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
Drug dealers need revenue to be drug dealers, otherwise they might cease to exist.

Sounds ridiculous, but client's neurotransmitters are the same.

>>baq+3X1
and i agree - why shouldn't these drugs be legalized? Regulate their sale, just like alcohol. Stop the drug cartels from making profit, and they will disappear.

After all, client's neurotransmitters are the same.

>>chii+L82
Honestly it should really be equalized the other way around: alcohol really shouldn’t be as easily available as it is today, perhaps even illegal.

Of course that won’t happen, it’s too ingrained in society. But it really is a scourge.

And I say this as someone who enjoys my beverages responsibly.

Legalizing heroin or the like will destroy parts of our society of nothing else changes.