But a much easier argument against sports betting is that it ruins the sports. Players throw. They get good at subtly cheating. The gambling apparatus latches itself to the sport, to the teams and players, the umpires and judges, the sporting organizations. With this much money on the line, it's not a matter of if but when games are thrown, cheated -- the bigger the game, the bigger the incentive. It's even easier now because of the amount of side/parlay betting that is available. It exhausts the spirit of competition.
Sports gambling is diametrically opposed to sport itself.
The point is that reversing a popularly acclaimed law, while yes showing to be a mistake, leads to huge losses in political consensus at elections and an easy win to the other parties.
People may like it but other than a few even the ones who like it wish it didn't exist.
At any rate every article I see about gambling is about how much it sucks. Probably the gambling industry doesn't have the top level public relations that smoking had once upon a time, otherwise I'd be seeing more ads about how gambling makes you a tough guy. Which, come to think of it, I do see a bit of that in Denmark, but Danes don't do advertising that isn't meant to be funny (laugh with) very well so these ads look ridiculous (laugh at)