4 ms·

I've never made a bet before, on an app or in a betting shop and have no inclination to ever do so. However, in the UK I'm bombarded with gambling (bingo and 'g

I've never made a bet before, on an app or in a betting shop and have no inclination to ever do so. However, in the UK I'm bombarded with gambling (bingo and 'games') advertisements on daytime TV aimed at trying to convince me it's actually in some way fun to pittle away my money. Then if I watch anything after 10pm on a UK streaming service or live advertising funded TV, I'm absolutely battered with endless gambling site adverts. I'm not exaggerating, every single one of them. I think the government's sat with it's fingers crossed hoping to ride this wave and reap the rewards until it has to come out with the obligatory crackdown on this psychopathic industry it's allowing to fester and expand at an alarming rate. It's an epidemic here but it's all fun though guys isn't it? Guys? Nothing wrong with a flutter now and then!

giantg2 2y ago
It's pretty rampant in the US too. I don't think a little gambling is bad, but the endless ads are a huge problem. They should really make all advertising of commonly addictive stuff banned - gambling, alcohol, etc. They should also do a better job of educating kids in school about the dangers and tricks. They were going you $100+ to open an account, or doing a deposit match up to $1k here. It's exactly what drug dealers do to get people hooked or scam artists to con someone - here's a free taste, or a deal that's too good to pass up.
- ChoHag 2y ago
  [dead]
- dutchbookmaker 2y ago
  I think sports betting is obnoxious and stupid but I do worry about this moral policing some seem to want to do. The people I know losing money to online sports betting are the same people who thought they were going to become pro online poker grinders 15 years ago. If you got rid of online sports betting they would go play slots at the casino more and waste their money on the lottery. If you get rid of all games of chance for money, there is a good % of people who will find a way to squander their savings somehow. If anything, people I know waste far more money going out to eat than sports betting.
  - GlacierFox 2y ago
    For me personally, It's not a moral thing. It's more of the militant nature of the current state of gambling advertising in the UK. It's predatory and aimed at the very people seemingly unable to have fun gambling. Those spending a little on a flutter now and then aren't really a concern of mine, it the ones struggling with gambling addictions having all this garbage shoved in their faces 24/7.
  - wavemode 2y ago
    Regulation of advertising is not "moral policing".
  - giantg2 2y ago
    I never said I want it to go away. I merely said that maybe we shouldn't advertise things that commonly lead to addiction. I've gambled a little here or there and don't see any harm if it's limited and done for fun. It might reduce the number of people who get into in the first place. But more likely and more importantly I would hope that it makes it easier for people who want to recover to not be tempted. I can't image what it would be like for an alcoholic to watch a cold refreshing beer cracked open in the types of party settings they used to enjoy during an ad, or for a gambler to see someone in an ad winning and hear that if you put $1k into an account they'll give you another $1k and other benefits.
  - rcxdude 2y ago
    It's a case of the relative amounts and proportions of harm. Gambling is something where a small but not insignificant percentage of the population have an addiction problem - they're prone to get hooked and basically lose all their money. Now, this isn't something that's absolute: someone may be susceptible to this but not actively seek it out, especially to the extent of going to a black market bookie or similar. So the fact that it's so heavily advertised is going to increase the harm to these people. Secondly, the bookies have a strong incentive to perpetuate this harm: much like with gatcha video games, which have the exact same moral hazard (and are exactly modeled on gambling), the 'whales' who get completely addicted bring in so much more revenue than those who occasionally gamble a little for a bit of fun, that even if they're a minority of customers they can make up the majority of revenue, and so they're going to make more money if they optimize for hooking them (there are some guardrails, to be fair: in contrast to said video games, there is a system where you can ban yourself from all the major bookies if you realize you have a problem. Probably doesn't make the ads any easier to sit through, though). I'm not in favor of banning gambling altogether: I realise it's something a lot of people can engage with healthily, even if I have no interest in it at all. But I would be in favor of reigning in the advertising of it: it's kind of obnoxious how large a percentage of it is present in sports media anyway, even without the harms done. (I feel the same about alcohol ads, even if that is something I do like, and alcohol has a much lower moral hazard from the manufacturers in terms of hooking in alcoholics, because the ratios are not so extreme)
DrBazza 2y ago
I'm glad it's not just me that's noticed this. I thought it was targeted advertising because I also see lots of 'old people adverts' :) It's horrific really. I change channels as soon as one of those adverts come on. Premier League football teams are sponsored by them, and I suppose F1 cars probably are as well. But not cigarettes. Then again, I've never seen cigarettes ruin an entire family and for them to end up in financial ruin and without a house. Someone else called them parasites, and they're not wrong.
- Tostino 2y ago
  > Then again, I've never seen cigarettes ruin an entire family and for them to end up in financial ruin and without a house. In the US, your hypothetical mother who smokes and gets lung cancer could easily bankrupt the family and leave them in financial ruin (you know, if your family tries to pay for the treatments so she doesn't die). Oh yeah, we're talking about the UK here...carry on.
tialaramex 2y ago
I have made exactly one actual bet for money. In December 2020 I bet that Donald Trump had lost the US Presidential Election, which he had done the previous month. Ordinarily of course you can't make bets like that because nobody wants the other side of the bet†, but there were plenty of takers for "No, Donald Trump actually won" so I got paid off, it wasn't a huge profit but it was meaningful. † There are two ways you could be betting, sometimes you can bet "against the house". A company is trying to adjust the odds such that whoever wins, they end up benefiting, it can be tricky to do this and requires expertise so... the other way is you're betting against other punters like you, which works like the buy/sell orders on a stock exchange and the house just gets a percentage no matter what happens. Political gambling tends to be on the latter basis. [Edited: I originally wrote December 2021, but obviously it's December 2020 when I made that bet, he lost in November 2020, not November 2021]
- ben_w 2y ago
  I was tempted to do likewise, but then someone pointed out the risk there isn't that we might be incorrect about a very well publicised event that had already happened, it's that the other side has a successful coup to make their fantasy into a reality. The odds didn't look so friendly when I considered them as a chance of a coup. And indeed, then Jan 6 happened, and people are sill here on this website arguing that what specifically happened on that day doesn't meet their idea of an attempted coup.
  - tialaramex 2y ago
    Sure, obviously it's a risky bet if a coup would make a difference. A coup didn't make a difference, Trump doesn't win an election by staging a coup. I deliberately didn't pick any of the correlated outcomes like Biden becomes President, because it's possible for them to not happen despite Trump losing. Now, if you're an American that doesn't help, the newly installed regime after a coup can just insist facts aren't true, so the bet is still unwise, but I'm not an American.
- rcxdude 2y ago
  This is a common issue in prediction markets: they tend to look nonsensical at the extremes, because if you're betting on 'sure outcome', then the main issues are a) counterparty risk, i.e. the risk that the payout is not awarded correctly, and b) opportunity costs, as the margins can be slim enough and the payout date far enough away that you've got better things you could do with your money.

giantg2 2y ago

It's pretty rampant in the US too. I don't think a little gambling is bad, but the endless ads are a huge problem. They should really make all advertising of commonly addictive stuff banned - gambling, alcohol, etc. They should also do a better job of educating kids in school about the dangers and tricks. They were going you $100+ to open an account, or doing a deposit match up to $1k here. It's exactly what drug dealers do to get people hooked or scam artists to con someone - here's a free taste, or a deal that's too good to pass up.

ChoHag 2y ago
[dead]
dutchbookmaker 2y ago
I think sports betting is obnoxious and stupid but I do worry about this moral policing some seem to want to do. The people I know losing money to online sports betting are the same people who thought they were going to become pro online poker grinders 15 years ago. If you got rid of online sports betting they would go play slots at the casino more and waste their money on the lottery. If you get rid of all games of chance for money, there is a good % of people who will find a way to squander their savings somehow. If anything, people I know waste far more money going out to eat than sports betting.
- GlacierFox 2y ago
  For me personally, It's not a moral thing. It's more of the militant nature of the current state of gambling advertising in the UK. It's predatory and aimed at the very people seemingly unable to have fun gambling. Those spending a little on a flutter now and then aren't really a concern of mine, it the ones struggling with gambling addictions having all this garbage shoved in their faces 24/7.
- wavemode 2y ago
  Regulation of advertising is not "moral policing".
- giantg2 2y ago
  I never said I want it to go away. I merely said that maybe we shouldn't advertise things that commonly lead to addiction. I've gambled a little here or there and don't see any harm if it's limited and done for fun. It might reduce the number of people who get into in the first place. But more likely and more importantly I would hope that it makes it easier for people who want to recover to not be tempted. I can't image what it would be like for an alcoholic to watch a cold refreshing beer cracked open in the types of party settings they used to enjoy during an ad, or for a gambler to see someone in an ad winning and hear that if you put $1k into an account they'll give you another $1k and other benefits.
- rcxdude 2y ago
  It's a case of the relative amounts and proportions of harm. Gambling is something where a small but not insignificant percentage of the population have an addiction problem - they're prone to get hooked and basically lose all their money. Now, this isn't something that's absolute: someone may be susceptible to this but not actively seek it out, especially to the extent of going to a black market bookie or similar. So the fact that it's so heavily advertised is going to increase the harm to these people. Secondly, the bookies have a strong incentive to perpetuate this harm: much like with gatcha video games, which have the exact same moral hazard (and are exactly modeled on gambling), the 'whales' who get completely addicted bring in so much more revenue than those who occasionally gamble a little for a bit of fun, that even if they're a minority of customers they can make up the majority of revenue, and so they're going to make more money if they optimize for hooking them (there are some guardrails, to be fair: in contrast to said video games, there is a system where you can ban yourself from all the major bookies if you realize you have a problem. Probably doesn't make the ads any easier to sit through, though). I'm not in favor of banning gambling altogether: I realise it's something a lot of people can engage with healthily, even if I have no interest in it at all. But I would be in favor of reigning in the advertising of it: it's kind of obnoxious how large a percentage of it is present in sports media anyway, even without the harms done. (I feel the same about alcohol ads, even if that is something I do like, and alcohol has a much lower moral hazard from the manufacturers in terms of hooking in alcoholics, because the ratios are not so extreme)

DrBazza 2y ago

I'm glad it's not just me that's noticed this. I thought it was targeted advertising because I also see lots of 'old people adverts' :) It's horrific really. I change channels as soon as one of those adverts come on. Premier League football teams are sponsored by them, and I suppose F1 cars probably are as well. But not cigarettes. Then again, I've never seen cigarettes ruin an entire family and for them to end up in financial ruin and without a house. Someone else called them parasites, and they're not wrong.

Tostino 2y ago
> Then again, I've never seen cigarettes ruin an entire family and for them to end up in financial ruin and without a house. In the US, your hypothetical mother who smokes and gets lung cancer could easily bankrupt the family and leave them in financial ruin (you know, if your family tries to pay for the treatments so she doesn't die). Oh yeah, we're talking about the UK here...carry on.

tialaramex 2y ago

I have made exactly one actual bet for money. In December 2020 I bet that Donald Trump had lost the US Presidential Election, which he had done the previous month. Ordinarily of course you can't make bets like that because nobody wants the other side of the bet†, but there were plenty of takers for "No, Donald Trump actually won" so I got paid off, it wasn't a huge profit but it was meaningful. † There are two ways you could be betting, sometimes you can bet "against the house". A company is trying to adjust the odds such that whoever wins, they end up benefiting, it can be tricky to do this and requires expertise so... the other way is you're betting against other punters like you, which works like the buy/sell orders on a stock exchange and the house just gets a percentage no matter what happens. Political gambling tends to be on the latter basis. [Edited: I originally wrote December 2021, but obviously it's December 2020 when I made that bet, he lost in November 2020, not November 2021]

ben_w 2y ago
I was tempted to do likewise, but then someone pointed out the risk there isn't that we might be incorrect about a very well publicised event that had already happened, it's that the other side has a successful coup to make their fantasy into a reality. The odds didn't look so friendly when I considered them as a chance of a coup. And indeed, then Jan 6 happened, and people are sill here on this website arguing that what specifically happened on that day doesn't meet their idea of an attempted coup.
- tialaramex 2y ago
  Sure, obviously it's a risky bet if a coup would make a difference. A coup didn't make a difference, Trump doesn't win an election by staging a coup. I deliberately didn't pick any of the correlated outcomes like Biden becomes President, because it's possible for them to not happen despite Trump losing. Now, if you're an American that doesn't help, the newly installed regime after a coup can just insist facts aren't true, so the bet is still unwise, but I'm not an American.
rcxdude 2y ago
This is a common issue in prediction markets: they tend to look nonsensical at the extremes, because if you're betting on 'sure outcome', then the main issues are a) counterparty risk, i.e. the risk that the payout is not awarded correctly, and b) opportunity costs, as the margins can be slim enough and the payout date far enough away that you've got better things you could do with your money.