Decades of a government monopoly on gambling was dismantled, and the market is being opened up for foreign companies buying licenses to operate.
It feels like there is a global wave of reintroducing every ”vice” that was somehow curbed with laws and restrictions. Nicotine? Cigarettes were so expensive that young people didn’t even bother, until snus, vapes and nicotine pouches (especially the pouchess) took off, and now more young people are hooked on nicotine than ever, and even younger.
Light alcohol beverages were only sold through supermarkets, and the wines and the stronger stuff through the well-equipped national monopoly. Now home delivery and breaking up the monopoly is on the table. Ever stronger stuff is getting moved to supermarkets instead of liquor stores.
Now gambling is next. It’s so bad that even the great Apple Inc. includes betting odds by DraftKings (it says so on the app) on their Sports scores app that’s rated ages 4+. You literally have to go to the app settings to turn them off.
All these rollbacks are made by economically right wing parties in the name of personal liberties. Oddly enough, as with many such reforma by the economic right, the gains are personal, but the losses are collective. Billions of euros a year go into fixing the negative effects of alcohol and nicotine. I’ve no idea about the numbers for gambling, but at least the revenues from the government monopoly funded NGOs and other public services directly.
It’s increasingly maddening seeing imperfect solutions to terrible human problems being replaced with… nothing. Nanny state laws might not work, but neither does my alcoholic neighbour… or my old high school friend, who lost so much money gambling that he refuses to find work, because the debt collectors taking a majority of his paycheck. They have more freedom now, at least.
Edit: Looks like you edited your comment to say Finland. Thanks!
As for the content of the comment, I totally agree. I think the eroding standards of regulation of addictive substances (and addictive behaviors like gambling or social media apps) is a serious mistake that we will come to profoundly regret.
Vaping avoids most of that.
Participation in sports betting appears to make people about 2x more likely to be delinquent on their loans.
Whether you think that’s “bad enough” is another question, but the article doesn’t make it very clear what the effect size is.
People who are bad with money are bad with money
most of betting houses depend heavily on problem gamblers, I will look for some stats, but the truth is regulators don't care or have controversial ties very often
erulabs•1h ago
I'm not a gambler and I personally find gambling morally questionable and intellectually embarrassing, but golly I'm tired of sports gambling being pointed in a sort of "see, freedom doesn't work!" sort of way.
1% of people will ruin their lives no matter what society does to prevent it. If you have a gambling problem (if it even appeals to you), I would as a _friend_, recommend you seek help; but as your fellow citizen? Up to you.
remarkEon•1h ago
When I turn on sports today it's just in your face gambling all the time. I think we'll come to regret this.
iambateman•1h ago
For the affected population, it’s around 10 percentage points—or double.
So people who sports bet are twice as likely to be delinquent as those who don’t. I’ll give you that the effect is smaller than I expected.
Here’s the thing though…it’s not like that trend is slowing down. The finalization of prediction markets and continued normalization of betting as a pro-social behavior is currently headed to the moon…so we should ask if it’s causing major side effects.
Smoking makes someone 25x more likely to develop lung cancer. Right now it looks like sports betting makes you 2x more likely to be delinquent on your car loan. At what incidence does that become anti-social enough to try to curb?
parthdesai•1h ago
eru•20m ago
BoorishBears•1h ago
You can barely even watch sports these days without interacting with betting, who is this helping?
If people want to seek out destruction, let them. But don't advertise and glamorize self-destruction by letting these people pay famous people to make their platforms look like the place to be, or have open discussion of their vice embedded in the broadcasting.
nofriend•1h ago
zoklet-enjoyer•38m ago
eru•21m ago
Huh, why?
> It was banned most everywhere, then with no public debate on the subject, much less consensus, all of a sudden it was legal and in your face wherever you went.
They didn't change any laws, did they? So it was as legal earlier as it is now, isn't it? It's just that someone found the right loophole that was always there.
snthpy•1h ago
acomjean•55m ago
I don’t disagree on ad regulation but it’s enmeshed now and will be hard to control. Leagues kept their distance because it looked bad, but now seem to embrace it as it must generate a boat load of ad revenue.
eru•17m ago
I say 'sports' to mean the stuff people watch on TV and in stadiums. You going for a run or kicking a ball with friends is fine. It's audience-driven sports that are bad.
A bit of betting is small fry by comparison.
Jcampuzano2•1h ago
I really don't care and I'm definitely on your side where I think people should be allowed to do what they want in this regard.
The crossing of line for me though is that this is now being advertised on TV and practically everywhere and being normalized for children and teenagers.
Call me a cynic, but I think the real goal in the long term for these companies is to get people addicted to it and to normalize it from a young age while they're more impressionable and thats where I believe the true harm is.
pinkmuffinere•39m ago
edit: I think it also matters whether this is a 0.5% _relative_ increase in the rate of credit delinquencies or if it's an _absolute_ increase of 0.5% in credit delinquencies. Eg, if the baseline rate was 0.5%, and this increases it to 1%, that's big
rmunn•11m ago
And knowing the baseline of a relative increase can matter a lot. If something goes from a 0.001% to a 0.002% chance of happening, that relative 100% increase means very little. If it goes from a 50% chance of happening to a 100% chance, that same relative 100% increase means a lot: it's gone from a coin-flip to a certainty.