly not an investment, but neither is a ODTE option. Both are entertainment, the former probably more logically so than the latter, I am not sure what appeal that latter can have other than to gambling addicts.
WarOnPrivacy 1y ago
> Why is it any different than betting on the stock market? We could honestly say gambling and investments were similar - if they typically had similar outcomes. In late 1990s, I set up two customers (in retirement) with PCs and internet. One was a day trader and the other did online casinos. After a year they were both about as good as their contemporaries. The day trader made more money than he lost but I don't know how much. The gambler hid his habit from his wife. He lost their entire retirement savings, maxed out their credit cards, got more cards and maxed those out - and took out 2 mortgages on their formerly paid-for house. It ended their marriage. These truly aren't similar outcomes.
pjc50 1y ago
Certain forms of stock market operations are indeed banned from retail - for example "binary options" in the UK.
48terry 1y ago
I buy a house to live in it, WTF are you buying one for?
tgv 1y ago
> Why is it any different than ... Buying a house Because your money will at least get you a roof over your head. It's not a bet because it involves an element of chance. I can't believe you're seriously raising such an argument.

bravetraveler 1y ago

If you want to bet on your ball, do it at the counter like the rest of us degenerates. Something, something, water cooler chat.

thrown-0825-1 1y ago

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bruce511 1y ago

Is it bad for society? It's certainly bad for individuals, and by extension their families. I guess if it scales up such that a serious chunk of society is affected, then yes its bad for society. Let's start with the obvious- in all forms of gambling the gamblers make a net loss. The games are hosted by very sophisticated companies, that have better mathematicians, and make money. $x is pumped into the system by the punters, $y is extracted, $z is returned. The 'house' is the only winner. All those TV ads you see? Funded by losers. Is it light entertainment? Similar to the cost of a ticket to the game? For some sure. But we understand the chemistry of gambling- it's addictive and compulsive. If we agree it's generally bad, then what? Lots of things are known to be bad, but are still allowed (smoking and drinking spring to mind, nevermind sugar.) It could be banned. Would that stop it? Probably not. Perhaps ban advertising? Perhaps tax gambling companies way higher (like we do with booze and smokes.) Perhaps treat it as a serious issue? All of which is unlikely in the US. Business rules, and sports gambling us really good business.

creato 1y ago
> Let's start with the obvious- in all forms of gambling the gamblers make a net loss. The games are hosted by very sophisticated companies, that have better mathematicians, and make money. It's not impossible to beat them consistently, but if you do, they'll limit how much you can bet or just ban you.
- katbyte 1y ago
  Seems like an easy solution is just to ban them from banning winners. Regulate them
  - skippyboxedhero 1y ago
    There is no reason why they have to provide a fair market to all users. The purpose of the product is entertainment, not financial risk. There are providers who specialise in providing action to sharps which then sets the prices that retail-facing customers use. If you want to make money, just bet with them. But limiting users is a way to provide a sustainable product. Again, it is an entertainment product, it is not a financial investment. Also, the quoted text is wrong...gambling companies do not employ lots of mathematicians, I am not sure why people think this...I am not even 100% sure why people think mathematicians are useful, most of the stats used are very basic. But retail providers don't, the prices you see for the biggest lines are provided by third parties, when you make a bet retail providers have no idea what price is being offered to you at that time. The only exception is parlays which are often priced in-house, these lines are very beatable but, again, retail providers limit because the purpose of the product is entertainment. Providers that do business with syndicates do not have lines on parlays because they are so beatable. The protection comes from all users being limited in the amount they can bet on parlays. A side note is that even in financial markets which are completely open, market makers avoid informed flow. If there was no uninformed flow, there would be no market makers. There has to be an ecosystem. Retail providers exist to buy advertising to win retail users every weekend, to do that they have to run their business in a certain way. There can't be a situation where they just lose money non-stop to fund someone else's business.

jacquesm 1y ago

That's always an interesting thing. Where does autonomy end and the right of the government to intrude into your private life begin. The bottom line, that something is bad for you seems to be so logical. But when you think about it a bit longer you see that there are so many things that are bad for you that it would be next to impossible to regulate all of them. Ok, so you only do it for the things that are really harmful. But then you're still left with smoking, alcohol, obesity, the state's lottery and casinos (always legal, for some weird reason, but just as bad as other forms of gambling), parachute jumping, social media, free climbing and a whole raft of other items that have the potential to massively ruin your (or even someone else's) life. And then there are the things you could do but that are illegal, such as speeding and drinking and then getting into the driver's seat of a vehicle. I find this one of the most difficult to answer questions about how you should run a society. In practice, we aim to curb the excesses and treat them as if they are illnesses but even that does not stop the damage. In the end it is an education problem. People are not taught to deal with a massive menu of options for addiction and oblivion, while at the same time their lives are structurally manipulated to select them for that addiction. In the UK for instance, where sports betting is legal (and in some other EU countries as well) it is a real problem. But the parties that make money of it (and who prey mostly on the poor) are so wealthy and politically connected that even if the bulk of the people would be against it I doubt something could be done about it. If it were made illegal it would still continue, but underground. It's really just another tax on the poor. Sports betting is problematic for the sports too. It causes people to throw matches for money and it exposes athletes to danger and claims of purposefully throwing matches when that might not be the case. This isn't a new thing ( https://apnews.com/article/sports-betting-scandals-1a59b8beee64e29c6283e521ad10e39d https://apnews.com/article/sports-betting-scandals-1a59b8bee... ), it is essentially as old as the sports themselves.

Terr_ 1y ago
> Where does autonomy end and the right of the government to intrude into your private life begin I think there are really three questions bundled in there: 1. At what point is it not really free-will anymore, and more like your brain being hacked? 2. At what point can the government step in to rescue you from #1? 3. At what point can the government step in to defend others from what you do, voluntarily or otherwise?

angarg12 1y ago

I left my home country over 10 years ago, and ever since I've travelled back once every 1 or 2 years. Since 4-5 years ago I started to notice these betting houses cropping up where my family and friends live. They are impossible to miss, with big pictures of different sports and no windows. The most important thing to notice is where these place are and are not. They proliferate in working class and less well off neighborhoods, while they tend to be absent from more affluent ones. These places get a lot of foot traffic, all the locals barely making ends meet, blowing a few tens of euros here and there, with the eventual payoff. It's not difficult to hear stories of people getting into the deep end and developing a real addiction with devastating consequences. And it's not only the business itself, but what they attract. All sort of sketchy characters frequent these places, and tend to attract drugs, violence... Legal or not these places make the communities they inhabit worse, not better. I personally would be very happy if family didn't have to live exposed to them.

kriops 1y ago
Guilt by association: If, e.g., violence is a problem, then one needs to deal with the violence. In general, law-abiding citizens are—and should—be free to congregate and partake in their bad habits wherever they please. And even though gambling is generally immoral, it does not infringe on anyone else's God-given rights and has no business being made illegal. Gambling is emphasized above to emphasize we are talking about individuals who are not sufficiently skilled to argue they are not essentially partaking in pure games of chance.
- Retric 1y ago
  It’s not about the Gambling, it’s the fact these businesses are collecting a large number of easy victims in once place. Imagine you’re a loan shark. Which of the following seems like a good place to look for customers: upscale restaurant, movie theater, random bar, theme park, baseball stadium, city park, or a sports betting venue.
  - dist-epoch 1y ago
    Imagine you're a luxury watch thief. Which of the following seems like a good place to look for customers: upscale restaurant, ... or a sports betting venue. https://robbreport.com/style/watch-collector/luxury-watch-theft-on-the-rise-1236960557/ https://robbreport.com/style/watch-collector/luxury-watch-th...

Gunax 1y ago

I happen to enjoy sports gambling and would be sad to see it disappear. I'm writing this because I want you to know what you're depriving me of. Because _other_ people make poor decisions, we need to take that decision away from everyone.

eggsandbeer 1y ago
What an incredibly selfish attitude.
- toasterlovin 1y ago
  It’s a completely legitimate question. It’s the same moral consideration behind whether drugs and alcohol should be legal. Banning them is good for people who can’t use them responsibly, but reduces the freedom of people who can. Given that we’ve flip flopped on the legality of alcohol, cannabis, and sports betting in the last 100ish years, it’s clear there is ambiguity about what is the best tradeoff.
- Gunax 1y ago
  Yes. I know it's incredibly selfish to push your laws on my body because you don't have self control. How do you sleep at night, knowing you're a nosy fascist?
  - eggsandbeer 1y ago
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smt88 1y ago
This is just the same social contract you agree to in every part of your life. Why can't you legally drive over 100 mph when you know you'd do it safely? Why can't you own certain kinds of weapons when you know you don't want to kill anyone or yourself? Gamblers going bankrupt is bad for all of us because they often have families and creditors who are harmed by the loss of the money, and the rest of us pay the price in the form of welfare, loss wages, etc.

Animats 1y ago

If only this had been figured out before the gambling industry became too big to fail.

_delirium 1y ago

I've found myself getting less interested in sports at all because of how pervasive sports betting has gotten. The announcers are always talking about odds and shilling gambling company sponsors, which is annoying and makes me not want to watch the games.

a96 1y ago
Adding advertising does indeed ruin most things.

wewewedxfgdf 1y ago

Sports betting once its in it's never leaving.

sapphicsnail 1y ago
It has before

eximius 1y ago

I mean, yes, but it's so far down the list of bad things for society we're facing right now. I'd rather we tackle the root problems leading to these. Increase education rather than reduce liberties. I'm not, like, strongly opposed to reducing this particular liberty, but man it's not my first priority.

jimbob45 1y ago
Where do you put drugs and alcohol on that list? Because gambling surely has an equivalent ability to wreck careers and families.
watwut 1y ago
Isnt the root problem a company being able to A/B test the most addictive product? They spent huge amount of money to find all the psychological tricks, to identify who has gambling potential and then target those people. Education wont beat that. Gambling is not a rational decision in the first place. But, young men gambling (they are the primary target demographic) will make them into desperate and hopeless group. And not just financially, marrying or dating gambler is even bigger mistake then partnering with an alcoholic. Their lives will go down the drain in all aspects.
squigz 1y ago
I don't think we have to take any liberties away to help reduce this issue - just banning gambling advertising would help a lot.

pavlov 1y ago

The role of gambling in society has massively expanded in the past 25 years. Legalization of sports betting, online poker, and meme cryptocurrencies are all highly visible examples of normalized gambling. Young people increasingly seem to believe that they need to gamble to get anywhere in life.

RataNova 1y ago
When traditional paths to financial security feel increasingly out of reach (housing, stable jobs, etc.), it's not surprising that high-risk/high-reward thinking becomes more normalized...
- hobs 1y ago
  You can also see it as the more we let corporations bend and break the rules of our society the more we will see the monetization of things that harm us directly for some small group's material gain.

keiferski 1y ago

The legalization and popularity of gambling is more than just an immoral activity that has negative societal effects. It’s reflective of people losing hope in the system’s ability to make their lives better. Gambling thrives in contexts where a ladder to success doesn’t exist or is perceived as not existing. If hard work or time doesn’t make your life better, then fate is just chance, and you might as well throw your money at something that has the possibility of making your rich, no matter how tiny that likelihood.

dist-epoch 1y ago
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- ayatollah 1y ago
  The stock market is gambling only for fools, while sports betting is gambling for everyone. False equivalence.
  - swarnie 1y ago
    It really depends how you use it. Put your 401k in to a global index and come back in 45 years? Yeah that's a false equivalence. Take out a bank loan and roll 0DTE options? That's 99% the same as sports gambling for me.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- keiferski 1y ago
  That's a completely false equivalence, and an uncharitable interpretation of what I wrote.
- d4mi3n 1y ago
  Let's keep this conversation productive. I don't read OP's comment anything like your response seems to imply. While I don't think OP's point about morals is relevant here (they vary widely from culture to culture), equating the stock market to gambling misses out on a lot of nuance. Your average 401k retirement fund is going to outperform your average gambler 100% of the time over one's lifetime. Long term investments also tend to not prey on addictive patterns of behavior. I personally think for a society to function well, it behooves ourselves to recognize when there are certain patterns or behaviors that are self destructive if left unchecked. I feel addictive drugs and gambling fall into this category. That's not to say banning this behavior is the right call, but there's a lot of space to explore productive policies between full on bans and anything-goes.

spike021 1y ago

It's become very toxic in baseball. just google "baseball player", "threats", and "gambling" and you'll see what I mean. edit for examples: * https://www.newsweek.com/sports/mlb/red-sox-pitcher-confronts-commissioner-about-gambling-social-media-threats-2102617 https://www.newsweek.com/sports/mlb/red-sox-pitcher-confront... * https://www.sfchronicle.com/sports/giants/article/mlb-threat-social-media-18349040.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/sports/giants/article/mlb-threat...

Balgair 1y ago
NCAA women's sports too. These young women don't have the money to hire security and are especially vulnerable as a result
- Spivak 1y ago
  I mean if we're going cut back on the worst offenses of sports gambling it seems like "you can only gamble on professional sports" could be a potential easy win. The next step would probably be eliminating betting on individual players, you can still bet on weird stuff but it would have to be $team does $thing. It wouldn't work for solo sports but given the most popular sports are all team sports it would cover a lot.
wmeredith 1y ago
It's awful when watching sports. I don't think I can get five minutes in an NFL game without seeing something about sports betting. It's in the commercials, sponsored segments, graphic placements, apps, etc. It's fucking gross.
Shocka1 1y ago
This kind of stuff is repulsive to me. I'm sure it's similar elsewhere too, but my local radio stations in the Midwest have been running ads about not harassing athletes over sports betting. The whole thing is comical to me, since they are collecting massive amounts of tax revenue from the whole thing to begin with and paying for the ads with it. They are great things coming from it, like school funding, but the whole concept doesn't really sit well with me. https://casinocontrol.ohio.gov/home/news-and-events/all-news/more+than+a+bet https://casinocontrol.ohio.gov/home/news-and-events/all-news...

RataNova 1y ago

Honestly, it's starting to look more like social media 2.0... like built on engagement, dressed up as entertainment, and slowly warping how people relate to something that used to just be… fun

ksec 1y ago

Interesting, Horse Racing and Football in UK doesn't seems to have that effect at all. I wonder why is it specifically US?

arlattimore 1y ago

Wow, took them a while.

Tade0 1y ago

I'm happy to hear that. By my (short) experience working for this industry, some companies seem to forget they're a legitimate business now.

gverrilla 1y ago

The USA is gambling it all away. Dangerous and dumb.

Synaesthesia 1y ago

China just straight banned it. Not a terrible idea IMO

elliotto 1y ago

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/tHiB8jLocbPLagYDZ/the-online-sports-gambling-experiment-has-failed https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/tHiB8jLocbPLagYDZ/the-online... This less wrong piece by a libertarian who examines the numbers and struggles to reconcile them with his beliefs is one of the best indictments on sports betting. There is a small proportion of the population who cannot handle this. And they become prey to the predators in the sports betting industry. These guys make money off destroying their lives.

eep_social 1y ago
Good read, thanks! I was surprised that the author brushed by restrictions around marketing while concluding that limited access would be an improvement. The normalization of betting and odds via inclusion in broadcasts, celebrity endorsements, etc strikes me as a narrow precursor to harm that would be relatively easy to target and puts the onus and focus on the providers to find a sustainable business model.
- elliotto 1y ago
  The author approaches the topic from a libertarian perspective with some prior beliefs about the futility of regulation. These restrictions are not permitted within their ontology, which in my opinion makes the damning conclusion more powerful. I strongly disagree with the authors political stance, which makes the fact that we agree on the problem / solution a nice bipartisan result

rf15 1y ago

I wonder when they see legal betting on a company's future success as a bad thing for society. For now one can only dream, unfortunetaly.

walthamstow 1y ago

What I find most sad about this is the symbiosis between the USA and the UK and how corporations (or politicians) in each one will look to see the most profitable (or divisive) in the other and copy it. This is how the US ended up with rampant sports gambling/advertising, something the UK has had most of this century. It's also how we ended up with voter ID in the UK despite having near-zero problems with voter impersonation.

bentt 1y ago

Sports gambling is perverting sports. When ESPN has special segments on good bets you know we have lost our way.

Throaway152 1y ago

What I'd like to know is why did legalizing sports betting = complete change of the sports media landscape? Like the question asked doesn't seem to be around how sports betting has been integrated. it's just "is sports betting good or should we ban it." Im fine with sports betting, what Im not fine with is my hockey games being saturated with ads, odds, and commentary about something that they keep telling us is tangential and not supposed-to-be-taken-seriously! The whole thing is pathetic and I don't see how it's sustainable. There's going to be a Mothers Against Gambling movement or something after enough lives get wrecked. And I'd like to add that most of the people throw the term around "lives get wrecked / ruined" flippantly around this, but that's exactly what it is. Your life is wrecked, you can't fix it, nothing can fix it. If only you never started gambling...

michaelcampbell 1y ago
> What I'd like to know is why did legalizing sports betting Financial interests.

swydydct 1y ago

I see adds for these companies all the time on Muni buses. It’s very frustrating, and I wish the city would be more choosy about who they let advertise.

brikym 1y ago
The system is run so that the corporations are #1 and people just there to feed the economy. That's why sports betting is allowed. Advertising in public spaces is another thing as you've noticed. Those bright electronic billboards are a net negative to society but still allowed. Guess who needs advertising come election time?

supportengineer 1y ago

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michaelcampbell 1y ago
One person's "support" is another's "overreach".

JumpinJack_Cash 1y ago

Everything is gambling . You are either gambling money or time or a combination or both to end up ahead in a particular metric that interests you However gambling time is seen as virtous and to be celebrated, whereas gambling money is the devil. At least if you lose money you can make it back, when you gamble time good luck getting back your 4 year studying for a gender studies degree. Also here on HN gambling on a startup which most likely go to 0 is seen as amazing, whereas betting on the Jacksonville Jaguars to win the SuperBowl is seen as bad and to be condamned , even though the Jaguars bet is at least an order of magnitude more likely to generate profits than the startup one.

RhysU 1y ago
If I gamble by joining a startup, I am trying to provide something of value to someone. Otherwise, my startup will fail. The bet is not societally zero sum in expectation. Long odds, sure, but possibly value creating. If I gamble on a sporting event, the outcome of the sporting event does not change. Someone wins. Someone loses. No value created. The outcome is societally zero sum in expectation.
- JumpinJack_Cash 1y ago
  > > If I gamble on a sporting event, the outcome of the sporting event does not change. Someone wins. Someone loses. No value created. The outcome is societally zero sum in expectation. If your net worth is less than 100M you have no business concerning yourself with societal value creation in the U.S. The only reason to create a startup instead of betting on a sporting event is that in the startup although your odds are longer you get to learn a field that presumibly you like and forage in an environment of similarly thinking individuals Nowadays where the startup world is all about networking and performance art and chasing the wave and all sorts of KPI BS, and sell out to VC firms...give me the sport bet every day of the week and twice on Sunday. Either that or 100M and then I can start worrying about societal outcomes, Also don't forget that one of the many ways in which for that sport bet windfall could be spent might be donating it to charity The sport bet is the MVB (minimum viable bet) whereas the startup is this complicated megabet with hundreds moving parts in which you also have to act to either impress your boss or investors (or both)

kqr 1y ago

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bethekidyouwant 1y ago
slot machines generally pay out 90 to 95%
Pulcinella 1y ago
"When commenting, I suggest being clear about what sort of gambling you mean. Confusion easily arises otherwise." When commenting, I suggest you read the article first. It would be extremely, extremely clear to you what people mean in this thread when they say "gambling."
- kqr 1y ago
  I disagree. There have been many other forms of gambling discussed in these comments.

JumpinJack_Cash 1y ago

Gambling on aggregators and platforms is bad because you are the new kid on the block betting against experts, people with enormous computing power and of course win or lose you have to give a cut to the aggregator or the platform. Gambling and betting should be 1v1 , as soon as you introduce a pool or an aggregator the wise advice is to stay away if such pool or aggregator has more than say a certain amount of bettors (100k-1M), because you become the new kid on the block and the new kid on the block gets skinned. Thing is the implication of all the above is that we should stay away from every stock market and that would be quite right considering how it produces such loopsided outcomes, not unlike the gambling platforms or even worse

tqi 1y ago

It's been fascinating to see how outlets like the NYT (which owns The Athletic) have largely given sports gambling companies like Kalshi and BetMGM a pass on this, given the amount of pearl clutching animosity that typifies rest of their tech coverage. Guess sponsoring 90% of all sports related content has it's benefits...

macinjosh 1y ago

You should be able to make a friendly competitive bet with your mates or coworkers or even strangers without getting in trouble. I am even fine with businesses facilitating this with apps or whatever. But I don't think anyone should be able to bet so much that it could make it hard for their social financial obligations to be met (taxes, rent/mortgage, utility bills, child support, etc). Otherwise society ends up having to help feed, house, clothe, rehab these people. You are giving people the choice to substantially wealth and at worst be saved by the social safety net, many people would take that bet.

diogenescynic 1y ago

It's a tax on dumb people and addicts. It's bad for society because it's just draining resources from people who probably can't afford to lose them.

obscurette 1y ago

I've seen gambling destroying more lives than alcohol in my lifetime. And I live in the area which is rather on top of the world by alcohol consumption per capita.

welcome_dragon 1y ago
Wisconsin? Lol

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deadbabe 1y ago

One day some athlete is gonna get shot in the head by a crazed gambler who lost a lot of money on a bet because of them.

IAmGraydon 1y ago

I'm not sure why we're talking about sports betting as if the "sports" part is relevant. The gambling industry in general is the business of selling hope to hopeless people. All of it is bad, and as long as we have the states themselves selling hundreds of millions of dollars of lottery tickets primarily to those living in poverty, this is never going to go away. It should not be legal to make money off of other people's suffering, which is exactly what this is.

nekusar 1y ago

I remember when gambling was actually just illegal in most of the USA. In my state, it was the state run lotto that was used to sell the idea "Hey we'll take lottery proceeds and fund education with it!!!!!". Of course, state-run lottery was legalized, and yes, the proceeds did run schools. The next funding session, they CUT the existing funding to schools and had the lottery run the bulk of the funding. They naturally never said that part out loud. And riverboat gambling was a quazi-legal thing. Then casinos were legalized. Then normalized gambling everywhere. Even the local groceries have state-run lotto vending machines that gobble 20's and 50's for a chance to strike it rich, or more likely, get poorer. I prefer when gambling was decriminalized individually, but not endorsed for the state or companies to run. I also don't want cop squads cracking down on the penny or quarter games in peoples' houses.

idopmstuff 1y ago
I honestly think we had a pretty good middle ground with people having to go to Vegas/Reno/AC to gamble. It can be fun, but you have to go out of your way to do it. If you have a fun Vegas weekend and blow a bunch of money once in a while, that seems pretty okay relative to being able to constantly bet on anything from your phone.
linehedonist 1y ago
Sounds like Illinois
- nekusar 1y ago
  Indiana, but yeah, close for sure. I think it was Illinois' state lotto that encouraged Indiana to also unrestrict it initially for government based gambling ($1 scratchoffs and weekly lotto drawing). Pretty sure they also did the "school budget scam" by transferring tax proceeds from the lotto instead of adding it as well. Again, though, news in the 1980's didnt have as much traveling power, unless it showed up in the NY Times or other national level papers. And the local papers actuually did local news then.

christophilus 1y ago

Reminds me of the quote: “Count on Americans to do the right thing… after they’ve exhausted all other options.”

layer8 1y ago

…as opposed to illegal sports betting? ;)

black_13 1y ago

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animitronix 1y ago

Should never have been allowed in the first place, but no one learns from history

brikym 1y ago
It's working as intended. Politics is setup to take from plebs and transfer to lords.

basisword 1y ago

The problem isn't gambling. It's America's obsession with excess. There are always going to be people that get addicted but most people can enjoy it with limited downside if it's regulated properly, as it is in lots of other countries that have had legalised sports gambling for decades and more. Instead, sports in American have made gambling part of the broadcast and almost the point of playing the game.

manchicken 1y ago

I don’t think there’s anything intrinsically awful about sports betting. I do think that the way American corporations have set it up, though, has made it a lot more predatory than many fans want to admit.

Unearned5161 1y ago

I'm surprised at the lack of mentioning the effects of gambling on the thing being gambled on! Sure gambling will always happen wherever there's something with uncertainty. But to make it fully legal opens the doors wide open for growth, leading to the only possible outcome of "more money being bet". I think it would be naive to assume that the integrity of any sport stays stable when such a large amount of money is staked on it.

kazinator 1y ago

Just wait how outraged they will be when they learn of this thing called the stock market.

deafpolygon 1y ago

Gambling, in general, has a net negative effect on society. In my mind, it's an obfuscated version of the MLM pyramid scheme.

rkomorn 1y ago
How do you see it as a MLM type scheme? It seems more direct to me: either you lose to the house, or you lose to someone else while the house gets a cut. Is that second part what you see as MLMish?

emptyfile 1y ago

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addicted 1y ago

I think eliminating online sports betting, and requiring it be done within the physical confines of a casino may help mitigate most of the concerns around this. After all, sports betting was legal in several states such as NJ, Nevada, as long as they were taking place in the casinos in Atlantic City/Las Vegas, and we didn't see any major negative impacts like we do now.

casey2 1y ago

Does society not have real problems? Why do we keep legalizing and recriminialize the same ~5 or so behaviors, just make some lawless or lawlite zones and be done with it. This is just political theater.

CraigRo 1y ago

When banks created derivatives that could only be fairly valued by the bank, with 5% profit margins built in, it got them a trip to Congress. SGPs have margins that would make options traders blush and were sold to people with no financial sophistication whatsoever. These things turn your phone into a vampire, and have no socially redeeming value. Please ban them!

rjon39570 1y ago

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Rodriguez22 1y ago

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