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Sports gambling, like all gambling, ruins lives. It's certainly worth having the discussion about whether people should be able to run a train through their lif

by mlsu 2y ago

Sports gambling, like all gambling, ruins lives. It's certainly worth having the discussion about whether people should be able to run a train through their life and the lives of their families via app. But a much easier argument against sports betting is that it ruins the sports. Players throw. They get good at subtly cheating. The gambling apparatus latches itself to the sport, to the teams and players, the umpires and judges, the sporting organizations. With this much money on the line, it's not a matter of if but when games are thrown, cheated -- the bigger the game, the bigger the incentive. It's even easier now because of the amount of side/parlay betting that is available. It exhausts the spirit of competition. Sports gambling is diametrically opposed to sport itself.

fallingknife 2y ago
Best make it legal then, so bookies have the threat of losing their license if they get caught rigging a match. Black market bookies couldn't care less.
- noqc 2y ago
  It's much easier to collect evidence for gambling itself than to collect evidence that a match was thrown.
- bbor 2y ago
  Much, much fewer people would gamble if you had to do it by finding some weird person and handing them cash and trusting them to run a fair book, than just clicking some buttons on an app. After all, that’s why they’re apps that are constantly advertised; gambling services don’t have customers they attract with offers on the free market, they have victims who’s better sense they overcome through convenience and manipulation. Black market bookies also would see consequences from getting caught rigging a sports match, anyway. For one, they would be punished by the law for being black market bookies.
- pbhjpbhj 2y ago
  Would gambling do so well without the constant brainwashing (advertising). Almost every advert I get on TV/web is designed to convince me how much fun gambling is. That seems to include every minute of sport, either player clothing, hoardings, or on-screen. It's soul-destroying.
randomdata 2y ago
> But a much easier argument against sports betting is that it ruins the sports. Is there really that much betting going on in the "little leagues"? Professional sports are already and have always been ruined as they, by their very nature of existence, have to appeal to what entertains the crowd, not for what is ideal for the sake of sporting. Betting doesn't really change the calculus there; at most changing what makes for the entertainment, but then you're just going into a silly "my entertainment is better than your entertainment".
- bbor 2y ago
  I don’t really understand the accusation here. Do you really think they rig (say) football games for ratings…? I’m a cynical guy, but that’s too much even for me. And how do you explain boring dynasties like the Warriors or the SF giants had in their sports for 4-8 years? Either way, I know little about sports so maybe you’re right regarding American sports. But no way is footie rigged. I just don’t accept it; too many people care too much.
  - randomdata 2y ago
    Rigged? No, probably not – at least not where driven by gambling, but professional sports leagues aren't shy about adjusting rules to make the game more enjoyable to watch, even if not what is best for the sport for the sake of sport. Such actions undeniably ruin the sport if you, like the previous comment, want to hold sport as having some kind of pure sporting existence (a nonsensical take, in my opinion, but whatever). And the natural extension of realizing that professional sport is about delivering entertainment value is: Why not rig the sport if it improves the entertainment value? If people are most entertained by gambling and rigging a sport comes as part of that, nothing is ruined other than maybe your arbitrary personal feelings. But "my entertainment is better than your entertainment" is not a logical position.
    - bbor 2y ago
      Huh. What do you mean by “sake of sport”…? Like, to see who’s the strongest? Regardless, I think you just misunderstood a bit: the concern here is deceptive practices, which when money is involved becomes fraud. No one cares that WWE is rigged; the difference is that the audience knows it’s rigged, and they don’t have money riding on the outcome with the understanding that it’s a fair match.
marcus_holmes 2y ago
Extending the logic, should we ban the derivatives market? Cryptocurrencies/tokens that only seek to be a speculative asset (and not an actual currency). Venture Capital that seeks to use businesses as speculative assets (trying to artificially inflate the short-term share price of the business rather than its long-term health)? I'm not putting up a straw man - I'm actually in favour of it. I agree that all forms of gambling ruins lives. We would improve society if we agreed that all gambling is bad.
- randomdata 2y ago
  > We would improve society if we agreed that all gambling is bad. As a professional gambler (aka farmer) I understand I am biased, but I have a hard time squaring that society would improve if we all agreed my gambling habit is bad. Especially if that means going as far as a ban. What would people eat? If you think Mother Nature is going to give up her bookie position, you're wrong.
  - gomerspiles 2y ago
    What is bad for society is zero sum games. They are profitable for individuals but take the same or more from elsewhere so they raise nothing. There are a few zero sum games where we think the side effects are good (i.e. in the pricing of stocks,) but in general they consume societies best minds in return for no progress.
    - chgs 2y ago
      Advertising - one of the largest industries on the planet. It’s not even zero sum, it’s a net loss. The views loses $50 and 100 hours, the winners gain $50
      - echoangle 2y ago
        Advertising improves information for consumers though, as long as you get advertised stuff you actually want but didn’t even know existed. I’m not saying it’s a net positive as it’s currently done, but advertising as a concept doesn’t have to be net negative.
alm1 2y ago
same argument can be made about excessive athlete salaries and really any sports related business ventures. Athletes go after specific stats to hit contract goals, get their bonuses and live good lives. Gambling industry is just one of the hundred detractors to the sport itself.
- dexwiz 2y ago
  But all of those stats will help a team win in theory. But you can bet against yourself, perform poorly, and then get a payout. That is the antithesis of good sportsmanship.
- educasean 2y ago
  The problem is that sports gambling introduces conflicting interests. It's one thing to coast and collect paychecks, it's a whole another thing for a player to actively sabotage their own team.
- vintermann 2y ago
  US sports is surprisingly "socialist", with systems like drafting ensuring that a team can't just buy up all the best players, so the league stays interesting. It seems obvious that player wages are kept lower in a system like this ... But I think they do pretty OK anyway. Amateur sports (college and high school sports) is also much, much bigger in the US than most other places. Both these trends I would guess have to do with the US's traditional ban on sports gambling.
  - throwaway2037 2y ago
    This is only the annual drafts. Baseball TV revs are not shared between teams, like American football. So baseball teams in large, urban centers have a huge advantage to buy better players from free agency.
notorandit 2y ago
Very few political decisions can be said to be carved in stone. The point is that reversing a popularly acclaimed law, while yes showing to be a mistake, leads to huge losses in political consensus at elections and an easy win to the other parties.
- bryanrasmussen 2y ago
  >popularly acclaimed law I have the feeling that gambling is popularly acclaimed in the same way that cigarette smoking is. People may like it but other than a few even the ones who like it wish it didn't exist. At any rate every article I see about gambling is about how much it sucks. Probably the gambling industry doesn't have the top level public relations that smoking had once upon a time, otherwise I'd be seeing more ads about how gambling makes you a tough guy. Which, come to think of it, I do see a bit of that in Denmark, but Danes don't do advertising that isn't meant to be funny (laugh with) very well so these ads look ridiculous (laugh at)
29athrowaway 2y ago
Other things that ruin lives: eating, shopping, TV, the Internet, videogames, alcohol, accumulating things in your house, etc.
- bozhark 2y ago
  Being alive ruins lives, guaranteed
- si1entstill 2y ago
  One could give themselves hyponatremia by overdrinking water, so might as well not have laws preventing children from buying alcohol.
- mihaic 2y ago
  I think you mean: "Whatabout other predatory industries where people fall in a slippery slope to destroy their lives? As long as a solution only addresses some of these industries, should we even consider it?"
  - 29athrowaway 2y ago
    More like: <MBA graduate> became CEO of <company>, now <company> is set out to maximize profits at the expense of society.
FridgeSeal 2y ago
In Australia gambling and poker machines have so deeply parasitised themselves into local sports clubs, that they can now _no longer operate without the poker machines_. They’ve co-opted sport so thoroughly, that gambling is now basically an ingrained part of organised sports from local level up. It’s heinous.
- chii 2y ago
  The local sports clubs need the revenue from the machines, otherwise they'd not make any money at all, and might even cease to exist. How do you propose to solve this problem? Higher fees from club members? or somehow get more gov't funding via taxing? I don't see the issue with gambling revenue funding a club.
  - lodovic 2y ago
    because the gambling machines mainly fund the people who own these machines, not the club. the club could hold a single bingo evening and raise more money than a month of gambling machines would bring.
    - ikr678 2y ago
      If the club holds the license the club owns the machines. Clubs are not for profits and need to return 100% of profits to the club & facility. In practice this takes the form of Club Board members giving themselves generous contracts to renovate/clean/manage aspects of the club (via services companies that they or a family member own). There are sports leagues clubs in NSW that rival small Las Vegas casinos in facilities and amenity.
  - lathiat 2y ago
    There are no pokies outside the Casino in Western Australia (Perth). And thus no pokies at sports clubs or bars etc. It’s glorious. I admit to not being entirely sure what "Sports Clubs" are over east though or why they need propping up by gambling. In any case, it works fine here. You CAN get a permit for a few bits of "gambling" that is mostly only for "sports clubs" but it's very VERY restricted, and mostly like actual games with people like Poker, Two Up, etc. It's not really a problem in nearly the same way, and no machines: https://sportscommunity.com.au/club-member/wa-gambling/ https://sportscommunity.com.au/club-member/wa-gambling/
dyauspitr 2y ago
Betting on a game makes watching the game 10x more fun though.
tgv 2y ago
> it ruins the sports If that were true, people would stop paying attention of it. What other criterion would you have for the quality of sports? But the worst is how easily you brush aside that it "ruins lives". Not that that's your fault. It seems that almost nobody cares about it. It has been known for a long time that gambling is detrimental, to individuals and to society, yet a bunch of Wolf-of-Wall-Street-style financiers use it to get richer without the need for as much as a good idea. There's less ingenuity and skill involved in betting than in drugs. It's bottom of the barrel amorality, bribing and corrupting its way into politics. And nobody cares.
- mlsu 2y ago
  No, I didn't brush it aside. There is a healthy argument going on with compelling points on both sides about the tradeoff between freedom (spending your own money how you please) and social harm reduction (preventing people from ruining their lives). You can look at another of my comments in the thread above this, I take a pretty clear position on the matter. My statement wasn't that none of that stuff is important, my statement is that gambling is unequivocally bad for the sports themselves and goes against the spirit of sporting regardless of its broader harm to society. I'm saying, there is no strong argument that gambling is good for the spirit of competition in sporting; there is no such debate. Unlike the broader topic.
throwup238 2y ago
> But a much easier argument against sports betting is that it ruins the sports. Players throw. They get good at subtly cheating. The gambling apparatus latches itself to the sport, to the teams and players, the umpires and judges, the sporting organizations. With this much money on the line, it's not a matter of if but when games are thrown, cheated -- the bigger the game, the bigger the incentive. It's even easier now because of the amount of side/parlay betting that is available. It exhausts the spirit of competition. I don't see how this latest gambling fad ends except for another Black Sox scandal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sox_Scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sox_Scandal It's been a hundred years so I guess it's time we learned our lesson the hard way, again.
- achenet 2y ago
  I vote we ban alcohol next :DDDDD
Hasu 2y ago
Gambling is generally against the law in South Korea, but any esports players or personnel who get caught fixing matches (this doesn't necessarily mean throwing a game, bets get placed on all kinds of things that aren't just the outcome of the game), they get a lifetime ban from the government from participating in esports in any way. I think we need something like that for all sports here in the US. If you get caught fixing games or coordinating to fix bets in any way, you should be liable, fined, and banned from sports and anything sports related for life. If the entire team was in on it, the entire team gets banned for life. No second chances, no exceptions. Or we could just make sports betting illegal again.
- boogieknite 2y ago
  Pretty much what's happening in the NBA with Jontay Porter
  - mlsu 2y ago
    And you start to wonder, he's just one who got caught. How many more. It sure didn't take long!
- mlsu 2y ago
  Of course all of the major leagues would say that they are not at all biased. Most probably have extreme suspension rules for being involved in gambling. But, we shall see. Human beings are fallible creatures; people forget, people slip. And it's hard to prove this. Especially nowadays, when you can do it over your phone in private. Still, it really doesn't matter, After all, who wins the flag. Good clean sport is what we're after, And we aim to make our brag To each near or distant nation Whereon shines the sporting sun That of all our games gymnastic Base ball is the cleanest one! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sox_Scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sox_Scandal
- Aerroon 2y ago
  I wish people would just realize that sports betting is stupid. If matches can be thrown then they will be thrown no matter the consequences. People shouldn't engage in sports gambling because it can be rigged. If you want to do it for fun then use fantasy points for it.
serial_dev 2y ago
While everything you wrote I agree with, I’m not sure I arrived to the same conclusion. Alcohol, cigarettes, workaholics, social media apps all ruin the lives of the weak and those around them. Should we make them all illegal?
- vincnetas 2y ago
  This boils down to a two question "should we as society allow a person to destroy his life." And because there is also a big external pressure from financially interested parties to convince a person to do things that are not beneficial to him, second question is "should we as society let smarter people fool less educated people out of their money/health/ happiness" (second one is more tricky) but low hanging fruits are advertisement for alcohol, gambling, smoking and other obviously non beneficial activities.
  - achenet 2y ago
    that's a good point. Ban advertising for gambling, tax the hell out of gambling companies... possibly create some sort of regulation for actual gamblers, i.e. check their ID against a national database everytime they bet to ensure they're not over-doing it... seems more likely to fix the issue than outright prohibition, which, at least for other things like drugs and prostitution, doesn't really seem to solve much.
- andrepd 2y ago
  Well, you cannot advertise cigarretes, so yes, why can you plaster the Internet, primetime TV, and player's jerseys with gambling ads?
- nuancedquestion 2y ago
  It is nuanced. Take alcohol. It is a drug, a poison, addictive, acute severe health problems are rare - although it can kill via the stupor it imposes but long term health and affects on productivity etc. Really bad. So society may be better off without it. But then mind altering substances may be good even if they are bad for social cohesion and self medication. It is hard to be sober you have to take life as it actually is. Make it illegal? Well that is almost orthogonal... why? What does it achieve to make it a moral outrage ... and who is the criminal? The brewer, the distributer or the drinker? Then even if you decide that incarceration is a good think to do to people who do one of the 3 things - the prohibition shows that people will do it anyway. As a drug alcohol in particular is probably the easier to synthesize. You just need readily available pantry items and a jar. Other drugs need chenistry labs, precursor chemicals or plants. So that effects the affect of criminializing alcohol. Then mix in its deep root in culture! Now alcohols is discussed, what next... too much work... That will have a different set of problems, solutions, unintended consequences of fixing the issue and so on. So just treat gambling like its own thing. Even then casino poker vs. Slots vs. Lottery vs. Physical Bookie vs. Online booke vs. Crypto vs. Backstreet all have different subissues and may need to be legislated individually.
esalman 2y ago
Exactly. Sports gambling takes the fun out of sports for those who are not interested in gambling.
- fsckboy 2y ago
  that's like saying alcoholics take the fun out of wine drinking for people who don't have a drinking problem.
  - MaxfordAndSons 2y ago
    Not really? It's more like saying alcoholics take the fun out of going to a restaurant that happens to have a bar.
    - albedoa 2y ago
      Your analogy is an improvement, but both of you are weirdly mapping "alcoholics" to "people who are interested in gambling". A valid analogy would speak of people who are interested in alcohol. (Incidentally, the restaurant in your analogy would probably not be viable without that bar!)
      - fsckboy 2y ago
        >A valid analogy would speak of people who are interested in alcohol. I did speak of people who enjoy wine (that contains alcohol) and don't have an alcohol problem. Their enjoyment of wine is not ruined by winos on the curb drinking out of paper bags.
  - nuancedquestion 2y ago
    Alcohol takes the fun out of socializing when stripped of it you are left with tables, chairs and a room. And company that spits and slurs! Without alchohol social scenes may be more creative. Karoke. Board games. Social games. Deep conversatiobs. Challenges. Parties like you had as a kid.
freetanga 2y ago
Agree. I would add that it is a bit of a perfect storm: - lower income families struggle for upwards mobility - we are moving ever more towards a full material world, where you need to have a lot of disposable income just to keep up (remember the first over 1000 usd iPhone and people saying it was too much?) - social media keeps reminding us that there are “successful” people who have all the stuff you dream, and can burn money (all a lie, but if desperate and poorly educated you buy it) - vanishing of social construct: less weight of family in peoples life, less local communities (replaced by only pseudo-communities as twitter or insta) which translates into less emotional support, pushing you to consumerism for solace. It’s no surprise that the hope of a quick buck (be it sports betting or also damaging scratch cards / lotteries) thrive in the context, and in particular with people desperate or with poor understanding of odds and biases…. Edit: I don’t think is necessary a poor-people-only problem, I think this is a symptom that a new definition of poverty is brewing - one beyond financial indicators… (stale life, no prospects of moving up, disenfranchising of society, resentment for feeling rug pulled from underneath, prone to absorb/consume anything that makes you feel “in the loop” or relevant like fake news or crazy theories, etc). I believe we are seeing this all across the Western world, yet us and our leaders fail to address it.
- mschuster91 2y ago
  I'd add another point to your list: decades of wage depression by rabid unchecked globalization, in urban areas combined with ever more power going to landlords. The amount of money especially young people have to fork off of their paychecks just to have a place to live is outright insane.
- Der_Einzige 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - throwaway2037 2y ago
    > For example, despite SK, JP, and Singapore having the best transit in the world by far, their people HATE using it and are desperate to buy expensive, crap cars to avoid using it. This is pretty bold statement. I certainly would not say that most Japanese in big cities follow this trend. To be fair, in any wealthy, dense city, a small fraction will always buy a car. A well-to-do senior manager at an urban Japanese firm is much more likely to upgrade to "Green Car" (slightly nicer train car), rather than drive a car to work. Last thought: Are there any highly developed, very dense cities in East Asia/Sino-sphere that do not have amazing mass transit? I struggle to think of any.
tirant 2y ago
Gambling, in the same way as consumption of drugs can be indeed harmful for individuals and the people surrounding them. But the solution is not forbidding them, but educating people and families on how to deal with them. Alcohol consumption is even more dangerous than sport betting, however several cultures after generations have been able to develop a healthy relationship towards its consumption. You can clearly see that by comparing deaths in Mediterranean countries against other northern countries or other parts of the world. I can feel that difference also directly in the way my Mediterranean cultural background has driven my relationship with alcohol. Me and my family love to drink wine or beer, but we despise getting drunk. The moment our heads get light headed we stop drinking. We enjoy the social aspect of it and its flavor, but we do not enjoy being incapacitated because of it. However the moment I started traveling north I noticed the difference in how people relate to alcohol:in a lot of cultures people just drink alcohol to get drunk or to disconnect from their every day lives. They have not learnt to stop on time and they develop a very unhealthy relationship to drinking. Same could be said about sports betting. If it’s part of our culture or our individual interests we need as a society to be able to develop a healthy relationship towards it and not forbid it (with the exception of minors).
- ramraj07 2y ago
  Which culture are you implying has a healthy relationship with alcohol?
  - achenet 2y ago
    Mediterranean (or at least the GP's family, which they say is Mediterranean).
llmthrow102 2y ago
I've made solid side income gambling over a number of different games and sports, and I say it should definitely be banned. It ruins lives, funnels money to terrible people, makes sports worse for everyone, and has no positive impact on society. The benefits of the "freedom" to let manipulation of your lizard brain drain you of your past and future earnings is not worth it.
- dailykoder 2y ago
  Over the years I did get to know a couple of people that were winning players in poker and sports betting. I was never patient enough for poker, so I just played it for fun every now and then (probably break-even, maybe a bit minus) and just watched the discussions about it interested. As poker got harder, a lot of them switched over to sports betting, which I was never interested in, but I found it amazing how they analyzed the games. But if you really think about it, yes there might be a tiny portion that wins overall, but they only win because there are a lot of people emotionally invested that ruin their lives. So yes, please ban. Edit: While yes, it can be fun and I personally can have a lot of fun when I put 50 bucks into a slot machine once or twice a year, no matter the outcome, it doesn't really justify to keep that business alive
  - jackcosgrove 2y ago
    > yes there might be a tiny portion that wins overall Probably explained by chance. Gambling "systems" don't work unless there's a flaw in the game.
    - pclmulqdq 2y ago
      There are inefficiencies that make certain bets positive EV if you are smart enough. It's usually a combination of playing in a weird way and having some insight that the maker of the game (the oddsmaker) didn't see. Gambling establishments don't mind because there are few enough of these and they will ban you if you take too much money from them. Winning sports betting players often go on to set odds.
lm28469 2y ago
Unless you live by yourself in the middle of the woods you never ruin just your life.
MaxfordAndSons 2y ago
I'd push back on the idea that gambling is inherently harmful. Gambling can be done at a scale where it is essentially play. It is particularly gambling against corporations or other non-individual actors, in games that they rig to be perpetually -EV, and market like crazy, that is inherently harmful.
rincebrain 2y ago
Unfortunately, banning it outright will probably only exacerbate problems. If you, hypothetically, banned it outright in the US, then you go from having few levers on what you can mitigate in the industry to none, because if it's all banned and has more than a slap on the wrist punishment, there's no reason not to charge 200% interest on gambling debts, or other absurd things. I'm firmly of the belief that the only thing you can really do is tightly regulate it to the point that there's still enough gambling, with controls minimizing as much unexpected harm as you can, to avoid most people feeling tempted to seek out the unregulated illegal avenues with more exploitative arrangements. I think history has shown that you can't effectively ban a lot of vices, you just wind up with them underground and even more destructive to people involved. The best you can do is try to minimize how easily one can destroy themself - look at Japan's reactive regulation around the most predatory gacha mechanics. Whether you think they strike the right balance or not, that's rather an example of what I mean - you can't really stop someone from deciding to deliberately spend their life's savings on things, you can just do as much as you can to avoid it being an impulsive choice.
jdietrich 2y ago
Sports gambling has been legal in the UK since 1960. Gambling wasn't seriously problematic in this country until 2005, when regulations were substantially liberalised. Pre-2005, sports betting was something that old men did in dingy backstreet shops; post-2005, it became a widespread social phenomenon, turbocharged by advertising and the growing influence and accessibility of the internet. There's a false dichotomy between prohibition and laissez-faire, which the US seems particularly prone to. You've seen similar issues with the decriminalisation of cannabis, where many states seem to have switched abruptly from criminalisation to a fully-fledged commercial market. There is a broad spectrum of other options in between those points that tend to be under-discussed. You can ban gambling advertising, as Italy did in 2019. You can set limits on maximum stakes or impose regulations to make gambling products less attractive to new customers and less risky for problem gamblers. You can have a single state-controlled parimutuel operator. Gambling does cause harm - whether it's legal or not - but it is within the purview of legislators to create a gambling market in which harm reduction is the main priority.
- divan 2y ago
  White paper on recent UK reform of the Gambling Act for the digital age. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/high-stakes-gambling-reform-for-the-digital-age https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/high-stakes-gambl...
- MavisBacon 2y ago
  I understand your position in theory but feel the comparison to cannabis is a bit unfair. Most physicians will agree that cannabis is fairly harmless in adults. Gambling, however has previously in the U.S. shown to be the leading cause of suicide attempts (20% in total) among all forms of addiction [1]. A body of evidence has also demonstrated it leads to divorce, bankruptcy, poor health and sometimes incarceration. Worth noting many of these studies centered around machine gambling and all forms of gambling are unique in terms of tendency for compulsion. Considering the landscape it is quite difficult for me to see a way of regulating out of this, not in the U.S. at least. [1] Zangeneh and Hason 2006, 191-93
  - 2y ago
anjel 2y ago
And on a good day,wall Street is orthagonal.
qwertox 2y ago
I find it funny how in Germany the state lottery advertises itself on TV but needs to add the info that "Gambling can be addictive." For example, this ad https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0-pKS_zx5E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0-pKS_zx5E is made by "LOTTO 6aus49", which is "LOTTO.de", which is "Toto-Lotto Niedersachsen GmbH", which is the lottery company of the state Lower Saxony. To me this is as if the state would place TV ads for wine which a state-owned winery produces, like "Landesbetrieb Hessische Staatsweingüter" also known as "Hessische Staatsweingüter GmbH Kloster Eberbach". And the lottery numbers are then presented in the prime time news in the publicly funded television.
- ekianjo 2y ago
  Governments make tons of money on gambling/lotteries. So they keep it running. This shows how much they don't care about making positive impact to people's lives.
- nicbou 2y ago
  Lotto Quebec runs both lottery ads and gambling-can-ruin-your-life ads. The German ads have nothing on those.
- lobochrome 2y ago
  You do know that lotto is state run, and all profit that isn’t redistributed to players is given to charity (mostly deutsche sporthilfe, who fund a lot of sports who would otherwise have trouble running). Lotto and sports betting in its modern incarnation are very different. Lotto was created so that people’s desire for gambling is diverted towards charity.
  - 4hg4ufxhy 2y ago
    How does operating expenses like salaries and bonuses look like? 10k bonus for every life ruined? I'm always worried about cronyism and corruption with this kind of monopolies. When I was a cashier the state owned lottery monopoly had a training session for us on how to operate the lottery machines, and it was really dystopian how most of the time was spent on encouraging us to make upsells with sales pitches and being happy about gambling.
neuroelectron 2y ago
The nice thing about sports gambling is it's a strong signal that your local government has been captured by outside interests. If anyone complains about the way things are you can simply point and say well, look we know the government doesn't represent us or work for the people, we have legalized gambling. Of course there's all sorts of other tells too but none is as clear cut without any need of conspiracy theories. unlike more complex policy areas where vested interests may be hidden behind layers of bureaucracy or decades of refined pseudo-moral talking points, gambling legalization is straightforward: the flow of money into lobbying, the rapid legislative changes, and the immediate establishment of large-scale betting operations make the influence unmistakable. It's a tangible, almost irrefutable sign that decisions are being made in favor of profit at the expense of public welfare.
nebulous1 2y ago
I'm going to suggest that you not use "run a train through" to mean "destroy".
- mlsu 2y ago
  I didn't realize it had that meaning, good suggestion!
interludead 2y ago
The line between legitimate competition and gambling-fueled manipulation is becoming increasingly blurred now!
fidotron 2y ago
This only truly works if sports gambling is illegal globally. The reason this doesn't apply too much with the US is foreign interest in US sport is limited. For example http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/426092.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/426092.stm is why british people of a certain age all know the phrase "Malaysian gambling syndicates" and associate it with random blackouts.
- throwaway2037 2y ago
  The US has pretty strict laws against its citizens from gambling on the Internet. Other countries could pass similar laws for their own citizens. > foreign interest in US sport is limited. I am pretty sure that American baseball is very popular in the Carribbean and Japan. And American basketball is very popular in China due to the legacy of Yao Ming.
  - astura 2y ago
    Japan has their own baseball league, Nippon Professional Baseball, I don't think they care about the MLB very much.
immibis 2y ago
Gambling triggers capitalism to ruin lives. If we had a well-designed society, you could lose a lot by gambling, but you could end up with $0 and still not be completely "ruined".
inquisitor26234 2y ago
man im torn here from sugar, cigs, to alcohol from netflix, pornhub, to onlyfans where do we draw the line
_heimdall 2y ago
This depends very much on how you define gambling. The stock market very much is gambling, though most people consider it investing.
DrillShopper 2y ago
Legalized sports betting and "weekly fantasy" leagues have severely reduced my enjoyment of NFL football. Last week in the NFL there was a player that went down at the one yard line and his team ran off the rest of the clock to win. The game was under the O/U but would have been over if the player had gone into the end zone. The player made the choice so that his team could run out the clock without giving the ball back to the other team, and if he had scored then they would have had to kick the ball back to the other team who could potentially (although unlikely) scored a touchdown on the kickoff or in the last few seconds after the kickoff which would have given the other team the game. It was, objectively, the right thing to do in the circumstance. The NFL analysts (who shill gambling apps) spent more time talking about if the player was responsible for everyone who lost on the O/U, and it just really killed it for me. Every. Single. Aspect is filtered through the lens of gambling. Games show the betting line on the screen and the analysts try to map out potential good parlays for the viewers. It's absolutely nuts and a very (in my mind) clear conflict of interest. It also blurs the line, in my mind, between objective reporting, analysis based on statistics, and paid promotion, and while I realize that sports reporting is probably the least important field in journalism, it's frustrating to see this unholy confluence and to see the impact it has on the ability for non-degenerate gamblers to enjoy the game.
pfdietz 2y ago
Perhaps it's not ruining sports, it's just forcing us to confront the emptiness of sports.
purpleblue 2y ago
I love gambling. I go to Vegas 4-6 times per year, and I play poker at the local casinos/card houses almost every week. I've NEVER liked sports gambling because it's so hard to predict and I also believe that it's rigged by Vegas and the Mafia. The NBA has already been outed as rigged via referees and the insane actions of refs in last year's Super Bowl by ignoring obvious penalties makes it even worse. The games are obviously tainted as this point. And the fact that none of the leagues want to implement rules that correct wrong penalties only solidifies the fact that they want these things to occur.
jeffwask 2y ago
It really ruined watching games for me with the constant talk of odds and gambling right in the broadcast. I thank my lucky stars this happened after I was a teenager/twenty-year-old because having to find a shady bookie that would break my legs if I didn't pay was one of the main factors that kept me from being stupid like a number of my friends. I would have been in deep trouble with an appified, gamified, psychologically addicting betting app on my phone offering me free bets to log in again. I had a hard enough time breaking away from phone gatcha shit that I would mindlessly click while sitting on the couch.
tshaddox 2y ago
> It's certainly worth having the discussion about whether people should be able to run a train through their life and the lives of their families via app. Even if you’ve convinced yourself that being able to ruin one’s own life is a sign of a society with Great Freedom, you might be willing to oppose other people profiting from urging people to ruin their lives.
1-more 2y ago
I agree but I'd put in a carve out for the kind of gambling that reinforces sociality. Poker night with your neighbors or a fantasy football league with your pals from school (with a groupchat where you shit-talk one another) make some sense: you spend the buy-in in order to have something to talk about with your buddies. A shooting range I used to go to would not rent to unaccompanied men. They had to be members and take a class at least, or be in a group, or bring their own guns. This was to prevent impulsive suicides. Maybe if you want to keep any kind of gambling on sports, you should have to go to a sports book with your pals and watch some games together. Putting the casino in your pocket feels like a social suicide.
MrFantastic 2y ago
I think sports gambling should be legal because otherwise the Bookies will kill you if you can't pay your debts. At least with legal gambling the worst that can happen is bankruptcy. The gambling institutions have some regulation as well. I do think that gambling ads should be banned just like cigarettes, and pharmaceuticals. USA and New Zealand are the only places that allow pharma ads and the public is uninformed to make that decision but the Agency problem means MDs will prescribe those drugs.
ferfumarma 2y ago
Honest question: why cares about the effect on sports? The most extreme example of cheating is sports theater, and even that has a fandom in the form of WWF. So why not let the sports police themselves, and let the market decide whether they are doing a good job with their attention? I don't care about sports, so I am asking from a naive position, but I from this position I can't fathom caring more about the sport than the people who compulsively wager on them, and destroy their lives.
- wrsh07 2y ago
  As a fan, it absolutely sucks to have your team throw. This isn't just a gambling problem, having your team tank to get top draft picks also sucks. But if you enjoy the sport, you probably enjoy it in a "may the best player/team win" way. It sucks to realize your team lost because the other team cheated, and it sucks to realize your team lost because somebody threw. If I wanted to watch scripted drama, I would put on succession. Or wwf.
highcountess 2y ago
I know many in those era are even aggressively opposed to the Bible, but I have long seen it as a kind of change log, commit notes, code notes, etc. … “hi, ancient people here. We learned this lesson hard over many iterations that gambling is bad, we are making a rule that you, future reader shouldn’t gamble or it will also result in your societal debt and likely contribute to your destruction too if you take on too many of the things we learned over millennia and many different civilizations and societies collapsing; and we wrapped it in nice allegories for so it appeals to your innate human proclivity to dream, imagine, and tell stories. Don’t say we didn’t want you!” Unfortunately it seems our Digital Age civilization is hell bent on emulating its Bronze Age and Tower of Babel compatriots the way we are going.

by mlsu 2y ago

fallingknife 2y ago

Best make it legal then, so bookies have the threat of losing their license if they get caught rigging a match. Black market bookies couldn't care less.

noqc 2y ago
It's much easier to collect evidence for gambling itself than to collect evidence that a match was thrown.
bbor 2y ago
Much, much fewer people would gamble if you had to do it by finding some weird person and handing them cash and trusting them to run a fair book, than just clicking some buttons on an app. After all, that’s why they’re apps that are constantly advertised; gambling services don’t have customers they attract with offers on the free market, they have victims who’s better sense they overcome through convenience and manipulation. Black market bookies also would see consequences from getting caught rigging a sports match, anyway. For one, they would be punished by the law for being black market bookies.
pbhjpbhj 2y ago
Would gambling do so well without the constant brainwashing (advertising). Almost every advert I get on TV/web is designed to convince me how much fun gambling is. That seems to include every minute of sport, either player clothing, hoardings, or on-screen. It's soul-destroying.

randomdata 2y ago

> But a much easier argument against sports betting is that it ruins the sports. Is there really that much betting going on in the "little leagues"? Professional sports are already and have always been ruined as they, by their very nature of existence, have to appeal to what entertains the crowd, not for what is ideal for the sake of sporting. Betting doesn't really change the calculus there; at most changing what makes for the entertainment, but then you're just going into a silly "my entertainment is better than your entertainment".

bbor 2y ago
I don’t really understand the accusation here. Do you really think they rig (say) football games for ratings…? I’m a cynical guy, but that’s too much even for me. And how do you explain boring dynasties like the Warriors or the SF giants had in their sports for 4-8 years? Either way, I know little about sports so maybe you’re right regarding American sports. But no way is footie rigged. I just don’t accept it; too many people care too much.
- randomdata 2y ago
  Rigged? No, probably not – at least not where driven by gambling, but professional sports leagues aren't shy about adjusting rules to make the game more enjoyable to watch, even if not what is best for the sport for the sake of sport. Such actions undeniably ruin the sport if you, like the previous comment, want to hold sport as having some kind of pure sporting existence (a nonsensical take, in my opinion, but whatever). And the natural extension of realizing that professional sport is about delivering entertainment value is: Why not rig the sport if it improves the entertainment value? If people are most entertained by gambling and rigging a sport comes as part of that, nothing is ruined other than maybe your arbitrary personal feelings. But "my entertainment is better than your entertainment" is not a logical position.
  - bbor 2y ago
    Huh. What do you mean by “sake of sport”…? Like, to see who’s the strongest? Regardless, I think you just misunderstood a bit: the concern here is deceptive practices, which when money is involved becomes fraud. No one cares that WWE is rigged; the difference is that the audience knows it’s rigged, and they don’t have money riding on the outcome with the understanding that it’s a fair match.

marcus_holmes 2y ago

Extending the logic, should we ban the derivatives market? Cryptocurrencies/tokens that only seek to be a speculative asset (and not an actual currency). Venture Capital that seeks to use businesses as speculative assets (trying to artificially inflate the short-term share price of the business rather than its long-term health)? I'm not putting up a straw man - I'm actually in favour of it. I agree that all forms of gambling ruins lives. We would improve society if we agreed that all gambling is bad.

randomdata 2y ago
> We would improve society if we agreed that all gambling is bad. As a professional gambler (aka farmer) I understand I am biased, but I have a hard time squaring that society would improve if we all agreed my gambling habit is bad. Especially if that means going as far as a ban. What would people eat? If you think Mother Nature is going to give up her bookie position, you're wrong.
- gomerspiles 2y ago
  What is bad for society is zero sum games. They are profitable for individuals but take the same or more from elsewhere so they raise nothing. There are a few zero sum games where we think the side effects are good (i.e. in the pricing of stocks,) but in general they consume societies best minds in return for no progress.
  - chgs 2y ago
    Advertising - one of the largest industries on the planet. It’s not even zero sum, it’s a net loss. The views loses $50 and 100 hours, the winners gain $50
    - echoangle 2y ago
      Advertising improves information for consumers though, as long as you get advertised stuff you actually want but didn’t even know existed. I’m not saying it’s a net positive as it’s currently done, but advertising as a concept doesn’t have to be net negative.

alm1 2y ago

same argument can be made about excessive athlete salaries and really any sports related business ventures. Athletes go after specific stats to hit contract goals, get their bonuses and live good lives. Gambling industry is just one of the hundred detractors to the sport itself.

dexwiz 2y ago
But all of those stats will help a team win in theory. But you can bet against yourself, perform poorly, and then get a payout. That is the antithesis of good sportsmanship.
educasean 2y ago
The problem is that sports gambling introduces conflicting interests. It's one thing to coast and collect paychecks, it's a whole another thing for a player to actively sabotage their own team.
vintermann 2y ago
US sports is surprisingly "socialist", with systems like drafting ensuring that a team can't just buy up all the best players, so the league stays interesting. It seems obvious that player wages are kept lower in a system like this ... But I think they do pretty OK anyway. Amateur sports (college and high school sports) is also much, much bigger in the US than most other places. Both these trends I would guess have to do with the US's traditional ban on sports gambling.
- throwaway2037 2y ago
  This is only the annual drafts. Baseball TV revs are not shared between teams, like American football. So baseball teams in large, urban centers have a huge advantage to buy better players from free agency.

notorandit 2y ago

Very few political decisions can be said to be carved in stone. The point is that reversing a popularly acclaimed law, while yes showing to be a mistake, leads to huge losses in political consensus at elections and an easy win to the other parties.

bryanrasmussen 2y ago
>popularly acclaimed law I have the feeling that gambling is popularly acclaimed in the same way that cigarette smoking is. People may like it but other than a few even the ones who like it wish it didn't exist. At any rate every article I see about gambling is about how much it sucks. Probably the gambling industry doesn't have the top level public relations that smoking had once upon a time, otherwise I'd be seeing more ads about how gambling makes you a tough guy. Which, come to think of it, I do see a bit of that in Denmark, but Danes don't do advertising that isn't meant to be funny (laugh with) very well so these ads look ridiculous (laugh at)

29athrowaway 2y ago

Other things that ruin lives: eating, shopping, TV, the Internet, videogames, alcohol, accumulating things in your house, etc.

bozhark 2y ago
Being alive ruins lives, guaranteed
si1entstill 2y ago
One could give themselves hyponatremia by overdrinking water, so might as well not have laws preventing children from buying alcohol.
mihaic 2y ago
I think you mean: "Whatabout other predatory industries where people fall in a slippery slope to destroy their lives? As long as a solution only addresses some of these industries, should we even consider it?"
- 29athrowaway 2y ago
  More like: <MBA graduate> became CEO of <company>, now <company> is set out to maximize profits at the expense of society.

FridgeSeal 2y ago

In Australia gambling and poker machines have so deeply parasitised themselves into local sports clubs, that they can now _no longer operate without the poker machines_. They’ve co-opted sport so thoroughly, that gambling is now basically an ingrained part of organised sports from local level up. It’s heinous.

chii 2y ago
The local sports clubs need the revenue from the machines, otherwise they'd not make any money at all, and might even cease to exist. How do you propose to solve this problem? Higher fees from club members? or somehow get more gov't funding via taxing? I don't see the issue with gambling revenue funding a club.
- lodovic 2y ago
  because the gambling machines mainly fund the people who own these machines, not the club. the club could hold a single bingo evening and raise more money than a month of gambling machines would bring.
  - ikr678 2y ago
    If the club holds the license the club owns the machines. Clubs are not for profits and need to return 100% of profits to the club & facility. In practice this takes the form of Club Board members giving themselves generous contracts to renovate/clean/manage aspects of the club (via services companies that they or a family member own). There are sports leagues clubs in NSW that rival small Las Vegas casinos in facilities and amenity.
- lathiat 2y ago
  There are no pokies outside the Casino in Western Australia (Perth). And thus no pokies at sports clubs or bars etc. It’s glorious. I admit to not being entirely sure what "Sports Clubs" are over east though or why they need propping up by gambling. In any case, it works fine here. You CAN get a permit for a few bits of "gambling" that is mostly only for "sports clubs" but it's very VERY restricted, and mostly like actual games with people like Poker, Two Up, etc. It's not really a problem in nearly the same way, and no machines: https://sportscommunity.com.au/club-member/wa-gambling/ https://sportscommunity.com.au/club-member/wa-gambling/

dyauspitr 2y ago

Betting on a game makes watching the game 10x more fun though.

tgv 2y ago

> it ruins the sports If that were true, people would stop paying attention of it. What other criterion would you have for the quality of sports? But the worst is how easily you brush aside that it "ruins lives". Not that that's your fault. It seems that almost nobody cares about it. It has been known for a long time that gambling is detrimental, to individuals and to society, yet a bunch of Wolf-of-Wall-Street-style financiers use it to get richer without the need for as much as a good idea. There's less ingenuity and skill involved in betting than in drugs. It's bottom of the barrel amorality, bribing and corrupting its way into politics. And nobody cares.

mlsu 2y ago
No, I didn't brush it aside. There is a healthy argument going on with compelling points on both sides about the tradeoff between freedom (spending your own money how you please) and social harm reduction (preventing people from ruining their lives). You can look at another of my comments in the thread above this, I take a pretty clear position on the matter. My statement wasn't that none of that stuff is important, my statement is that gambling is unequivocally bad for the sports themselves and goes against the spirit of sporting regardless of its broader harm to society. I'm saying, there is no strong argument that gambling is good for the spirit of competition in sporting; there is no such debate. Unlike the broader topic.

throwup238 2y ago

> But a much easier argument against sports betting is that it ruins the sports. Players throw. They get good at subtly cheating. The gambling apparatus latches itself to the sport, to the teams and players, the umpires and judges, the sporting organizations. With this much money on the line, it's not a matter of if but when games are thrown, cheated -- the bigger the game, the bigger the incentive. It's even easier now because of the amount of side/parlay betting that is available. It exhausts the spirit of competition. I don't see how this latest gambling fad ends except for another Black Sox scandal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sox_Scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sox_Scandal It's been a hundred years so I guess it's time we learned our lesson the hard way, again.

achenet 2y ago
I vote we ban alcohol next :DDDDD

Hasu 2y ago

Gambling is generally against the law in South Korea, but any esports players or personnel who get caught fixing matches (this doesn't necessarily mean throwing a game, bets get placed on all kinds of things that aren't just the outcome of the game), they get a lifetime ban from the government from participating in esports in any way. I think we need something like that for all sports here in the US. If you get caught fixing games or coordinating to fix bets in any way, you should be liable, fined, and banned from sports and anything sports related for life. If the entire team was in on it, the entire team gets banned for life. No second chances, no exceptions. Or we could just make sports betting illegal again.

boogieknite 2y ago
Pretty much what's happening in the NBA with Jontay Porter
- mlsu 2y ago
  And you start to wonder, he's just one who got caught. How many more. It sure didn't take long!
mlsu 2y ago
Of course all of the major leagues would say that they are not at all biased. Most probably have extreme suspension rules for being involved in gambling. But, we shall see. Human beings are fallible creatures; people forget, people slip. And it's hard to prove this. Especially nowadays, when you can do it over your phone in private. Still, it really doesn't matter, After all, who wins the flag. Good clean sport is what we're after, And we aim to make our brag To each near or distant nation Whereon shines the sporting sun That of all our games gymnastic Base ball is the cleanest one! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sox_Scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sox_Scandal
Aerroon 2y ago
I wish people would just realize that sports betting is stupid. If matches can be thrown then they will be thrown no matter the consequences. People shouldn't engage in sports gambling because it can be rigged. If you want to do it for fun then use fantasy points for it.

serial_dev 2y ago

While everything you wrote I agree with, I’m not sure I arrived to the same conclusion. Alcohol, cigarettes, workaholics, social media apps all ruin the lives of the weak and those around them. Should we make them all illegal?

vincnetas 2y ago
This boils down to a two question "should we as society allow a person to destroy his life." And because there is also a big external pressure from financially interested parties to convince a person to do things that are not beneficial to him, second question is "should we as society let smarter people fool less educated people out of their money/health/ happiness" (second one is more tricky) but low hanging fruits are advertisement for alcohol, gambling, smoking and other obviously non beneficial activities.
- achenet 2y ago
  that's a good point. Ban advertising for gambling, tax the hell out of gambling companies... possibly create some sort of regulation for actual gamblers, i.e. check their ID against a national database everytime they bet to ensure they're not over-doing it... seems more likely to fix the issue than outright prohibition, which, at least for other things like drugs and prostitution, doesn't really seem to solve much.
andrepd 2y ago
Well, you cannot advertise cigarretes, so yes, why can you plaster the Internet, primetime TV, and player's jerseys with gambling ads?
nuancedquestion 2y ago
It is nuanced. Take alcohol. It is a drug, a poison, addictive, acute severe health problems are rare - although it can kill via the stupor it imposes but long term health and affects on productivity etc. Really bad. So society may be better off without it. But then mind altering substances may be good even if they are bad for social cohesion and self medication. It is hard to be sober you have to take life as it actually is. Make it illegal? Well that is almost orthogonal... why? What does it achieve to make it a moral outrage ... and who is the criminal? The brewer, the distributer or the drinker? Then even if you decide that incarceration is a good think to do to people who do one of the 3 things - the prohibition shows that people will do it anyway. As a drug alcohol in particular is probably the easier to synthesize. You just need readily available pantry items and a jar. Other drugs need chenistry labs, precursor chemicals or plants. So that effects the affect of criminializing alcohol. Then mix in its deep root in culture! Now alcohols is discussed, what next... too much work... That will have a different set of problems, solutions, unintended consequences of fixing the issue and so on. So just treat gambling like its own thing. Even then casino poker vs. Slots vs. Lottery vs. Physical Bookie vs. Online booke vs. Crypto vs. Backstreet all have different subissues and may need to be legislated individually.

esalman 2y ago

Exactly. Sports gambling takes the fun out of sports for those who are not interested in gambling.

fsckboy 2y ago
that's like saying alcoholics take the fun out of wine drinking for people who don't have a drinking problem.
- MaxfordAndSons 2y ago
  Not really? It's more like saying alcoholics take the fun out of going to a restaurant that happens to have a bar.
  - albedoa 2y ago
    Your analogy is an improvement, but both of you are weirdly mapping "alcoholics" to "people who are interested in gambling". A valid analogy would speak of people who are interested in alcohol. (Incidentally, the restaurant in your analogy would probably not be viable without that bar!)
    - fsckboy 2y ago
      >A valid analogy would speak of people who are interested in alcohol. I did speak of people who enjoy wine (that contains alcohol) and don't have an alcohol problem. Their enjoyment of wine is not ruined by winos on the curb drinking out of paper bags.
- nuancedquestion 2y ago
  Alcohol takes the fun out of socializing when stripped of it you are left with tables, chairs and a room. And company that spits and slurs! Without alchohol social scenes may be more creative. Karoke. Board games. Social games. Deep conversatiobs. Challenges. Parties like you had as a kid.

freetanga 2y ago

Agree. I would add that it is a bit of a perfect storm: - lower income families struggle for upwards mobility - we are moving ever more towards a full material world, where you need to have a lot of disposable income just to keep up (remember the first over 1000 usd iPhone and people saying it was too much?) - social media keeps reminding us that there are “successful” people who have all the stuff you dream, and can burn money (all a lie, but if desperate and poorly educated you buy it) - vanishing of social construct: less weight of family in peoples life, less local communities (replaced by only pseudo-communities as twitter or insta) which translates into less emotional support, pushing you to consumerism for solace. It’s no surprise that the hope of a quick buck (be it sports betting or also damaging scratch cards / lotteries) thrive in the context, and in particular with people desperate or with poor understanding of odds and biases…. Edit: I don’t think is necessary a poor-people-only problem, I think this is a symptom that a new definition of poverty is brewing - one beyond financial indicators… (stale life, no prospects of moving up, disenfranchising of society, resentment for feeling rug pulled from underneath, prone to absorb/consume anything that makes you feel “in the loop” or relevant like fake news or crazy theories, etc). I believe we are seeing this all across the Western world, yet us and our leaders fail to address it.

mschuster91 2y ago
I'd add another point to your list: decades of wage depression by rabid unchecked globalization, in urban areas combined with ever more power going to landlords. The amount of money especially young people have to fork off of their paychecks just to have a place to live is outright insane.
Der_Einzige 2y ago
[flagged]
- throwaway2037 2y ago
  > For example, despite SK, JP, and Singapore having the best transit in the world by far, their people HATE using it and are desperate to buy expensive, crap cars to avoid using it. This is pretty bold statement. I certainly would not say that most Japanese in big cities follow this trend. To be fair, in any wealthy, dense city, a small fraction will always buy a car. A well-to-do senior manager at an urban Japanese firm is much more likely to upgrade to "Green Car" (slightly nicer train car), rather than drive a car to work. Last thought: Are there any highly developed, very dense cities in East Asia/Sino-sphere that do not have amazing mass transit? I struggle to think of any.

tirant 2y ago

Gambling, in the same way as consumption of drugs can be indeed harmful for individuals and the people surrounding them. But the solution is not forbidding them, but educating people and families on how to deal with them. Alcohol consumption is even more dangerous than sport betting, however several cultures after generations have been able to develop a healthy relationship towards its consumption. You can clearly see that by comparing deaths in Mediterranean countries against other northern countries or other parts of the world. I can feel that difference also directly in the way my Mediterranean cultural background has driven my relationship with alcohol. Me and my family love to drink wine or beer, but we despise getting drunk. The moment our heads get light headed we stop drinking. We enjoy the social aspect of it and its flavor, but we do not enjoy being incapacitated because of it. However the moment I started traveling north I noticed the difference in how people relate to alcohol:in a lot of cultures people just drink alcohol to get drunk or to disconnect from their every day lives. They have not learnt to stop on time and they develop a very unhealthy relationship to drinking. Same could be said about sports betting. If it’s part of our culture or our individual interests we need as a society to be able to develop a healthy relationship towards it and not forbid it (with the exception of minors).

ramraj07 2y ago
Which culture are you implying has a healthy relationship with alcohol?
- achenet 2y ago
  Mediterranean (or at least the GP's family, which they say is Mediterranean).

llmthrow102 2y ago

I've made solid side income gambling over a number of different games and sports, and I say it should definitely be banned. It ruins lives, funnels money to terrible people, makes sports worse for everyone, and has no positive impact on society. The benefits of the "freedom" to let manipulation of your lizard brain drain you of your past and future earnings is not worth it.

dailykoder 2y ago
Over the years I did get to know a couple of people that were winning players in poker and sports betting. I was never patient enough for poker, so I just played it for fun every now and then (probably break-even, maybe a bit minus) and just watched the discussions about it interested. As poker got harder, a lot of them switched over to sports betting, which I was never interested in, but I found it amazing how they analyzed the games. But if you really think about it, yes there might be a tiny portion that wins overall, but they only win because there are a lot of people emotionally invested that ruin their lives. So yes, please ban. Edit: While yes, it can be fun and I personally can have a lot of fun when I put 50 bucks into a slot machine once or twice a year, no matter the outcome, it doesn't really justify to keep that business alive
- jackcosgrove 2y ago
  > yes there might be a tiny portion that wins overall Probably explained by chance. Gambling "systems" don't work unless there's a flaw in the game.
  - pclmulqdq 2y ago
    There are inefficiencies that make certain bets positive EV if you are smart enough. It's usually a combination of playing in a weird way and having some insight that the maker of the game (the oddsmaker) didn't see. Gambling establishments don't mind because there are few enough of these and they will ban you if you take too much money from them. Winning sports betting players often go on to set odds.

lm28469 2y ago

Unless you live by yourself in the middle of the woods you never ruin just your life.

MaxfordAndSons 2y ago

I'd push back on the idea that gambling is inherently harmful. Gambling can be done at a scale where it is essentially play. It is particularly gambling against corporations or other non-individual actors, in games that they rig to be perpetually -EV, and market like crazy, that is inherently harmful.

rincebrain 2y ago

Unfortunately, banning it outright will probably only exacerbate problems. If you, hypothetically, banned it outright in the US, then you go from having few levers on what you can mitigate in the industry to none, because if it's all banned and has more than a slap on the wrist punishment, there's no reason not to charge 200% interest on gambling debts, or other absurd things. I'm firmly of the belief that the only thing you can really do is tightly regulate it to the point that there's still enough gambling, with controls minimizing as much unexpected harm as you can, to avoid most people feeling tempted to seek out the unregulated illegal avenues with more exploitative arrangements. I think history has shown that you can't effectively ban a lot of vices, you just wind up with them underground and even more destructive to people involved. The best you can do is try to minimize how easily one can destroy themself - look at Japan's reactive regulation around the most predatory gacha mechanics. Whether you think they strike the right balance or not, that's rather an example of what I mean - you can't really stop someone from deciding to deliberately spend their life's savings on things, you can just do as much as you can to avoid it being an impulsive choice.

jdietrich 2y ago

Sports gambling has been legal in the UK since 1960. Gambling wasn't seriously problematic in this country until 2005, when regulations were substantially liberalised. Pre-2005, sports betting was something that old men did in dingy backstreet shops; post-2005, it became a widespread social phenomenon, turbocharged by advertising and the growing influence and accessibility of the internet. There's a false dichotomy between prohibition and laissez-faire, which the US seems particularly prone to. You've seen similar issues with the decriminalisation of cannabis, where many states seem to have switched abruptly from criminalisation to a fully-fledged commercial market. There is a broad spectrum of other options in between those points that tend to be under-discussed. You can ban gambling advertising, as Italy did in 2019. You can set limits on maximum stakes or impose regulations to make gambling products less attractive to new customers and less risky for problem gamblers. You can have a single state-controlled parimutuel operator. Gambling does cause harm - whether it's legal or not - but it is within the purview of legislators to create a gambling market in which harm reduction is the main priority.

divan 2y ago
White paper on recent UK reform of the Gambling Act for the digital age. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/high-stakes-gambling-reform-for-the-digital-age https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/high-stakes-gambl...
MavisBacon 2y ago
I understand your position in theory but feel the comparison to cannabis is a bit unfair. Most physicians will agree that cannabis is fairly harmless in adults. Gambling, however has previously in the U.S. shown to be the leading cause of suicide attempts (20% in total) among all forms of addiction [1]. A body of evidence has also demonstrated it leads to divorce, bankruptcy, poor health and sometimes incarceration. Worth noting many of these studies centered around machine gambling and all forms of gambling are unique in terms of tendency for compulsion. Considering the landscape it is quite difficult for me to see a way of regulating out of this, not in the U.S. at least. [1] Zangeneh and Hason 2006, 191-93
- 2y ago

anjel 2y ago

And on a good day,wall Street is orthagonal.

qwertox 2y ago

I find it funny how in Germany the state lottery advertises itself on TV but needs to add the info that "Gambling can be addictive." For example, this ad https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0-pKS_zx5E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0-pKS_zx5E is made by "LOTTO 6aus49", which is "LOTTO.de", which is "Toto-Lotto Niedersachsen GmbH", which is the lottery company of the state Lower Saxony. To me this is as if the state would place TV ads for wine which a state-owned winery produces, like "Landesbetrieb Hessische Staatsweingüter" also known as "Hessische Staatsweingüter GmbH Kloster Eberbach". And the lottery numbers are then presented in the prime time news in the publicly funded television.

ekianjo 2y ago
Governments make tons of money on gambling/lotteries. So they keep it running. This shows how much they don't care about making positive impact to people's lives.
nicbou 2y ago
Lotto Quebec runs both lottery ads and gambling-can-ruin-your-life ads. The German ads have nothing on those.
lobochrome 2y ago
You do know that lotto is state run, and all profit that isn’t redistributed to players is given to charity (mostly deutsche sporthilfe, who fund a lot of sports who would otherwise have trouble running). Lotto and sports betting in its modern incarnation are very different. Lotto was created so that people’s desire for gambling is diverted towards charity.
- 4hg4ufxhy 2y ago
  How does operating expenses like salaries and bonuses look like? 10k bonus for every life ruined? I'm always worried about cronyism and corruption with this kind of monopolies. When I was a cashier the state owned lottery monopoly had a training session for us on how to operate the lottery machines, and it was really dystopian how most of the time was spent on encouraging us to make upsells with sales pitches and being happy about gambling.

neuroelectron 2y ago

The nice thing about sports gambling is it's a strong signal that your local government has been captured by outside interests. If anyone complains about the way things are you can simply point and say well, look we know the government doesn't represent us or work for the people, we have legalized gambling. Of course there's all sorts of other tells too but none is as clear cut without any need of conspiracy theories. unlike more complex policy areas where vested interests may be hidden behind layers of bureaucracy or decades of refined pseudo-moral talking points, gambling legalization is straightforward: the flow of money into lobbying, the rapid legislative changes, and the immediate establishment of large-scale betting operations make the influence unmistakable. It's a tangible, almost irrefutable sign that decisions are being made in favor of profit at the expense of public welfare.

nebulous1 2y ago

I'm going to suggest that you not use "run a train through" to mean "destroy".

mlsu 2y ago
I didn't realize it had that meaning, good suggestion!

interludead 2y ago

The line between legitimate competition and gambling-fueled manipulation is becoming increasingly blurred now!

fidotron 2y ago

This only truly works if sports gambling is illegal globally. The reason this doesn't apply too much with the US is foreign interest in US sport is limited. For example http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/426092.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/426092.stm is why british people of a certain age all know the phrase "Malaysian gambling syndicates" and associate it with random blackouts.

throwaway2037 2y ago
The US has pretty strict laws against its citizens from gambling on the Internet. Other countries could pass similar laws for their own citizens. > foreign interest in US sport is limited. I am pretty sure that American baseball is very popular in the Carribbean and Japan. And American basketball is very popular in China due to the legacy of Yao Ming.
- astura 2y ago
  Japan has their own baseball league, Nippon Professional Baseball, I don't think they care about the MLB very much.

immibis 2y ago

Gambling triggers capitalism to ruin lives. If we had a well-designed society, you could lose a lot by gambling, but you could end up with $0 and still not be completely "ruined".

inquisitor26234 2y ago

man im torn here from sugar, cigs, to alcohol from netflix, pornhub, to onlyfans where do we draw the line

_heimdall 2y ago

This depends very much on how you define gambling. The stock market very much is gambling, though most people consider it investing.

DrillShopper 2y ago

Legalized sports betting and "weekly fantasy" leagues have severely reduced my enjoyment of NFL football. Last week in the NFL there was a player that went down at the one yard line and his team ran off the rest of the clock to win. The game was under the O/U but would have been over if the player had gone into the end zone. The player made the choice so that his team could run out the clock without giving the ball back to the other team, and if he had scored then they would have had to kick the ball back to the other team who could potentially (although unlikely) scored a touchdown on the kickoff or in the last few seconds after the kickoff which would have given the other team the game. It was, objectively, the right thing to do in the circumstance. The NFL analysts (who shill gambling apps) spent more time talking about if the player was responsible for everyone who lost on the O/U, and it just really killed it for me. Every. Single. Aspect is filtered through the lens of gambling. Games show the betting line on the screen and the analysts try to map out potential good parlays for the viewers. It's absolutely nuts and a very (in my mind) clear conflict of interest. It also blurs the line, in my mind, between objective reporting, analysis based on statistics, and paid promotion, and while I realize that sports reporting is probably the least important field in journalism, it's frustrating to see this unholy confluence and to see the impact it has on the ability for non-degenerate gamblers to enjoy the game.

pfdietz 2y ago

Perhaps it's not ruining sports, it's just forcing us to confront the emptiness of sports.

purpleblue 2y ago

I love gambling. I go to Vegas 4-6 times per year, and I play poker at the local casinos/card houses almost every week. I've NEVER liked sports gambling because it's so hard to predict and I also believe that it's rigged by Vegas and the Mafia. The NBA has already been outed as rigged via referees and the insane actions of refs in last year's Super Bowl by ignoring obvious penalties makes it even worse. The games are obviously tainted as this point. And the fact that none of the leagues want to implement rules that correct wrong penalties only solidifies the fact that they want these things to occur.

jeffwask 2y ago

It really ruined watching games for me with the constant talk of odds and gambling right in the broadcast. I thank my lucky stars this happened after I was a teenager/twenty-year-old because having to find a shady bookie that would break my legs if I didn't pay was one of the main factors that kept me from being stupid like a number of my friends. I would have been in deep trouble with an appified, gamified, psychologically addicting betting app on my phone offering me free bets to log in again. I had a hard enough time breaking away from phone gatcha shit that I would mindlessly click while sitting on the couch.

tshaddox 2y ago

> It's certainly worth having the discussion about whether people should be able to run a train through their life and the lives of their families via app. Even if you’ve convinced yourself that being able to ruin one’s own life is a sign of a society with Great Freedom, you might be willing to oppose other people profiting from urging people to ruin their lives.

1-more 2y ago

I agree but I'd put in a carve out for the kind of gambling that reinforces sociality. Poker night with your neighbors or a fantasy football league with your pals from school (with a groupchat where you shit-talk one another) make some sense: you spend the buy-in in order to have something to talk about with your buddies. A shooting range I used to go to would not rent to unaccompanied men. They had to be members and take a class at least, or be in a group, or bring their own guns. This was to prevent impulsive suicides. Maybe if you want to keep any kind of gambling on sports, you should have to go to a sports book with your pals and watch some games together. Putting the casino in your pocket feels like a social suicide.

MrFantastic 2y ago

I think sports gambling should be legal because otherwise the Bookies will kill you if you can't pay your debts. At least with legal gambling the worst that can happen is bankruptcy. The gambling institutions have some regulation as well. I do think that gambling ads should be banned just like cigarettes, and pharmaceuticals. USA and New Zealand are the only places that allow pharma ads and the public is uninformed to make that decision but the Agency problem means MDs will prescribe those drugs.

ferfumarma 2y ago

Honest question: why cares about the effect on sports? The most extreme example of cheating is sports theater, and even that has a fandom in the form of WWF. So why not let the sports police themselves, and let the market decide whether they are doing a good job with their attention? I don't care about sports, so I am asking from a naive position, but I from this position I can't fathom caring more about the sport than the people who compulsively wager on them, and destroy their lives.

wrsh07 2y ago
As a fan, it absolutely sucks to have your team throw. This isn't just a gambling problem, having your team tank to get top draft picks also sucks. But if you enjoy the sport, you probably enjoy it in a "may the best player/team win" way. It sucks to realize your team lost because the other team cheated, and it sucks to realize your team lost because somebody threw. If I wanted to watch scripted drama, I would put on succession. Or wwf.

highcountess 2y ago

I know many in those era are even aggressively opposed to the Bible, but I have long seen it as a kind of change log, commit notes, code notes, etc. … “hi, ancient people here. We learned this lesson hard over many iterations that gambling is bad, we are making a rule that you, future reader shouldn’t gamble or it will also result in your societal debt and likely contribute to your destruction too if you take on too many of the things we learned over millennia and many different civilizations and societies collapsing; and we wrapped it in nice allegories for so it appeals to your innate human proclivity to dream, imagine, and tell stories. Don’t say we didn’t want you!” Unfortunately it seems our Digital Age civilization is hell bent on emulating its Bronze Age and Tower of Babel compatriots the way we are going.