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
Exactly. Sports gambling takes the fun out of sports for those who are not interested in gambling.

>>esalma+CY1
that's like saying alcoholics take the fun out of wine drinking for people who don't have a drinking problem.

>>fsckbo+BZ1
This would be true if wine was deliberately made worse quality in order to maximize some incentive behind manipulating alcoholics. I don't have a horse in this race, but this comparison misses the entire point of this particular counter to sports gambling. The sports in question are, purportedly, made worse - the outcome changed in arbitrary ways disconnected from the spirit of nature of the sport - in order to maximize the profits of the incredibly wealthy. There is no way to escape this when enjoying the sport; if deliberately throwing is rampant, you would always have to ask if a player's mistake was genuine, and your emotional investment in a game is poisoned as a result. Likewise, the comparison would be that no wine is immune from this kind of quality reduction. Eventually, a wine drinker will drink wine which has been reduced in quality on purpose.