15 ms·

A lobbying blitz made sports betting ubiquitous

164 points by wallflower 4y ago

School-Cotton 4y ago
https://archive.ph/5dEFc https://archive.ph/5dEFc Another reminder that the US is not a normal liberal democracy. It is a very corrupt pseudo-democracy whose extreme wealth lets it have a higher level of development than other countries to which that description applies.
- sithadmin 4y ago
  I don't buy your argument that the US's concentration of wealth among a politically powerful class has much bearing on its development. Extreme concentration of wealth among an oligarch class isn't generally associated with socioeconomic development at all, arguably the contrary. Look at mideast petro-monarchy states, or some of the least developed southeast Asian nations as clear counterexamples. If anything, the US's relatively high level of political liberalness serves as a counterbalance against its own oligarch class.
  - School-Cotton 4y ago
    It’s not just concentrated at the top. The US is very, very wealthy by global standards even at lower percentiles. The exact rank depends on how you measure, of course: according to Wikipedia, the US’s median income is first in the world; I found some other sources saying it’s fifth. At any rate, very high.
    - monero-xmr 4y ago
      It would surprise a lot of Americans just how wealthy the lower-class are in the US and the luxuries available to them when compared to other places. There are a lot of very poor people in Europe, having traveled a fair bit in Portugal, Spain, Greece, and Italy, which are countries that are ostensibly highly developed. The safety net in the US is actually quite strong for citizens (there is a huge illegal immigrant class that gets very little) as SNAP benefits (free food) and Medicaid expansion for low-income people are quite generous. If you can get a Section 8 (free housing) voucher you can essentially live without working. The pros outweigh the cons IMO but there are some very weird incentives, like poor people are far less likely to get married after having children because government benefits are much stronger for single moms with multiple kids. It’s counter-productive.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - techsupporter 4y ago
        > The safety net in the US is actually quite strong for citizens And permanent residents. This used to not be the case but changed in the late 90s for reasons I won't derail the thread on. > SNAP benefits (free food) and Medicaid expansion for low-income people are quite generous I'm not sure our definitions of "quite generous" are the same. In Washington State, if you are a family of three who makes under $2,300 per month and pays rent and utilities, you qualify for $383/month in food benefit. In western Washington, this is not enough to pay for an entire month of food for three people. It's about a third, or half if you try really hard. (If you have a small child you can qualify for another program, called WIC, but what you get through it is more regulated.) > If you can get a Section 8 (free housing) voucher you can essentially live without working The phrase "if you can get" is doing a great deal of work here. The public housing voucher--of all types, not just section 8--waiting list for every populated county in Washington State is closed right now due to far more applicants than availability. In most of the country the waitlist is years long, if not decades. There is that notable story of a person who is now an Alderwoman for the City of Chicago[0] who was on the waiting list for 29 years and finally reached the point where she could apply for (but not yet receive) housing benefits. The social safety net in the US is neither as strong nor as ubiquitous as you might suspect. 0 - https://www.npr.org/2022/06/23/1104338319/chicago-public-housing-29-year-waitlist-alderwoman https://www.npr.org/2022/06/23/1104338319/chicago-public-hou...
      - dsfyu404ed 4y ago
        > get married after having children because government benefits are much stronger for single moms with multiple kids. It’s counter-productive. The purpose of the system is what it does. The bureaucracy must ensure the continued existence of the dependent population it was built to serve. So it breaks up families and support networks in an effort to keep breeding more dependents.
    - kibwen 4y ago
      > according to Wikipedia, the US’s median income is first in the world According to this page, the US's median wealth is 21st in the world: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_per_adult https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_...
- hash872 4y ago
  Without getting into the rest of this- gambling is fairly normal all over the world, in most cultures, and in most other developed countries (Britain especially). The US, in spite of its libertarian reputation, is still weirdly Puritanical about some things (frankly I'd add prostitution in the mix there as well- regulated in some parts of Europe, basically tolerated in others). Traditionally America had the 'you can only gamble in Vegas' model for decades, then it was forced by court decisions to extend that right to native casinos, then more recently it was forced by the Supreme Court to open it up to states who want it. It really has little to do with lobbying politicians, the US has been forced to relax gambling laws mostly by the courts
  - School-Cotton 4y ago
    My point was not that gambling being legal is abnormal for functional democracies — it’s that the way in which it was legalized is.
  - vintermann 4y ago
    > It really has little to do with lobbying politicians Casinos are very good at courting (or grooming) rich and powerful people. It would be very strange if they never applied that skill on politicians - or judges.
exogeny 4y ago
It's amazing that sports betting is legalized almost everywhere in the US, and legitimate skill-based games like BigBrain, PlayVS, and others aren't. Sports betting is the ultimate second-person game; no individual bettor is the one throwing the football. But somehow, I guess on the back of lobbyists, that's more acceptable than first-person games of skill. It's ridiculous.
- jamiek88 4y ago
  Yep and still we can’t play poker.
- Loocid 4y ago
  I agree it's absurd that it's legalized while games like online poker are banned but there is a (small) skill element to sports betting in playing the odds in various ways. I would consider it somewhere in the middle-ground between poker and roulette. It's possible to have an edge in sports betting, it's just very, very hard to find.
  - AtlasBarfed 4y ago
    Online poker would be rigged so fas if declared a game of skill. Online poker relies on you trusting the online dealer to not stack the deck,reveal your hand to players representing the casino, etc.
    - MaxfordAndSons 4y ago
      That's not how poker works. It's player vs player, not player vs house. The casino just takes a rake (a cut of each pot). There is no incentive for the casinos to rig the outcome of the game. They make money regardless of the outcomes.
      - JamesianP 4y ago
        They would make money by colluding with one of the players and taking a cut of their winnings. Or sometimes they just get hacked. It does make sense that in a lot of player-versus-player games, online makes it more risky.
SkyMarshal 4y ago
Not ubiquitous, it failed in the recent California ballot proposition.
- csa 4y ago
  Eh… sort of. The two gambling props failed because they came with baggage. I’m pretty sure that California citizens are ok with sports betting in general.
  - halpmeh 4y ago
    If I could warn all Californian voters against approving sports betting, I would. Would I do so for moral reasons? No, I don’t care what people do with their money or their time. But legalized sports betting has ruined advertisements during sporting events. I can only watch so many sports betting ads before wanting to rip out my eyes. That’s all you see now in states where it is legal.
    - scarface74 4y ago
      Then stop watching sports? I’m not in favor of giving the government more power to regulate what consenting adults do that only affects themselves and those directly dependent on them (drugs, alcohol, etc)
      - halpmeh 4y ago
        Isn’t the purpose of democratic governance to create a society that the people want to inhabit? I want to watch sports, and I want to do so without being bombarded with sports betting ads. If enough people feel like me, perhaps there is a way to create regulations that bring forth such a reality.
        scarface74 4y ago
        Is the purpose of a democratic government to force your will on others? There are more than enough Christians who were in power to pass laws against “sodomy” (homosexual sex), miscegenation (interracial marriage) and all sorts of other morality laws. The purpose of democracy is not to impose the majority’ will on consenting adults. “Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch”
AlexandrB 4y ago
Gambling seems to have become absolutely rampant in the last 10 years. Between loot boxes in games, (e)sports gambling, crypto, online gambling sites, and an increasing number of unregulated gambling services as well it's crazy how widespread it is now. I don't know what to make of it. As an industry, gambling doesn't really produce anything. It is a form entertainment, but a very expensive one for the consumer relative to something like movies. It can also be extremely exploitative. The information imbalance between the consumer and provider is massive and there's a whole industry around innovating new ways to make gambling more appealing and profitable.
- api 4y ago
  The mobile revolution seems like a major factor in a lot of this. People have this little portable device that seems oddly addictive in and of itself and the perfect gateway to wider worlds of pointless addiction. It's like mobile devices are digital cigarettes.
- p1necone 4y ago
  The gaming industry seems to have been moving away from loot boxes recently. Overwatch and Call of Duty have both stopped using them (replaced with a battle pass subscription with fixed rewards). TBH I think it's kind of a shame because I never had a problem with this sort of thing for cosmetic only rewards. It's fun to crack them open and see what you get and it doesn't give you any sort of advantage over other players because it's all cosmetic. Mobile games where the lootboxes contain stuff you actually need to progress in the game (and often require you to spend hundreds or thousands to get to the upper tiers of power/content) are a whole different story but thankfully that doesn't seem to have corrupted the PC/Console gaming space yet. Are there any big AAA PC/Console games that still use these mechanics? Fifa/Madden I'm assuming but I'm also out of the loop and haven't played a Fifa game since like 2018.
  - vogt 4y ago
    The gaming industry has moved away primarily because legislation has been getting passed in countries like Japan and China forbidding lootboxes in games. It's been a hot topic off and on in Congress and Parliaments around the world for a few years now and I assume game developers are (of course) skittish about it. To your point about cosmetic-only though, that still exists. Rocket League, which I play regularly, gives out boxes you open and get a random cosmetic with varying degrees of rarity. You can get a net larger amount of these cosmetic boxes by paying for the Rocket Pass premium (something like $10 a season). But the loot boxes only ever contain skins, wheels, etc.
noduerme 4y ago
So I wrote and launched a Bitcoin casino/poker site - started privately in 2008 and launched in BTC back in 2011, long before BTC was considered currency, but I still blocked everyone from my home country (the US) out of a very conservative reading of federal and state laws around the definitions of "game of chance" and "thing of value". I figured it would be legalized one day but only for massive corporations that could buy enough government officials. I thought I could bootstrap my way into it. That wasn't my big eye-opener on this type of corruption, though. I used my little casino as a testbed for dozens of original card games, slot games, and multiplayer games, many of which had adjustable odds that could be set anywhere from pari-mutuel to a specific house rake over time. I spent a lot of time presenting videos and demos to Indian tribes and cruise lines and individual Vegas casinos with the idea of having the online casino work on their premises, i.e. in the hotel rooms. The issues in the way were many, and mostly regulatory. For instance, in Vegas, casino floor square footage is taxed and regulated in a certain way, and off-floor gaming isn't allowed. On the floor, wifi coverage for gaming-connected systems is charted by heat maps and any system connected to the monetized network has to go through extremely expensive ongoing code / hardware testing conducted by the Nevada Gaming Control Board (NGCB). Mostly at the casino's expense. So even though it was a novel concept at the time to let people join satellites of real poker tournaments on their phones while they were at the casino bar, the casinos figured they would hold off until a provider with deep pockets came along. So then I had the idea of just licensing my original slots and card games. I had all the statistical analyses worked out and playable versions that were already in use with tons of real world data. Sure, said the NGCB. That'll be $500,000 per review of each game variant before you can shop it to casinos. The cost of each review is nonrefundable if it doesn't pass, and the review process takes a year, and there's a 2-3 year backlog because Bally puts out tons of games we have to review. Not exactly possible for a lone coder making a modest sum from running a Bitcoin casino that has to lock out one country after another. It was clear to me that sooner or later, once they figured out a way to exclude tech-side competitors with a history of software gaming from the market, (Galewind, Microgaming, et al - not that any of them are very clean) the powers that be in the US would find a way to reward those lucrative contracts to their buddies and/or whoever paid top dollar under the table. I ran [edit] provably fair games and published every result. But I never encountered a gaming regulatory body from Isle of Man to Costa Rica to Nevada that wasn't crooked as all get-out. Then again, show me an economic field of supposedly questionable morality that hasn't developed a parasitic class of bureaucrats to grift off people's desire to access it.
neonate 4y ago
https://archive.ph/5dEFc https://archive.ph/5dEFc
respondo2134 4y ago
It's utterly incomprehensible to me that networks are allowed to advertise and then insert gambling content into their broadcasts... you think we would have learned our lesson with cigarette ads. And the saddest part, when I see Wayne Gretzky, the greatest hockey player of all time, who can't possibly need the money shilling BetMGM, my heart breaks
- milsorgen 4y ago
  I happen to work with some problem gamblers. I find it a detestable practice but I know that's wrong of me to say, I shouldn't judge. What I find interesting in this context is that they all follow sports to a pretty high degree but never once have they talked of betting on sports. Aside from actual casinos and the odd scratcher the main draw from what I see is online operations trading in Bitcoin. From site to CashApp to bank account- it appears to be quite a frictionless experience. People who had never heard of Bitcoin outside the random news story, suddenly are moving thousands of dollars of crypto around and my biggest fear is that gambling will become ever more normalized. I've seen drug addicts maintain more of a semblance of normalcy than I've seen from some of these gamblers. Magical thinking and compulsion, it's really quite jarring to see. Gambling in my opinion tends to insidiousness and perhaps sports betting isn't as bad but I'd rather not tempt people with any of it including lottery. The house always wins.
- Ensorceled 4y ago
  > when I see Wayne Gretzky, the greatest hockey player of all time, who can't possibly need the money shilling BetMGM, my heart breaks Years ago, Gretzky gave an interview about doing promotions and he said he initially refused doing any promotions but that his agent convinced him he could just promote products he actually used and liked. I think of that interview every time I see him on a garish gambling poster that looks like something you would see on the Atlantic City boardwalk.
  - jliptzin 4y ago
    He might need the money…I’ve seen plenty of people blow it all on stupid things who should have been set for life. But in any case it is sad.
dang 4y ago
Related ongoing thread: Colleges and sports-betting companies ‘caesarized’ campus life - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33681023 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33681023 - Nov 2022 (12 comments)
diogenescynic 4y ago
Pay enough money to politicians and you can make anything legal or be swept under the rug. The Sacklers pushed opiates on millions of Americans, knowing how addictive and deadly they were. Thousands (millions?) died and the Sacklers just paid some hush money in fines and it was all swept under the rug.
- scarface74 4y ago
  It’s amazing that when the opioid crisis hit “rural America” people blame the distributors and called it a “disease”. But when it was rampant in the “inner cities” it was about “moral failings” and the lack of discipline. Even though the drug problem in the inner city was also caused by the government actively propping up governments where it was being produced in service to the Cold War.
  - jker 4y ago
    You’re talking about two very different eras and this two different sets of people.
    - scarface74 4y ago
      Eras? The “tough on crime” happened when Clinton was in office - whose wife supported him and ran for President in 2016, Trump talking about crime before he was into politics who was the President, and when Biden who is the President was in Congress (ie this is not a Democratic or Republican thing). The same politicians who are in charge now were in charge then. Today minorities are statistically being given harsher sentences for the same drug crimes than non minorities.
howenterprisey 4y ago
All I want to know is when we get prediction markets.
- kregasaurusrex 4y ago
  PredictIt had a limit of $850 on the platform, and even it's in the process of being shut down by the CFTC. I see it as a chicken-and-egg problem because having actual stakes even when miniscule means that smarter decisions are made with allocation; but I feel a lot of users would grow bored or not even use the platform if they could only use play money. My personal favorite example was ran in Popular Science magazine[0] for a few years where users could buy/sell imaginary shares based on the % probability outcome of certain events/discoveries being made by a specified date. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popular_Science_Predictions_Exchange https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popular_Science_Predictions_Ex...
- quickthrower2 4y ago
  Play money (but fiercely taken seriously so seemingly “accurate”) is https://manifold.markets https://manifold.markets
- yieldcrv 4y ago
  polymarket is okay, just needs liquidity incentives The US senate races had hundreds of thousands of liquidity But its a steep bell curve
  - boppo1 4y ago
    Is polymarket defi? What does it use as an oracle solution?
    - yieldcrv 4y ago
      yes, each market has an agreed upon resolver, and you just don't use the market if you don't like it and it never attracts liquidity. its more complicated than that, check it out.
- 4y ago
WeylandYutani 4y ago
Yes they recently legalised sports betting in the Netherlands. Didn't have much choice though all the money was going to Malta. At least now it can be taxed!
- vintermann 4y ago
  The gambling industry is like the tobacco industry, in that no matter how legal their product is, it's going to be run by gangsters. Because working with it, you can't in the long run deny the deadly human misery you create and profit from. So taxing it is no solution. It would have been better to let that foul industry keep corrupting Malta, than let them start corrupting the Netherlands as well. They won't be paying taxes for long.
bayesian_horse 4y ago
Most kinds of gambling are praying on the weak and vulnerable. I'm normally not for regulating vices, but I also don't see how you can allow it.
w1nst0nsm1th 4y ago
Sometimes, futur is predictible ; most of the time it's not in reliable way.
pneumatic1 4y ago
Article doesn’t mention the influence of Harry Reid who worked to maintain the monopoly of Las Vegas.
jasonwatkinspdx 4y ago
One fun bit of hypocrisy here is Twitch banned all the bitcoin casino sites from being streamed after a scandal, but they have a huge sports betting contract so that's still a ok.
- Miner49er 4y ago
  They banned all non-regulated casino sites.
  - jasonwatkinspdx 4y ago
    I know. My point was the hypocrisy, particularly because the scandal that triggered the ban was a streamer scamming 300k of "loans" off people to feed his sports betting habit.
gbronner 4y ago
The issue, which is similar to how alcohol is mis regulated, is that the legislatures machines returns either to the states general funds (ny) or to the companies and their lobbyists and politicians (ks) They should have maximized happiness of the users by limiting the pace at which money could be lost, and the odds/ spreads at which it was lost
alexb_ 4y ago
It baffles me that a lot of this website is positive of drug legalization, but gambling is suddenly completely morally awful and the government should not allow anyone to do it because they know what's good for you.
StanislavPetrov 4y ago
What sickens me is that in New York, sports gambling, lottery and horse racing are all fully legal, advertised and endorsed (and in the case of lottery, directly controlled) by the state, but it is still illegal to play online poker.

164 points by wallflower 4y ago

https://archive.ph/5dEFc https://archive.ph/5dEFc Another reminder that the US is not a normal liberal democracy. It is a very corrupt pseudo-democracy whose extreme wealth lets it have a higher level of development than other countries to which that description applies.

sithadmin 4y ago
I don't buy your argument that the US's concentration of wealth among a politically powerful class has much bearing on its development. Extreme concentration of wealth among an oligarch class isn't generally associated with socioeconomic development at all, arguably the contrary. Look at mideast petro-monarchy states, or some of the least developed southeast Asian nations as clear counterexamples. If anything, the US's relatively high level of political liberalness serves as a counterbalance against its own oligarch class.
- School-Cotton 4y ago
  It’s not just concentrated at the top. The US is very, very wealthy by global standards even at lower percentiles. The exact rank depends on how you measure, of course: according to Wikipedia, the US’s median income is first in the world; I found some other sources saying it’s fifth. At any rate, very high.
  - monero-xmr 4y ago
    It would surprise a lot of Americans just how wealthy the lower-class are in the US and the luxuries available to them when compared to other places. There are a lot of very poor people in Europe, having traveled a fair bit in Portugal, Spain, Greece, and Italy, which are countries that are ostensibly highly developed. The safety net in the US is actually quite strong for citizens (there is a huge illegal immigrant class that gets very little) as SNAP benefits (free food) and Medicaid expansion for low-income people are quite generous. If you can get a Section 8 (free housing) voucher you can essentially live without working. The pros outweigh the cons IMO but there are some very weird incentives, like poor people are far less likely to get married after having children because government benefits are much stronger for single moms with multiple kids. It’s counter-productive.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - techsupporter 4y ago
      > The safety net in the US is actually quite strong for citizens And permanent residents. This used to not be the case but changed in the late 90s for reasons I won't derail the thread on. > SNAP benefits (free food) and Medicaid expansion for low-income people are quite generous I'm not sure our definitions of "quite generous" are the same. In Washington State, if you are a family of three who makes under $2,300 per month and pays rent and utilities, you qualify for $383/month in food benefit. In western Washington, this is not enough to pay for an entire month of food for three people. It's about a third, or half if you try really hard. (If you have a small child you can qualify for another program, called WIC, but what you get through it is more regulated.) > If you can get a Section 8 (free housing) voucher you can essentially live without working The phrase "if you can get" is doing a great deal of work here. The public housing voucher--of all types, not just section 8--waiting list for every populated county in Washington State is closed right now due to far more applicants than availability. In most of the country the waitlist is years long, if not decades. There is that notable story of a person who is now an Alderwoman for the City of Chicago[0] who was on the waiting list for 29 years and finally reached the point where she could apply for (but not yet receive) housing benefits. The social safety net in the US is neither as strong nor as ubiquitous as you might suspect. 0 - https://www.npr.org/2022/06/23/1104338319/chicago-public-housing-29-year-waitlist-alderwoman https://www.npr.org/2022/06/23/1104338319/chicago-public-hou...
    - dsfyu404ed 4y ago
      > get married after having children because government benefits are much stronger for single moms with multiple kids. It’s counter-productive. The purpose of the system is what it does. The bureaucracy must ensure the continued existence of the dependent population it was built to serve. So it breaks up families and support networks in an effort to keep breeding more dependents.
  - kibwen 4y ago
    > according to Wikipedia, the US’s median income is first in the world According to this page, the US's median wealth is 21st in the world: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_per_adult https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_...
hash872 4y ago
Without getting into the rest of this- gambling is fairly normal all over the world, in most cultures, and in most other developed countries (Britain especially). The US, in spite of its libertarian reputation, is still weirdly Puritanical about some things (frankly I'd add prostitution in the mix there as well- regulated in some parts of Europe, basically tolerated in others). Traditionally America had the 'you can only gamble in Vegas' model for decades, then it was forced by court decisions to extend that right to native casinos, then more recently it was forced by the Supreme Court to open it up to states who want it. It really has little to do with lobbying politicians, the US has been forced to relax gambling laws mostly by the courts
- School-Cotton 4y ago
  My point was not that gambling being legal is abnormal for functional democracies — it’s that the way in which it was legalized is.
- vintermann 4y ago
  > It really has little to do with lobbying politicians Casinos are very good at courting (or grooming) rich and powerful people. It would be very strange if they never applied that skill on politicians - or judges.

exogeny 4y ago

It's amazing that sports betting is legalized almost everywhere in the US, and legitimate skill-based games like BigBrain, PlayVS, and others aren't. Sports betting is the ultimate second-person game; no individual bettor is the one throwing the football. But somehow, I guess on the back of lobbyists, that's more acceptable than first-person games of skill. It's ridiculous.

jamiek88 4y ago
Yep and still we can’t play poker.
Loocid 4y ago
I agree it's absurd that it's legalized while games like online poker are banned but there is a (small) skill element to sports betting in playing the odds in various ways. I would consider it somewhere in the middle-ground between poker and roulette. It's possible to have an edge in sports betting, it's just very, very hard to find.
- AtlasBarfed 4y ago
  Online poker would be rigged so fas if declared a game of skill. Online poker relies on you trusting the online dealer to not stack the deck,reveal your hand to players representing the casino, etc.
  - MaxfordAndSons 4y ago
    That's not how poker works. It's player vs player, not player vs house. The casino just takes a rake (a cut of each pot). There is no incentive for the casinos to rig the outcome of the game. They make money regardless of the outcomes.
    - JamesianP 4y ago
      They would make money by colluding with one of the players and taking a cut of their winnings. Or sometimes they just get hacked. It does make sense that in a lot of player-versus-player games, online makes it more risky.

SkyMarshal 4y ago

Not ubiquitous, it failed in the recent California ballot proposition.

csa 4y ago
Eh… sort of. The two gambling props failed because they came with baggage. I’m pretty sure that California citizens are ok with sports betting in general.
- halpmeh 4y ago
  If I could warn all Californian voters against approving sports betting, I would. Would I do so for moral reasons? No, I don’t care what people do with their money or their time. But legalized sports betting has ruined advertisements during sporting events. I can only watch so many sports betting ads before wanting to rip out my eyes. That’s all you see now in states where it is legal.
  - scarface74 4y ago
    Then stop watching sports? I’m not in favor of giving the government more power to regulate what consenting adults do that only affects themselves and those directly dependent on them (drugs, alcohol, etc)
    - halpmeh 4y ago
      Isn’t the purpose of democratic governance to create a society that the people want to inhabit? I want to watch sports, and I want to do so without being bombarded with sports betting ads. If enough people feel like me, perhaps there is a way to create regulations that bring forth such a reality.
      - scarface74 4y ago
        Is the purpose of a democratic government to force your will on others? There are more than enough Christians who were in power to pass laws against “sodomy” (homosexual sex), miscegenation (interracial marriage) and all sorts of other morality laws. The purpose of democracy is not to impose the majority’ will on consenting adults. “Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch”

AlexandrB 4y ago

Gambling seems to have become absolutely rampant in the last 10 years. Between loot boxes in games, (e)sports gambling, crypto, online gambling sites, and an increasing number of unregulated gambling services as well it's crazy how widespread it is now. I don't know what to make of it. As an industry, gambling doesn't really produce anything. It is a form entertainment, but a very expensive one for the consumer relative to something like movies. It can also be extremely exploitative. The information imbalance between the consumer and provider is massive and there's a whole industry around innovating new ways to make gambling more appealing and profitable.

api 4y ago
The mobile revolution seems like a major factor in a lot of this. People have this little portable device that seems oddly addictive in and of itself and the perfect gateway to wider worlds of pointless addiction. It's like mobile devices are digital cigarettes.
p1necone 4y ago
The gaming industry seems to have been moving away from loot boxes recently. Overwatch and Call of Duty have both stopped using them (replaced with a battle pass subscription with fixed rewards). TBH I think it's kind of a shame because I never had a problem with this sort of thing for cosmetic only rewards. It's fun to crack them open and see what you get and it doesn't give you any sort of advantage over other players because it's all cosmetic. Mobile games where the lootboxes contain stuff you actually need to progress in the game (and often require you to spend hundreds or thousands to get to the upper tiers of power/content) are a whole different story but thankfully that doesn't seem to have corrupted the PC/Console gaming space yet. Are there any big AAA PC/Console games that still use these mechanics? Fifa/Madden I'm assuming but I'm also out of the loop and haven't played a Fifa game since like 2018.
- vogt 4y ago
  The gaming industry has moved away primarily because legislation has been getting passed in countries like Japan and China forbidding lootboxes in games. It's been a hot topic off and on in Congress and Parliaments around the world for a few years now and I assume game developers are (of course) skittish about it. To your point about cosmetic-only though, that still exists. Rocket League, which I play regularly, gives out boxes you open and get a random cosmetic with varying degrees of rarity. You can get a net larger amount of these cosmetic boxes by paying for the Rocket Pass premium (something like $10 a season). But the loot boxes only ever contain skins, wheels, etc.

noduerme 4y ago

So I wrote and launched a Bitcoin casino/poker site - started privately in 2008 and launched in BTC back in 2011, long before BTC was considered currency, but I still blocked everyone from my home country (the US) out of a very conservative reading of federal and state laws around the definitions of "game of chance" and "thing of value". I figured it would be legalized one day but only for massive corporations that could buy enough government officials. I thought I could bootstrap my way into it. That wasn't my big eye-opener on this type of corruption, though. I used my little casino as a testbed for dozens of original card games, slot games, and multiplayer games, many of which had adjustable odds that could be set anywhere from pari-mutuel to a specific house rake over time. I spent a lot of time presenting videos and demos to Indian tribes and cruise lines and individual Vegas casinos with the idea of having the online casino work on their premises, i.e. in the hotel rooms. The issues in the way were many, and mostly regulatory. For instance, in Vegas, casino floor square footage is taxed and regulated in a certain way, and off-floor gaming isn't allowed. On the floor, wifi coverage for gaming-connected systems is charted by heat maps and any system connected to the monetized network has to go through extremely expensive ongoing code / hardware testing conducted by the Nevada Gaming Control Board (NGCB). Mostly at the casino's expense. So even though it was a novel concept at the time to let people join satellites of real poker tournaments on their phones while they were at the casino bar, the casinos figured they would hold off until a provider with deep pockets came along. So then I had the idea of just licensing my original slots and card games. I had all the statistical analyses worked out and playable versions that were already in use with tons of real world data. Sure, said the NGCB. That'll be $500,000 per review of each game variant before you can shop it to casinos. The cost of each review is nonrefundable if it doesn't pass, and the review process takes a year, and there's a 2-3 year backlog because Bally puts out tons of games we have to review. Not exactly possible for a lone coder making a modest sum from running a Bitcoin casino that has to lock out one country after another. It was clear to me that sooner or later, once they figured out a way to exclude tech-side competitors with a history of software gaming from the market, (Galewind, Microgaming, et al - not that any of them are very clean) the powers that be in the US would find a way to reward those lucrative contracts to their buddies and/or whoever paid top dollar under the table. I ran [edit] provably fair games and published every result. But I never encountered a gaming regulatory body from Isle of Man to Costa Rica to Nevada that wasn't crooked as all get-out. Then again, show me an economic field of supposedly questionable morality that hasn't developed a parasitic class of bureaucrats to grift off people's desire to access it.

neonate 4y ago

https://archive.ph/5dEFc https://archive.ph/5dEFc

respondo2134 4y ago

It's utterly incomprehensible to me that networks are allowed to advertise and then insert gambling content into their broadcasts... you think we would have learned our lesson with cigarette ads. And the saddest part, when I see Wayne Gretzky, the greatest hockey player of all time, who can't possibly need the money shilling BetMGM, my heart breaks

milsorgen 4y ago
I happen to work with some problem gamblers. I find it a detestable practice but I know that's wrong of me to say, I shouldn't judge. What I find interesting in this context is that they all follow sports to a pretty high degree but never once have they talked of betting on sports. Aside from actual casinos and the odd scratcher the main draw from what I see is online operations trading in Bitcoin. From site to CashApp to bank account- it appears to be quite a frictionless experience. People who had never heard of Bitcoin outside the random news story, suddenly are moving thousands of dollars of crypto around and my biggest fear is that gambling will become ever more normalized. I've seen drug addicts maintain more of a semblance of normalcy than I've seen from some of these gamblers. Magical thinking and compulsion, it's really quite jarring to see. Gambling in my opinion tends to insidiousness and perhaps sports betting isn't as bad but I'd rather not tempt people with any of it including lottery. The house always wins.
Ensorceled 4y ago
> when I see Wayne Gretzky, the greatest hockey player of all time, who can't possibly need the money shilling BetMGM, my heart breaks Years ago, Gretzky gave an interview about doing promotions and he said he initially refused doing any promotions but that his agent convinced him he could just promote products he actually used and liked. I think of that interview every time I see him on a garish gambling poster that looks like something you would see on the Atlantic City boardwalk.
- jliptzin 4y ago
  He might need the money…I’ve seen plenty of people blow it all on stupid things who should have been set for life. But in any case it is sad.

dang 4y ago

Related ongoing thread: Colleges and sports-betting companies ‘caesarized’ campus life - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33681023 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33681023 - Nov 2022 (12 comments)

diogenescynic 4y ago

Pay enough money to politicians and you can make anything legal or be swept under the rug. The Sacklers pushed opiates on millions of Americans, knowing how addictive and deadly they were. Thousands (millions?) died and the Sacklers just paid some hush money in fines and it was all swept under the rug.

scarface74 4y ago
It’s amazing that when the opioid crisis hit “rural America” people blame the distributors and called it a “disease”. But when it was rampant in the “inner cities” it was about “moral failings” and the lack of discipline. Even though the drug problem in the inner city was also caused by the government actively propping up governments where it was being produced in service to the Cold War.
- jker 4y ago
  You’re talking about two very different eras and this two different sets of people.
  - scarface74 4y ago
    Eras? The “tough on crime” happened when Clinton was in office - whose wife supported him and ran for President in 2016, Trump talking about crime before he was into politics who was the President, and when Biden who is the President was in Congress (ie this is not a Democratic or Republican thing). The same politicians who are in charge now were in charge then. Today minorities are statistically being given harsher sentences for the same drug crimes than non minorities.

howenterprisey 4y ago

All I want to know is when we get prediction markets.

kregasaurusrex 4y ago
PredictIt had a limit of $850 on the platform, and even it's in the process of being shut down by the CFTC. I see it as a chicken-and-egg problem because having actual stakes even when miniscule means that smarter decisions are made with allocation; but I feel a lot of users would grow bored or not even use the platform if they could only use play money. My personal favorite example was ran in Popular Science magazine[0] for a few years where users could buy/sell imaginary shares based on the % probability outcome of certain events/discoveries being made by a specified date. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popular_Science_Predictions_Exchange https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popular_Science_Predictions_Ex...
quickthrower2 4y ago
Play money (but fiercely taken seriously so seemingly “accurate”) is https://manifold.markets https://manifold.markets
yieldcrv 4y ago
polymarket is okay, just needs liquidity incentives The US senate races had hundreds of thousands of liquidity But its a steep bell curve
- boppo1 4y ago
  Is polymarket defi? What does it use as an oracle solution?
  - yieldcrv 4y ago
    yes, each market has an agreed upon resolver, and you just don't use the market if you don't like it and it never attracts liquidity. its more complicated than that, check it out.
4y ago

WeylandYutani 4y ago

Yes they recently legalised sports betting in the Netherlands. Didn't have much choice though all the money was going to Malta. At least now it can be taxed!

vintermann 4y ago
The gambling industry is like the tobacco industry, in that no matter how legal their product is, it's going to be run by gangsters. Because working with it, you can't in the long run deny the deadly human misery you create and profit from. So taxing it is no solution. It would have been better to let that foul industry keep corrupting Malta, than let them start corrupting the Netherlands as well. They won't be paying taxes for long.

bayesian_horse 4y ago

Most kinds of gambling are praying on the weak and vulnerable. I'm normally not for regulating vices, but I also don't see how you can allow it.

w1nst0nsm1th 4y ago

Sometimes, futur is predictible ; most of the time it's not in reliable way.

pneumatic1 4y ago

Article doesn’t mention the influence of Harry Reid who worked to maintain the monopoly of Las Vegas.

jasonwatkinspdx 4y ago

One fun bit of hypocrisy here is Twitch banned all the bitcoin casino sites from being streamed after a scandal, but they have a huge sports betting contract so that's still a ok.

Miner49er 4y ago
They banned all non-regulated casino sites.
- jasonwatkinspdx 4y ago
  I know. My point was the hypocrisy, particularly because the scandal that triggered the ban was a streamer scamming 300k of "loans" off people to feed his sports betting habit.

gbronner 4y ago

The issue, which is similar to how alcohol is mis regulated, is that the legislatures machines returns either to the states general funds (ny) or to the companies and their lobbyists and politicians (ks) They should have maximized happiness of the users by limiting the pace at which money could be lost, and the odds/ spreads at which it was lost

alexb_ 4y ago

It baffles me that a lot of this website is positive of drug legalization, but gambling is suddenly completely morally awful and the government should not allow anyone to do it because they know what's good for you.

StanislavPetrov 4y ago

What sickens me is that in New York, sports gambling, lottery and horse racing are all fully legal, advertised and endorsed (and in the case of lottery, directly controlled) by the state, but it is still illegal to play online poker.