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.

>>Fridge+kS1
The local sports clubs need the revenue from the machines, otherwise they'd not make any money at all, and might even cease to exist.

How do you propose to solve this problem? Higher fees from club members? or somehow get more gov't funding via taxing?

I don't see the issue with gambling revenue funding a club.

>>chii+ET1
A (local) sports club doesn't need to "make ... money". It can get contribution from its members, and subsidy from the local government. Otherwise, your argument would sanction every behavior, even turning schools into strip clubs.

>>tgv+7W1
Um, what good are schools if you can't make a profit from them? /s

That's why UK Conservatives turned most of English education into for-profit businesses.

People here are always harping on about how the only reason for coordinating people (companies) is to make profit for the owners/bosses.

What pains me is that people are saying "the local club couldn't survive without {an external party taking a proportion of the gross income}". The maths means that without that external entity there would be more money.

Of course without addiction ruining lives people wouldn't give so much of their money away to these particular sports clubs. But, that just means the sports club is running off the destruction of people's lives in the local community. I mean, that's perfect capitalism, but absolutely inhumane.