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
Sports gambling has been legal in the UK since 1960. Gambling wasn't seriously problematic in this country until 2005, when regulations were substantially liberalised. Pre-2005, sports betting was something that old men did in dingy backstreet shops; post-2005, it became a widespread social phenomenon, turbocharged by advertising and the growing influence and accessibility of the internet.

There's a false dichotomy between prohibition and laissez-faire, which the US seems particularly prone to. You've seen similar issues with the decriminalisation of cannabis, where many states seem to have switched abruptly from criminalisation to a fully-fledged commercial market. There is a broad spectrum of other options in between those points that tend to be under-discussed.

You can ban gambling advertising, as Italy did in 2019. You can set limits on maximum stakes or impose regulations to make gambling products less attractive to new customers and less risky for problem gamblers. You can have a single state-controlled parimutuel operator. Gambling does cause harm - whether it's legal or not - but it is within the purview of legislators to create a gambling market in which harm reduction is the main priority.

>>jdietr+182
I absolutely hate that gambling adverts on TV are legal in the UK. I've seen at least one friend's life ruined because of it.

9pm, and it's wall-to-wall.

Ironically, this is around the same time as bans on smoking in pubs, and tobacco advertising became draconian.

But gambling doesn't do any first-order physical harm, so it's all good, right?

Seeing betting firms on the front of football teams' shirts offends me.

> When Tony Blair's Labour government introduced the Gambling Act in 2005, it allowed gambling firms to advertise sports betting, poker and online casinos on TV and radio for the first time.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-64510095

>>DrBazz+ns2
Bans cost money to enforce, while diminishing personal choice and responsibility. Why not spend that money on education instead? I've not had an ad in my home or on my mobile devices for well over a decade, and I've spent exactly zero on additional hardware to make that happen. It takes less than 10 minutes to configure a new device to be completely ad-free. I won't purchase anything that can't be configured to be free of ads, including smart TVs and iPhones. I still watch whatever content I want on my TV via HDMI from a PC. If our governments are going to be involved, their focus should be on teaching people how to do what people like me do. It's not difficult.

>>34679+SD2
I think there’s an argument that behavioral change is much more difficult that just ingesting the information. (And I’m talking about people who want to change, not some nefarious change instituted by someone else or an institution). Think of how many people want to lose weight but struggle. It’s not usually from the lack of education; there are psychological, social, and environmental impediments to change.

I think the “all it takes is the right information” model lacks a nuanced understanding of human behavior.

>>bumby+sL2
I also mentioned personal choice and responsibility. If someone doesn't want to change, why should we attempt to force them? It's not likely to have the effect you desire.

I think the "all it takes is a government ban" model lacks a nuanced understanding of human behavior. Cannabis is a prime example.

To be clear, I'm not advocating a solution for all of society's ills. I'm advocating a path toward the goals we all share. That path may be longer and more difficult to traverse, but it's my belief that it'll lead us closer to where we want to go.

>>34679+CP2
>belief that it'll lead us closer to where we want to go.

That just sounds like a hypothesis (ie unfounded conjecture). Meanwhile, the counterclaim at least has a basis in empirical results. We should craft policy based on how people actually behave, not in how we wish they did.

I get that HN skews towards libertarian. My issue is that that the libertarian idea of how people operate is an idealist’s fantasy and not rooted in the real world.