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...
That is certainly on the table... as long as they have a couple of million stashed away to put into World Liberty Financial and the charges are federal.
The unwashed poors though... they are SOL.
I want this rigorously studied.
If it does, I’m more open to it. I don’t think it does. It’s a minuscule industry, macroeconomically spwaking, with massive negative externalities. I think regulating the marketing and conduct of industries proximate to addiction is something productive societies do. (On the other side of the spectrum we have the Qing.)
But it captures a truth. States see lotteries as a funding source. Kalshi and Polymarket are combined valued at the GDP of Iceland (or alternatively, 13 Greenlands).
Casinos are run as a productive part of Nevada’s economy. Lotteries, too, on average, at least in some places. Our liquor and now cannabis industries are economic engines. It isn’t ridiculous to expect gambling apps to wind up in a similar place.
How about we treat adults like they're adults and let them make their own choices?
I don’t really gamble. But I agree with you. Prohibition is never the answer.
Our current regime, however, is one where bartenders face zero liability for their patrons’ drunk driving. Making gambling companies liable for problematic gambling is a good start. Banning gambling ads, within apps and without, is a great end. I’d also argue for a cap on bet sizes, but I’m open to being talked out of that.
That's prohibition.
Limiting gambling ads the same way might be a good step.
It's hard to fully prohibit gambling (because you can play poker around a table, and it's better if that's legalized). It's much easier to prohibit banks from interacting with casinos and TV networks from letting them advertise, as those are large businesses who want to be compliant. That doesn't make gambling itself illegal, but cuts off most of its oxygen.
If I design a chemical that will specifically make you fasterik so dependent on it that you'll do any sexually depraved things that a line up of random strangers want so that they'll give you pocket change so that you can get another hit of that chemical should it be illegal for me to surreptitiously give it to you in a product that you buy from me?
Why or why not?
On top of that, sports betting inevitably leads into match fixing, threatening of players etc.
I believe that I, as a responsible adult, should be allowed to gamble for entertainment if I want to, and my right to do that shouldn't be taken away because a small minority of the population has low impulse control.
Legalized gambling establishments do very little besides extract money from visitors and project negative externalities into their surroundings.
> I believe that I, as a responsible adult, should be allowed to gamble for entertainment if I want to, and my right to do that shouldn't be taken away because a small minority of the population has low impulse control.
You can believe that, and be correct in theory. In practice, the "small minority" doesn't appear to be small enough under the current regulatory regime.
It's no different than the regulation of controlled substances and other vices. Or do you have an issue with that as well, and feel you should have the right to consume as much heroin as you want?
Regardless, I don't think we should stretch the metaphor between gambling and drugs too far. They are fundamentally different things.
Recognizing this fact isn't treating them like children, it's treating them like the adults they are.
Like... cigarretes aren't prohibited. But you're hard pressed to find anyone who doesn't agree that we're MUCH better off now with full advertising bans, indoor smoking bans, bans on sales to minors, steep tax, etc, than what we were in the 70s with disgusting cigarrete smoke everywhere.
Prohibition was a mistake and it goes a long way of sorting how people will act stupid regardless
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!).
+ 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
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.
https://www.syracuse.com/news/2017/07/one_mans_huge_lottery_...
The problem in this case is not that the lotto exists, it's that the formula for awarding school funding is (or was?) broken in this state. This is a textbook example of why you almost always use the median instead of mean on things that have a bell curve.
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.
All they need to do is check if you're cashing out more chips than you came in with.
A buddy from out of town, or a losing regular, or a poker player who the casino doesn't care if they win. In Vegas some casinos' chips are negotiable, officially or unofficially, in other casinos.
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.
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2025/dec/05/brighton-ow...
I have a very small edge in sports betting although I don't really do any of the deep overpriced/underpriced arbitrage or any special types of bets outside of wins/loses. And it's limited to tennis, a sport I've played my entire life and have followed the pro circuit closely for 3 decades. And even then my edge is very small, and the strategy I use when I do bet doesn't make me much in total return.
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.
> Anyway, I think ev isn't the right tool to model gambling behavior; dollar utility isn't linear.
You're right. The more money you have, the less utility it gives you, which makes gambling for a windfall an even worse decision. Worse still if you include taxes.
Very positive (IRR ~9%). It's been studied extensively: https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/server/api/core/bitstrea...
The problem is, society is fucking broken. The middle class is being decimated. People are going to take their destinies into their own hands, as seen by the growth of daytrading and sports betting. With wages being destroyed, billionaires avoiding taxes, COL skyrocketing for the middle and lower classes, and jobs evaporating, who's going to fucking blame someone for trying to figure out how to use what they know (in this case, sports) to make money?
Plus, this generation has seen another class of gamblers (big banks) get bailout after bailout without any problem.
Sports betting is the symptom, not the root cause that needs to be addressed.
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?
What's the implication here? "In for a penny, in for a pound", so might as well legalize every other form of gambling?
For these private betting firms, it's open season trying to find whales like mobile gaming, and there's no end to their greed and exploitation.
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.
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.
> If anything, doesn't it add anxiety as you watch the game?
> Is anxiety interesting?
Yes. Adding anxiety generally makes things more interesting. Think of watching a story or a film or a game play out. Good stories often involve giving the reader some anxiety. Tension. Not knowing what's going to happen, but being somehow invested in it ... to stay engaged.
I don’t generally like gambling. On a recent trip to Vegas I socially gambled with friends and won about $5k, but then lost $500 of it and was more annoyed about losing that sum than the net amount gained. Such is my personality.
That said, a friendly game of poker is absolutely more fun with a $10 buy-in or whatnot. So I can see the general idea holding water. What we don’t need are (a) ads or (b) large bets.
(Not passing judgment)
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?
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.
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.
this isn't new. a relative is an MVP at a casino she dumps cash into. The pit bosses comp all of her meals and call her on days that she doesn't show up. It's all sold to the customer as friendly-people-who-care and the people eat that up, especially lonely elderly folks.
She fell at one such casino and ended up suing them, she wondered why all her friends stopped calling her, so she moved casinos and low-and-behold she was able to make friends there, too!
To be fair, like another poster mentioned, they do this everywhere people spend a lot of money, not just gambling. Car dealerships are lousy with this kind of 'concierge'-ness. They, too, take advantage of elderly folks who have the money for a new car that they don't yet realize they need.
edit: Additionally, there are whales and there are folks who's job it is to get them in the door (we had game managers for the big games).
Bullshit.
If the person you’re raising kids with starts living at the casino 1-4 days a week, you notice.
The Internet, for better and for worse, masks this.
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.
Over-dramatic? Maybe, but this thought springs to my mind more and more.
Movies require an investment of your time so it's somewhat hard to become "addicted" to them.
There are "steam game library" addicts though.
> this majority isn't the target customer
Of course they are. They just aren't prioritized for high cost user enticements. The company only exists if the majority lose. They have big losers and little losers. They aren't here to "entertain" you. Which features of their service are designed to heighten "entertainment" I wonder?
With the AI progress, there will be no need in a search for personalities - algorithms will make you one. And this can be applied to any company producing entertainment (e.g. social networks), not just gambling.