and the idea of advertising gambling on television wasn't even something conceivable?
and, even more so, the idea that sports entertainment channels would be directly involved in the operation of gambling of was just completely beyond comprehension?
ahhh, the remote, halcyon, bygone days of 2018...
How about we treat adults like they're adults and let them make their own choices?
On top of that, sports betting inevitably leads into match fixing, threatening of players etc.
Limiting gambling ads the same way might be a good step.
Prohibition was a mistake and it goes a long way of sorting how people will act stupid regardless
+ in stagflation of 70s/early 80s - states create state-run lotteries to help fix their budgets
+ 2008 great recession - states legalize casinos to recover lost tax revenue and prevent folks from traveling out of state to gamble
+ C19 - states fast track the legalization of mobile sports betting and online casinos to secure immediate tax revenue
https://www.syracuse.com/news/2017/07/one_mans_huge_lottery_...
This seems questionable given that covid-19 relief funds from the federal government left states flush with cash, causing them to spend lavishly or even cut taxes. It also makes me suspicious of the other examples. Recessions happen every 5-10 years, and if you count the few years after a recession as part of the recession, it's not hard to pattern match a little too aggressively and think it's tied to economic downturns, when it's really a secular trend.
Summed up very nicely in https://oldcoinbad.com/p/long-degeneracy
Having student debt doesn't justify throwing away the rest of your residual income
People that get two or three years of college debt and no diploma have a big hole to fill and a small shovel.
Anyway, I think ev isn't the right tool to model gambling behavior; dollar utility isn't linear. It's more about a small spending for a large potential. But then you get into repeated small wagers and such.
I don't know of any long term profitable sports gamblers - but that makes sense because why reveal yourself and your methods if you're profitable?
By long term I mean at least 1,000 bets while still being profitable. Even more impressive if they are making a living off of it.
The only person I can think of is Picks Office on Twitter.
The bigger the market the harder that is, so maybe it doesn't apply at the level of online sports betting. But organized crime could make trouble at horse tracks.
There are so many portions of the post Muprhy vs NCAA world that bum me out, but this is by far what makes me the most annoyed. There seem to be so many objectives being achieved while hiding behind the guise of protecting the children. Yet we just let these advertisements slide by and infest broadcasts that children largely consume. Not like getting an older person to buy you a GTA game when you are 12 or something either, this is just watching any sort of sports broadcast, aimed at all ages.
I see some other people here mentioning how we gave into legalized state lotteries and its why we arrived here, its such a stark difference though. There was a ton of back and forth for state lotteries, the results were tons of advertising restrictions, and the profits largely benefited the education system.
Murphy vs NCAA was passed in 2018, we have legal sports betting now in 38 total states after ~8 total years.
New Hampshire legalized state lotteries in 1964, from that point it took 32 years to reach 38 total states with some form of a state lottery.
The profits didn't benefit shit. Yes, the money went into education, and that same education system saw commensurate cuts from regular tax revenue.
What it did is shift the state's tax burden towards people who play the lottery... While permanently entrenching the lottery (How can we ban it! It would gut our education budget!).
Betting platforms assign highly profitable customers "concierges" who reach out and prompt them to gamble, offer incentives, and work to keep them betting. It's insidious and wrong - the platforms actively identify and take advantage of addicts.
For most, a lottery ticket or an online bet is just buying entertainment - not much different from a movie ticket or steam game. Turns out, though, this majority isn't the target customer; we're just the top of the funnel as these platforms algorithmically search for personalities they can abuse, rob, and financially destroy.
A friend of mine worked at Disney, and it is insane how much data they capture on their players/spenders and how they use it for the sole purpose of triggering a popup at the right time, at the right price, that would maximize spending/gambling on loot boxes.
When legal cannabis surges, so do Americans' memory problems
When legal junk food surges, so do Americans' obesity problems
When legal gay marriage surges, so do Americans' fertility rate problems
The puritans never really give up, do they?
SoftTalker•3h ago
dolphinscorpion•3h ago
(Not passing judgment)
gruez•2h ago
What's the implication here? "In for a penny, in for a pound", so might as well legalize every other form of gambling?
SoftTalker•2h ago
HWR_14•2h ago
kjkjadksj•2h ago
evilduck•1h ago
Maybe it's because of pay-at-the-pump popularity now but have you never seen someone standing off to the side of the main gas station counter surrounded by a pile of scratch offs? People exist who will drop their entire paycheck on them in a single day. I've also seen people buy irresponsibly large stacks of Powerball tickets and not just the "oh, I like to fantasize about winning so I buy a ticket each week since you can't win if you don't play". It's gambling all the same.
chistev•2h ago
Is anxiety interesting?
And if you only bet a negligible amount of money, then the outcome of the game doesn't really matter all that much.
actionfromafar•1h ago
unethical_ban•1h ago
At least with win/loss, the ability to outright manipulate the outcome for financial gain by players, coaches and refs is a lot harder to accomplish without detection. Prop bets? Who knows if a player or ref or coach made a decision on who gets the first 3pt basket of the second half?
SoftTalker•20m ago
And people do spend stupid amounts of money on Powerball tickets too. I just think if the state is running a numbers racket, that they don't have much of a leg to stand on when they want to regulate other gambling.