7 ms·

The online sports gambling experiment

124 points by A_D_E_P_T 2y ago

hobs 2y ago
I think the most interesting part of this is that people treated it as an experiment when the externalities of gambling were widely understood and very negative. Even in the well regulated cases things like state lotteries they are effectively taxes on the poor, and the best arguments we've got are "we should let anyone do what they want" - sure, but we shouldn't make it easy for corporations to exploit anyone in any way they want. If you want to setup with a local bookie and deal with that you're going to filter out a huge portion of starting gamblers.
stonethrowaway 2y ago
We should establish a Haidt of online gambling so we can have another merry-go-round into how there isn’t enough conclusive evidence to correlate gambling to shitty outcomes. Any volunteers? We are all here in the breeches waiting for a champion to rise up and give us the arena for the smorgasbord of shitposting that is about to commence from the vultures that benefit off of societal decay. Edit: not sure why the downvotes. This is exactly what’s going to happen. Edit 2: Bingo. See one of the top posts in this thread defending gambling by trying to draw parallels to alcohol. Let the shitposting begin.
arlattimore 2y ago
Gambling in general is a scourge on society. Legalizing online gambling, enabling mass gambling advertising on the internet/TV/radio/etc in many countries has only exasperated what I'd consider an already desperate position for the most vulnerable.
- mock-possum 2y ago
  Gambling for me very much falls into the category of “if you’re dumb enough to do it then you deserve to get what’s coming to you” type activities - as in, how do you preserve the practice for adults who enjoy it responsibility, while restricting access to those who’d be better off without it? Who makes that decision? Abolition clearly isn’t a realistic option - so what to do, apart from education and sin tax?
  - hengheng 2y ago
    Regulation against dark patterns.
    - Palomides 2y ago
      gambling /is/ a dark pattern, it's basically the archetypal example
      - stvltvs 2y ago
        True, but there are people who get paid to make games even more addictive. You don't see many old one-armed bandits in Vegas anymore because the newer games are more alluring and addictive, therefore profitable.
  - teaearlgraycold 2y ago
    I think gambling should be legal as it is possible to do responsibly. But I'm no libertarian. I think that money would be better spent elsewhere and I'd support restrictions on advertising.
  - sameoldtune 2y ago
    If you’re stupid enough to get depressed you don’t deserve to rot in bed all day. If you’re stupid enough to get sick you don’t deserve to go into debt. But I think that’s the difference between seeing gambling as an activity and an addiction.
    - johnnyanmac 2y ago
      >If you’re stupid enough to get depressed you don’t deserve to rot in bed all day. Given how much my country invests in mental health clinics, I think that's what many people up top think, yes.
  - avidiax 2y ago
    * Don't allow advertising for it, period. * Standardize the UI. No animations. No cartoon characters. No flashing, sounds. It should look more boring than Craigslist. No A/B testing. No hiring psychologists to "optimize" the UI. * No "retention team". No freebies, kickbacks, offers, comps. * Implement a voluntary ban list, and enforce it strongly. Someone that decides to ban themselves from gambling for life should be unable to bet even a penny. * Setup a "qualified gambler" program, similar to "qualified investors". You can bet $1,000 per year, or 20% of your YoY growth in net worth, or 1% of total net worth, whichever is greatest.
- grugagag 2y ago
  I think excessive gambling is a preview of the ugliest face capitalism could show from time to time. After inflicting pain on the society we’ll learn to keep gambling away and in very restrictive settings such as casinos and places that require determination to go to. By then the investors will have collected their loot and moved on to some other exploitative endeavor. Im not against gambling per say, but the dark patters and exploitation of human psychology are what irk me. I had some friends whose lives went down the drain due to gambling.
  - kyleee 2y ago
    I feel similarly - there is a real dystopian feeling, for instance using UK as an example, of every other shop on high street being a shiny colorful betting shop. Seems like more and more the surviving/thriving business are vice related and it is creepy and depressing, to me at least.
- nly 2y ago
  I place a couple of online bets a year on big events. It's a bit of fun and i can afford to lose what I stake What you need is good regulation, which is pretty much what we have in the UK.
wistlo 2y ago
A worry about the incoming American president has nothing to do directly with the proliferation of sports gambling nor the harms it brings, but the sudden absence of formerly available data that might-just-might contradict the narrative of an industry that's unzipped its change purse and let Trump have at the mic stand inside (a horribly multi-mixed metaphor, but apt). "That data set you got there, UC Consumer Credit Panel. Sure would be a shame if something happened to it, you know, if, say, somebody decided to publish a post tying bankruptcies to our donor's lil $300 billion enterprise here. Capiche?" That's happened with climate data during his previous term, so expect more (of less).
birdyrooster 2y ago
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Xxfireman 2y ago
This article touches slightly on how online sports gambling is ruining sports for non gamblers as well in the “The Product as Currently Offered is Terrible” section. We don’t get interesting stats or in-depth analysis by commentators now. All we get is the odds, over/under, etc. I will see pregame shows where commentators will pick 5 leg parlays (who benefits from this?) Sports as a product is shifting completely to a means of online gambling. I suspect it is because they make more money from a gambler than a viewer.
- idopmstuff 2y ago
  I agree this is true, but I think it ignores the way commentary went before sports gambling - it was rambling anecdotes, random stats and lots of repetition (and that was the good commentators). Every once in a while you'd get a really entertaining color commentator (I personally love to listen to Jeff van Gundy rant about anything) or a very insightful former player (think Tony Romo calling out the defenses before the ball is snapped), but for the most part sports commentating has always been mediocre because the essence of the job is filling hours of time per game with talking.
  - Xxfireman 2y ago
    I agree that commentary was rambling anecdotes, stats, and repetition, but when I turn on the tennis channel and I see the commentators talking about the “Fan Dual match of the day” and the current match line odds, it makes me think the commentators are no longer for me (non-gambler), but for fan dual customers themselves. I do not have a problem with anyone gambling, but I would like prohibition of sports betting ads for content broadcasters, or at least limit advertisements to commercials only, no more integrating with the broadcast itself. Could you imagine commentators talking about the best F150 deals or any other commonly advertised product every 10 minutes? (Please don’t give advertisers any more ideas)
    - LargeWu 2y ago
      "but when I turn on the tennis channel and I see the commentators talking about the “Fan Dual match of the day...” This sort of promo message is almost as old as sports broadcasting itself. Go to a baseball game and everything is "Seventh Inning Stretch brought to you by Tire Plus" and "The Schweigert Sausages Mascot Race" and "Bud Light Fan Cam" and a million other sponsored messages. This is no different really, except it's for a product you find objectionable.
smallstepforman 2y ago
Anyone publish a study about the harmms of legalised stock trading (day traders), currency traders, auction hunters, real estate speculators, collectables, crypto hoarders etc you get the point. The only difference is time between sessions, wager amount and tangibles. The next revolution in gambling will add some ownership element, akin to bitcoin.
- cyberax 2y ago
  There is a difference, though. Stock trading is a non-zero-sum game, investment can result in an overall economic growth. Betting is _literally_ a zero-sum game that doesn't provide any economic benefits.
  - titanomachy 2y ago
    Amazing you had to point this out. Some people are so used to thinking of the stock market as a gambling platform that we forget it serves an actual purpose, and is probably one of the primary drivers of our society’s prosperity. That said, I’ve worked in consumer trading, and almost all of the profit margin comes from customers engaging in gambling-like behavior (e.g. crypto and options day trading). It’s a big reason I don’t work in that space any more.
    - johnnyanmac 2y ago
      >that we forget it serves an actual purpose, and is probably one of the primary drivers of our society’s prosperity. We chose to give our fate of "prosperity" to monopoly money and we wonder why people became lonelier, more depressed, and hopeless in life. When services cease to serve society and instead this speculation for people well off enough to participate, it should be no surprise Goodheart's law is minmaxed towards enshittification over quality. Shittier but higher engagement algorithms, price hikes on a whim, ads everywhere on your screen real estate, paywalls for essential news. And subscriptions for things that have no business being a subscription. So many subscriptions. I could go on all day. And ofc the final optimization of this phenomenon is reducing costs on the mode expensive part of a business: labor. Automate it away or become a US shell company when 95+% operates in a 3rd world country paying well below US minimum wage. That's exactly what society needs, less reasons to get out of bed. But if it made a few dozen billionaires even richer, I guess that's all that matters in the end.
doilee 2y ago
Who would realistically ban this? I don't think it's an unreasonable guess that sports bettors are more likely to have voted Republican in the recent election: they are likely men, and men that stereotypically like watching sports at that. Republicans are anti-regulation, Trump in particular wants two pieces of regulation removed for any one regulation added (whatever that means). Democrats are not in power and remove sports betting "for your own good" would make them even less popular with this demographic, which does not respond well to that sort of thing.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
ccppurcell 2y ago
I'm glad op rethought it. But how the hell do you go into the casino business and not realise you're doing something that is a social net negative. Have you not heard of the film Casino. Or how do you not realise you're going into the casino business, I guess?
- birdyrooster 2y ago
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ericra 2y ago
I'm American but lived in Toronto from 2022 until a couple months ago. I was astounded by the amount of online gambling ads just literally pasted everywhere in Toronto. When I got YouTube ads, a huge percentage was for these. They were pasted over the whole body of streetcars and in transit stations throughout the city. I don't know much about the current status in the U.S., but Ontario at least seems to be completely infected by gambling ads. They must be making insane amounts of money off exploiting people's gambling addictions, as well as creating new addictions daily.
- nozzlegear 2y ago
  > I'm American but lived in Toronto from 2022 until a couple months ago. Just for clarification, do you mean you were astounded by the amount of ads in Toronto? Or in the US? > I don't know much about the current status in the U.S., but Ontario at least seems to be completely infected by gambling ads. I just live in a small farm town, so I'm not really exposed to ads or billboards in my daily life. Online gambling ads aren't in our local newspapers yet, at least.
  - ericra 2y ago
    Sorry that I wasn't clear. This was in Toronto. I've yet to see quite as many such ads here in the US, but it's possible they were just pushed out by political ads during this period.
- boosting6889 2y ago
  My hypothesis is that the disenfranchised young men complaining that they don’t have enough money because of inflation have really just been blowing their money on online sports gambling and refuse to admit it.
shombaboor 2y ago
Everything is gambling. Kalshi, polymarket are the apps du jour. Before that robinhood and crypto. The culture is pervasive now.
- FanaHOVA 2y ago
  Yep, sneakers (which is now crashing hard), collectibles (also mostly crashing for non-functional cards like sports), etc, are all the same as well. COVID and stimulus checks were a turning point imo.
schnable 2y ago
We're also only one scandal away from destroying public trust in a professional sports league. That would be bad for the culture too. It's always seemed shortsighted to me that the leagues are directly partnering with gambling apps.
- lotsofpulp 2y ago
  MLB and NBA have already had corrupt officials and players altering the game for gambling purposes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_League_Baseball_scandals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_League_Baseball_scandals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_NBA_betting_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_NBA_betting_scandal NFL also has players that NFL itself “punishes” for gambling, although I don’t think any refs have been caught yet: https://www.nfl.com/news/nfl-reinstates-five-players-who-were-suspended-indefinitely-for-violation-of-gambling-policy https://www.nfl.com/news/nfl-reinstates-five-players-who-wer...
  - nikcub 2y ago
    Add earlier this year Jontay Porter of the Toronto Raptors was banned for life after he was found to be betting on himself and throwing games/stats[0] It was kind of swept away that it appears many players are now betting. https://www.npr.org/2024/04/17/1245301982/nba-bans-jontay-porter-gambling https://www.npr.org/2024/04/17/1245301982/nba-bans-jontay-po...
- DCH3416 2y ago
  Since when were they trustworthy organizations? Seriously I've always been under the assumption it's run by a bunch of deep pocket fat cats.
- doilee 2y ago
  I don't follow sports but even I know that the baseball champions a few years ago were cheating. That wasn't enough to destroy trust?
ChrisArchitect 2y ago
Related: Legalizing Sports Gambling Was a Mistake https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41659458 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41659458
- johnnyanmac 2y ago
  Well, my state voted for it way back in 2022 (or was it 2020?). I think that was one of the few times I left a choice blank. The theme of the 2020's has been people voting against theirs or society's best interests zo it's just keeping on theme.
idopmstuff 2y ago
Lots of people saying things along the lines of "this is bad for society, therefore it should be banned," and kind of making the implicit assumption that the counterargument against "sports gambling is bad" is "sports gambling is good." I don't think that's it at all - the counterargument to "sports gambling is bad" is "we live in a society that places an incredibly high value on personal freedom, so we should err on the side of allowing people to do what they want, even if it results in some amount of harm, because the inherent value of allowing freedom of choice is high." That's not to say we can't ever ban things - obviously there is a degree of harm that is high enough that we should sacrifice particular freedoms (e.g. you can't have a nuke). And FWIW I think this one certainly sits close to the line of being worth banning, but the point is that it's not a clear case just because the direct benefits to society of people gambling (which are minimal) outweigh the harms (which are substantial). I think the most helpful way to consider the tradeoff is by using examples of what we allow in society now. Alcohol's a good one - without question a hugely harmful substance overall, but we allow it. Is gambling more or less harmful than alcohol?
- itake 2y ago
  > even if it results in some amount of harm I think society needs to draw the line when the bad thing harms innocent people. Addictions always impact the entire families, not just the person with the addiction. The problem with banning alcohol is the enforceability is impossible. Enough people wont agree with the ban and we can't just throw everyone in jail. Similar cases include gun control or tobacco.
  - pablobaz 2y ago
    As the article discusses you don't need to ban alcohol you can just make it more awkward: - tax it - restrict the sales by age, location and time(see Nordic countries for a really strict version of this) - minimum unit pricing - warning labels Etc. You can argue if this is the right thing to do or not but it is enforceable and there's good evidence that these measures reduce consumption and harms.
- kthejoker2 2y ago
  Most gambling (and alcohol) addictions are the result of mental disorders, not freely chosen. Not aving things in society which actively prey on people with atypical dopamine response patterns to the point of them committing suicide, harming others, and going into deep financial and physical ruin is ... an easy "tradeoff."
henning 2y ago
What's the point of working hard? Many industries have no upward mobility. Your reward for working harder is that your boss fires your coworkers and keeps you at the same pay so you can do their jobs, too. You're supposed to just hustle until you literally drop dead. I can understand why people decide they're better off just gambling and hoping for the best.
superkuh 2y ago
The worst part of it is the corruption of the sports themselves as gambling encouraging fixing of competitions (by refs, etc) and other forms of cheating. But this breaking of a recreational game's rules isn't enough to justify the use of violent force against those that gamble (ie, the old status quo of it being illegal). As with most things you can only control your own behavior and refuse to participate. What others do is up to them.
ChrisArchitect 2y ago
Related: Should Sports Betting Be Banned? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41665630 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41665630
xnx 2y ago
I've heard sports gambling as an explanation for why people don't feel prosperous despite low unemployment ,wage gains, etc.
- LargeWu 2y ago
  This is an extraordinary claim that needs evidence.
- johnny22 2y ago
  I'd love to read more about this if you have links.
- Der_Einzige 2y ago
  Red state-ers are the king of scams, MLMs, pyramid schemes, and most other forms of terrible good for nothing businesses. This is the party of the payday loan shark and of the buy here pay here used car scamsman.
dudus 2y ago
In Brazil there is a recent trend with gambling called "fortune tiger" aka "tigrinho". It's just a ridiculous ugly slot machine. You can pickup and play in a second. You see people playing while working in the cities. Mostly poor people playing. YouTube is completely inundated with videos revealing the, I kid you not, "best strategy". These are made with a special version of the app for influencers that have a higher chance of gain, apparently this is well known. Here's a recent video from just yesterday with a "strategy" https://youtu.be/sDQdIUl777M?si=-0tZ0OMN3HeQtFdn https://youtu.be/sDQdIUl777M?si=-0tZ0OMN3HeQtFdn Here's reporting on the issue 11 months ago. https://youtu.be/FU5e5TLvol8?si=cqmLkZXR96ucgvIi https://youtu.be/FU5e5TLvol8?si=cqmLkZXR96ucgvIi
plagiarist 2y ago
It seems like even a year ago there were not many online gambling ads in my vicinity, but today they seem ubiquitous. From the ad spend they are willing to do, my assumptions about their ROI suggest I should not be doing any sports gambling.
mandibles 2y ago
The best solution to a societal gambling problem is genuine economic growth. Debt fueled "stimulus" mostly finds its way into the hands of the well-connected. Inflation hurts the poor the most, increasing the severity of an already desperate situation. Real economic growth, on the other hand, gives opportunity and hope to the lowest in society (who are more likely to be gambling what they can't afford).
loughnane 2y ago
I don’t gamble but the emphasis on it is turning me off from sports. Betting lines have metastasized on the broadcasts and much of the commentary. The silver lining is that it’s pushed me to watch more of my towns local teams. I’ve realized what I like about the sports is less professionals at their best than a competitive game well-played. I can get that at the high school level.
LargeWu 2y ago
I enjoy gambling on sports for small sums. I put $500 or so in a book a number of years ago and I've basically stayed even over that time. But I do not think the current climate is healthy, and it's definitely predatory. An signs of sophistication shown by bettors gets you banned or limited real fast, but meanwhile losing players are showered with incentives to keep playing. I would very much be for banning advertising and promotions. I've seen engineering job postings for sports books and daily fantasy sites, and while I think those problems would be really fun to work on, I don't think I could work at a place so predatory. I already work for a rapacious mega-corp, I'd rather my next job not be even worse.
janalsncm 2y ago
The point of regulating gambling isn’t to protect the gambler, in my mind. It is to protect those around them, i.e. to reduce externalities. Kids can’t protect themselves. Women who, through no fault of their own, suffer 9% more beatings when their home team loses. On the other hand, there is more than one alternative to libertarian hands-off approaches that completely ignore externalities.
- ikr678 2y ago
  I would not be suprised if in future gambling activity gets rolled into an aspect of credit worthiness/background checks that employers conduct on staff. Gambling debts make people desperate.
  - fragmede 2y ago
    Being blackmail-able has been part of a background check for sensitive roles dating back to well before the Internet. Illicit drug use, gambling, marital affairs are all fair game if you wanted to work at, eg, the FBI.
    - ikr678 2y ago
      Yes, but I am talking more about non-sensitive roles. Eg. Businesses with cash handling functions may be willing to pay to find out if potential hires have gambling activity recorded (in addition to the usual credit and criminal activity checks).
xrd 2y ago
Great article. And, the bonus story is that a bunch of libertarians think this is worthy of regulation and prohibition. That's a fascinating discussion.
iwontberude 2y ago
This article was so poorly founded with its thesis hoping that the reader has the naïveté of a serf.

124 points by A_D_E_P_T 2y ago

hobs 2y ago

I think the most interesting part of this is that people treated it as an experiment when the externalities of gambling were widely understood and very negative. Even in the well regulated cases things like state lotteries they are effectively taxes on the poor, and the best arguments we've got are "we should let anyone do what they want" - sure, but we shouldn't make it easy for corporations to exploit anyone in any way they want. If you want to setup with a local bookie and deal with that you're going to filter out a huge portion of starting gamblers.

stonethrowaway 2y ago

We should establish a Haidt of online gambling so we can have another merry-go-round into how there isn’t enough conclusive evidence to correlate gambling to shitty outcomes. Any volunteers? We are all here in the breeches waiting for a champion to rise up and give us the arena for the smorgasbord of shitposting that is about to commence from the vultures that benefit off of societal decay. Edit: not sure why the downvotes. This is exactly what’s going to happen. Edit 2: Bingo. See one of the top posts in this thread defending gambling by trying to draw parallels to alcohol. Let the shitposting begin.

arlattimore 2y ago

Gambling in general is a scourge on society. Legalizing online gambling, enabling mass gambling advertising on the internet/TV/radio/etc in many countries has only exasperated what I'd consider an already desperate position for the most vulnerable.

mock-possum 2y ago
Gambling for me very much falls into the category of “if you’re dumb enough to do it then you deserve to get what’s coming to you” type activities - as in, how do you preserve the practice for adults who enjoy it responsibility, while restricting access to those who’d be better off without it? Who makes that decision? Abolition clearly isn’t a realistic option - so what to do, apart from education and sin tax?
- hengheng 2y ago
  Regulation against dark patterns.
  - Palomides 2y ago
    gambling /is/ a dark pattern, it's basically the archetypal example
    - stvltvs 2y ago
      True, but there are people who get paid to make games even more addictive. You don't see many old one-armed bandits in Vegas anymore because the newer games are more alluring and addictive, therefore profitable.
- teaearlgraycold 2y ago
  I think gambling should be legal as it is possible to do responsibly. But I'm no libertarian. I think that money would be better spent elsewhere and I'd support restrictions on advertising.
- sameoldtune 2y ago
  If you’re stupid enough to get depressed you don’t deserve to rot in bed all day. If you’re stupid enough to get sick you don’t deserve to go into debt. But I think that’s the difference between seeing gambling as an activity and an addiction.
  - johnnyanmac 2y ago
    >If you’re stupid enough to get depressed you don’t deserve to rot in bed all day. Given how much my country invests in mental health clinics, I think that's what many people up top think, yes.
- avidiax 2y ago
  * Don't allow advertising for it, period. * Standardize the UI. No animations. No cartoon characters. No flashing, sounds. It should look more boring than Craigslist. No A/B testing. No hiring psychologists to "optimize" the UI. * No "retention team". No freebies, kickbacks, offers, comps. * Implement a voluntary ban list, and enforce it strongly. Someone that decides to ban themselves from gambling for life should be unable to bet even a penny. * Setup a "qualified gambler" program, similar to "qualified investors". You can bet $1,000 per year, or 20% of your YoY growth in net worth, or 1% of total net worth, whichever is greatest.
grugagag 2y ago
I think excessive gambling is a preview of the ugliest face capitalism could show from time to time. After inflicting pain on the society we’ll learn to keep gambling away and in very restrictive settings such as casinos and places that require determination to go to. By then the investors will have collected their loot and moved on to some other exploitative endeavor. Im not against gambling per say, but the dark patters and exploitation of human psychology are what irk me. I had some friends whose lives went down the drain due to gambling.
- kyleee 2y ago
  I feel similarly - there is a real dystopian feeling, for instance using UK as an example, of every other shop on high street being a shiny colorful betting shop. Seems like more and more the surviving/thriving business are vice related and it is creepy and depressing, to me at least.
nly 2y ago
I place a couple of online bets a year on big events. It's a bit of fun and i can afford to lose what I stake What you need is good regulation, which is pretty much what we have in the UK.

wistlo 2y ago

A worry about the incoming American president has nothing to do directly with the proliferation of sports gambling nor the harms it brings, but the sudden absence of formerly available data that might-just-might contradict the narrative of an industry that's unzipped its change purse and let Trump have at the mic stand inside (a horribly multi-mixed metaphor, but apt). "That data set you got there, UC Consumer Credit Panel. Sure would be a shame if something happened to it, you know, if, say, somebody decided to publish a post tying bankruptcies to our donor's lil $300 billion enterprise here. Capiche?" That's happened with climate data during his previous term, so expect more (of less).

birdyrooster 2y ago

[dead]

Xxfireman 2y ago

This article touches slightly on how online sports gambling is ruining sports for non gamblers as well in the “The Product as Currently Offered is Terrible” section. We don’t get interesting stats or in-depth analysis by commentators now. All we get is the odds, over/under, etc. I will see pregame shows where commentators will pick 5 leg parlays (who benefits from this?) Sports as a product is shifting completely to a means of online gambling. I suspect it is because they make more money from a gambler than a viewer.

idopmstuff 2y ago
I agree this is true, but I think it ignores the way commentary went before sports gambling - it was rambling anecdotes, random stats and lots of repetition (and that was the good commentators). Every once in a while you'd get a really entertaining color commentator (I personally love to listen to Jeff van Gundy rant about anything) or a very insightful former player (think Tony Romo calling out the defenses before the ball is snapped), but for the most part sports commentating has always been mediocre because the essence of the job is filling hours of time per game with talking.
- Xxfireman 2y ago
  I agree that commentary was rambling anecdotes, stats, and repetition, but when I turn on the tennis channel and I see the commentators talking about the “Fan Dual match of the day” and the current match line odds, it makes me think the commentators are no longer for me (non-gambler), but for fan dual customers themselves. I do not have a problem with anyone gambling, but I would like prohibition of sports betting ads for content broadcasters, or at least limit advertisements to commercials only, no more integrating with the broadcast itself. Could you imagine commentators talking about the best F150 deals or any other commonly advertised product every 10 minutes? (Please don’t give advertisers any more ideas)
  - LargeWu 2y ago
    "but when I turn on the tennis channel and I see the commentators talking about the “Fan Dual match of the day...” This sort of promo message is almost as old as sports broadcasting itself. Go to a baseball game and everything is "Seventh Inning Stretch brought to you by Tire Plus" and "The Schweigert Sausages Mascot Race" and "Bud Light Fan Cam" and a million other sponsored messages. This is no different really, except it's for a product you find objectionable.

smallstepforman 2y ago

Anyone publish a study about the harmms of legalised stock trading (day traders), currency traders, auction hunters, real estate speculators, collectables, crypto hoarders etc you get the point. The only difference is time between sessions, wager amount and tangibles. The next revolution in gambling will add some ownership element, akin to bitcoin.

cyberax 2y ago
There is a difference, though. Stock trading is a non-zero-sum game, investment can result in an overall economic growth. Betting is _literally_ a zero-sum game that doesn't provide any economic benefits.
- titanomachy 2y ago
  Amazing you had to point this out. Some people are so used to thinking of the stock market as a gambling platform that we forget it serves an actual purpose, and is probably one of the primary drivers of our society’s prosperity. That said, I’ve worked in consumer trading, and almost all of the profit margin comes from customers engaging in gambling-like behavior (e.g. crypto and options day trading). It’s a big reason I don’t work in that space any more.
  - johnnyanmac 2y ago
    >that we forget it serves an actual purpose, and is probably one of the primary drivers of our society’s prosperity. We chose to give our fate of "prosperity" to monopoly money and we wonder why people became lonelier, more depressed, and hopeless in life. When services cease to serve society and instead this speculation for people well off enough to participate, it should be no surprise Goodheart's law is minmaxed towards enshittification over quality. Shittier but higher engagement algorithms, price hikes on a whim, ads everywhere on your screen real estate, paywalls for essential news. And subscriptions for things that have no business being a subscription. So many subscriptions. I could go on all day. And ofc the final optimization of this phenomenon is reducing costs on the mode expensive part of a business: labor. Automate it away or become a US shell company when 95+% operates in a 3rd world country paying well below US minimum wage. That's exactly what society needs, less reasons to get out of bed. But if it made a few dozen billionaires even richer, I guess that's all that matters in the end.

doilee 2y ago

Who would realistically ban this? I don't think it's an unreasonable guess that sports bettors are more likely to have voted Republican in the recent election: they are likely men, and men that stereotypically like watching sports at that. Republicans are anti-regulation, Trump in particular wants two pieces of regulation removed for any one regulation added (whatever that means). Democrats are not in power and remove sports betting "for your own good" would make them even less popular with this demographic, which does not respond well to that sort of thing.

deleted 2y ago
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ccppurcell 2y ago

I'm glad op rethought it. But how the hell do you go into the casino business and not realise you're doing something that is a social net negative. Have you not heard of the film Casino. Or how do you not realise you're going into the casino business, I guess?

birdyrooster 2y ago
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ericra 2y ago

I'm American but lived in Toronto from 2022 until a couple months ago. I was astounded by the amount of online gambling ads just literally pasted everywhere in Toronto. When I got YouTube ads, a huge percentage was for these. They were pasted over the whole body of streetcars and in transit stations throughout the city. I don't know much about the current status in the U.S., but Ontario at least seems to be completely infected by gambling ads. They must be making insane amounts of money off exploiting people's gambling addictions, as well as creating new addictions daily.

nozzlegear 2y ago
> I'm American but lived in Toronto from 2022 until a couple months ago. Just for clarification, do you mean you were astounded by the amount of ads in Toronto? Or in the US? > I don't know much about the current status in the U.S., but Ontario at least seems to be completely infected by gambling ads. I just live in a small farm town, so I'm not really exposed to ads or billboards in my daily life. Online gambling ads aren't in our local newspapers yet, at least.
- ericra 2y ago
  Sorry that I wasn't clear. This was in Toronto. I've yet to see quite as many such ads here in the US, but it's possible they were just pushed out by political ads during this period.
boosting6889 2y ago
My hypothesis is that the disenfranchised young men complaining that they don’t have enough money because of inflation have really just been blowing their money on online sports gambling and refuse to admit it.

shombaboor 2y ago

Everything is gambling. Kalshi, polymarket are the apps du jour. Before that robinhood and crypto. The culture is pervasive now.

FanaHOVA 2y ago
Yep, sneakers (which is now crashing hard), collectibles (also mostly crashing for non-functional cards like sports), etc, are all the same as well. COVID and stimulus checks were a turning point imo.

schnable 2y ago

We're also only one scandal away from destroying public trust in a professional sports league. That would be bad for the culture too. It's always seemed shortsighted to me that the leagues are directly partnering with gambling apps.

lotsofpulp 2y ago
MLB and NBA have already had corrupt officials and players altering the game for gambling purposes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_League_Baseball_scandals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_League_Baseball_scandals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_NBA_betting_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_NBA_betting_scandal NFL also has players that NFL itself “punishes” for gambling, although I don’t think any refs have been caught yet: https://www.nfl.com/news/nfl-reinstates-five-players-who-were-suspended-indefinitely-for-violation-of-gambling-policy https://www.nfl.com/news/nfl-reinstates-five-players-who-wer...
- nikcub 2y ago
  Add earlier this year Jontay Porter of the Toronto Raptors was banned for life after he was found to be betting on himself and throwing games/stats[0] It was kind of swept away that it appears many players are now betting. https://www.npr.org/2024/04/17/1245301982/nba-bans-jontay-porter-gambling https://www.npr.org/2024/04/17/1245301982/nba-bans-jontay-po...
DCH3416 2y ago
Since when were they trustworthy organizations? Seriously I've always been under the assumption it's run by a bunch of deep pocket fat cats.
doilee 2y ago
I don't follow sports but even I know that the baseball champions a few years ago were cheating. That wasn't enough to destroy trust?

ChrisArchitect 2y ago

Related: Legalizing Sports Gambling Was a Mistake https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41659458 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41659458

johnnyanmac 2y ago
Well, my state voted for it way back in 2022 (or was it 2020?). I think that was one of the few times I left a choice blank. The theme of the 2020's has been people voting against theirs or society's best interests zo it's just keeping on theme.

idopmstuff 2y ago

Lots of people saying things along the lines of "this is bad for society, therefore it should be banned," and kind of making the implicit assumption that the counterargument against "sports gambling is bad" is "sports gambling is good." I don't think that's it at all - the counterargument to "sports gambling is bad" is "we live in a society that places an incredibly high value on personal freedom, so we should err on the side of allowing people to do what they want, even if it results in some amount of harm, because the inherent value of allowing freedom of choice is high." That's not to say we can't ever ban things - obviously there is a degree of harm that is high enough that we should sacrifice particular freedoms (e.g. you can't have a nuke). And FWIW I think this one certainly sits close to the line of being worth banning, but the point is that it's not a clear case just because the direct benefits to society of people gambling (which are minimal) outweigh the harms (which are substantial). I think the most helpful way to consider the tradeoff is by using examples of what we allow in society now. Alcohol's a good one - without question a hugely harmful substance overall, but we allow it. Is gambling more or less harmful than alcohol?

itake 2y ago
> even if it results in some amount of harm I think society needs to draw the line when the bad thing harms innocent people. Addictions always impact the entire families, not just the person with the addiction. The problem with banning alcohol is the enforceability is impossible. Enough people wont agree with the ban and we can't just throw everyone in jail. Similar cases include gun control or tobacco.
- pablobaz 2y ago
  As the article discusses you don't need to ban alcohol you can just make it more awkward: - tax it - restrict the sales by age, location and time(see Nordic countries for a really strict version of this) - minimum unit pricing - warning labels Etc. You can argue if this is the right thing to do or not but it is enforceable and there's good evidence that these measures reduce consumption and harms.
kthejoker2 2y ago
Most gambling (and alcohol) addictions are the result of mental disorders, not freely chosen. Not aving things in society which actively prey on people with atypical dopamine response patterns to the point of them committing suicide, harming others, and going into deep financial and physical ruin is ... an easy "tradeoff."

henning 2y ago

What's the point of working hard? Many industries have no upward mobility. Your reward for working harder is that your boss fires your coworkers and keeps you at the same pay so you can do their jobs, too. You're supposed to just hustle until you literally drop dead. I can understand why people decide they're better off just gambling and hoping for the best.

superkuh 2y ago

The worst part of it is the corruption of the sports themselves as gambling encouraging fixing of competitions (by refs, etc) and other forms of cheating. But this breaking of a recreational game's rules isn't enough to justify the use of violent force against those that gamble (ie, the old status quo of it being illegal). As with most things you can only control your own behavior and refuse to participate. What others do is up to them.

ChrisArchitect 2y ago

Related: Should Sports Betting Be Banned? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41665630 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41665630

xnx 2y ago

I've heard sports gambling as an explanation for why people don't feel prosperous despite low unemployment ,wage gains, etc.

LargeWu 2y ago
This is an extraordinary claim that needs evidence.
johnny22 2y ago
I'd love to read more about this if you have links.
Der_Einzige 2y ago
Red state-ers are the king of scams, MLMs, pyramid schemes, and most other forms of terrible good for nothing businesses. This is the party of the payday loan shark and of the buy here pay here used car scamsman.

dudus 2y ago

In Brazil there is a recent trend with gambling called "fortune tiger" aka "tigrinho". It's just a ridiculous ugly slot machine. You can pickup and play in a second. You see people playing while working in the cities. Mostly poor people playing. YouTube is completely inundated with videos revealing the, I kid you not, "best strategy". These are made with a special version of the app for influencers that have a higher chance of gain, apparently this is well known. Here's a recent video from just yesterday with a "strategy" https://youtu.be/sDQdIUl777M?si=-0tZ0OMN3HeQtFdn https://youtu.be/sDQdIUl777M?si=-0tZ0OMN3HeQtFdn Here's reporting on the issue 11 months ago. https://youtu.be/FU5e5TLvol8?si=cqmLkZXR96ucgvIi https://youtu.be/FU5e5TLvol8?si=cqmLkZXR96ucgvIi

plagiarist 2y ago

It seems like even a year ago there were not many online gambling ads in my vicinity, but today they seem ubiquitous. From the ad spend they are willing to do, my assumptions about their ROI suggest I should not be doing any sports gambling.

mandibles 2y ago

The best solution to a societal gambling problem is genuine economic growth. Debt fueled "stimulus" mostly finds its way into the hands of the well-connected. Inflation hurts the poor the most, increasing the severity of an already desperate situation. Real economic growth, on the other hand, gives opportunity and hope to the lowest in society (who are more likely to be gambling what they can't afford).

loughnane 2y ago

I don’t gamble but the emphasis on it is turning me off from sports. Betting lines have metastasized on the broadcasts and much of the commentary. The silver lining is that it’s pushed me to watch more of my towns local teams. I’ve realized what I like about the sports is less professionals at their best than a competitive game well-played. I can get that at the high school level.

LargeWu 2y ago

I enjoy gambling on sports for small sums. I put $500 or so in a book a number of years ago and I've basically stayed even over that time. But I do not think the current climate is healthy, and it's definitely predatory. An signs of sophistication shown by bettors gets you banned or limited real fast, but meanwhile losing players are showered with incentives to keep playing. I would very much be for banning advertising and promotions. I've seen engineering job postings for sports books and daily fantasy sites, and while I think those problems would be really fun to work on, I don't think I could work at a place so predatory. I already work for a rapacious mega-corp, I'd rather my next job not be even worse.

janalsncm 2y ago

The point of regulating gambling isn’t to protect the gambler, in my mind. It is to protect those around them, i.e. to reduce externalities. Kids can’t protect themselves. Women who, through no fault of their own, suffer 9% more beatings when their home team loses. On the other hand, there is more than one alternative to libertarian hands-off approaches that completely ignore externalities.

ikr678 2y ago
I would not be suprised if in future gambling activity gets rolled into an aspect of credit worthiness/background checks that employers conduct on staff. Gambling debts make people desperate.
- fragmede 2y ago
  Being blackmail-able has been part of a background check for sensitive roles dating back to well before the Internet. Illicit drug use, gambling, marital affairs are all fair game if you wanted to work at, eg, the FBI.
  - ikr678 2y ago
    Yes, but I am talking more about non-sensitive roles. Eg. Businesses with cash handling functions may be willing to pay to find out if potential hires have gambling activity recorded (in addition to the usual credit and criminal activity checks).

xrd 2y ago

Great article. And, the bonus story is that a bunch of libertarians think this is worthy of regulation and prohibition. That's a fascinating discussion.

iwontberude 2y ago

This article was so poorly founded with its thesis hoping that the reader has the naïveté of a serf.