zlacker

>>jimbob+(OP)
Sports gambling, like all gambling, ruins lives. It's certainly worth having the discussion about whether people should be able to run a train through their life and the lives of their families via app.

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.

>>mlsu+wN1
In Australia gambling and poker machines have so deeply parasitised themselves into local sports clubs, that they can now _no longer operate without the poker machines_. They’ve co-opted sport so thoroughly, that gambling is now basically an ingrained part of organised sports from local level up.

It’s heinous.