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
fantasy land vs the real world.

I am sure most business owners don't want to be casinos, but would rather be clubs. When the bills are due, they have to find a way to pay up.

>>mu53+502
That absolutely cannot be true. If a business does not want to be a casino, it doesn't have to be.

I run a pub. We'd never have any gambling (machines or otherwise) in it, and we charge less than most pubs for locally sourced beer/cider.

If you're running your business to extract value from people rather than to create community with them, you're a bad person.

>>Blahah+G22
> If you're running your business to extract value from people rather than to create community with them, you're a bad person.

I run a restaurant with the same idea - we pay our staff way more than anyone else is outside the Michelin places for example.

Still, you might be a bad person if you're running an exploitative business, but very likely the system will reward that kind of person more than you or I. In fact I find it difficult to compete with those sorts of people because they get away with it and make more money so can do more marketing, expand more aggressively etc. The classic annoyance I face is other restaurants in the area giving away free french fries for a 5 star review on Google maps.

Now there are customers who spot the fraudulent review restaurants and come to ours instead, and the discerning customer is our market segment anyway (we do many other things that normies would miss but discerning customers notice and reward with their loyalty) but a restaurant lives and dies on the whims of hordes of normie customers that are delighted to get free fries and don't mind creating a Google account for the first time in their lives to get'm.

>>komali+a62
>we do many other things that normies would miss but discerning customers notice and reward with their loyalty

this sounds interesting, can you share any other examples?