zlacker

[return to "Legalizing sports gambling was a mistake"]
1. thefau+md[view] [source] 2024-09-26 16:24:43
>>jimbob+(OP)
Gambling is also ruining professional sports for me because I find the frequent gambling promos during the games depressing and disruptive.

Many years ago I worked at a company that had Ladbrokes in the UK as a customer. On my first visit to London, I noticed their storefronts and found them appalling. They were some of the sorriest, shabbiest public spaces I'd seen, clearly designed to extract resources from the least well off.

I don't really buy any of the arguments in favor of widespread legalization (and I include state lotteries in this). I could be ok with legalization for a few big events like the NCAA tournament because clearly there is some demand that must be met, but we should not be enabling gambling as a widespread daily habit.

Of course there will always be black market gambling and the state cannot protect its citizens from every evil, but nor should it actively enable them.

◧◩
2. drcong+5g[view] [source] 2024-09-26 16:36:25
>>thefau+md
The state of sports gambling in the UK is now such that Sky Sports (used to be a cable/satellite TV station catering purely to sports) is now basically just a series of gambling adverts with some sport thrown in to keep the punters hooked. They even launched a Sky Bet betting company which seems to have completely overtaken the TV channels - every sport is riddled with Sky Bet adverts and sponsorship. The biggest irony is that professional sportsmen (it's always men) keep getting bans for gambling on their own sport, and yet we somehow expect extremely rich young men in a "banter" culture to ignore the fact that every week they pull on a shirt with multiple gambling sponsors on it and then play in a stadium with endless gambling ads scrolling around the LED boards before being interviewed afterwards standing in front of a wall of gambling sponsors by a man with Sky Bet written on his microphone.
◧◩◪
3. FMecha+HR1[view] [source] 2024-09-27 05:43:08
>>drcong+5g
>The biggest irony is that professional sportsmen (it's always men) keep getting bans for gambling on their own sport

People pointing this out often leads me to an impression that athletes should be allowed to bet on their own games. Problem is, that leads to match-fixing.

[go to top]