[HN Gopher] When legal sports betting surges, so do Americans' f...
___________________________________________________________________
When legal sports betting surges, so do Americans' financial
problems
Author : pseudolus
Score : 136 points
Date : 2026-04-04 15:14 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.npr.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.npr.org)
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Gambling can be a fun way to make a game more interesting. Some
| people can't stop there, but government lost any moral high
| ground when they legalized state lotteries.
| dolphinscorpion wrote:
| Fun turns to disaster when you lose. Sadly, many can't control
| it, destroying entire lives in the process.
|
| (Not passing judgment)
| gruez wrote:
| >but government lost any moral high ground when they legalized
| state lotteries.
|
| What's the implication here? "In for a penny, in for a pound",
| so might as well legalize every other form of gambling?
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I think so. If you're going to regulate sports betting (and I
| think there are good arguments for doing that), but you
| yourself run a lottery which is a tax on people who don't
| understand probability, then you are just preaching in a "do
| as I say not as I do" kind of way.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| The difference between the ability to make bets 2-3 times a
| week for a dollar or two and the ability to drop $500 every
| play of a sporting event is dramatic.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| What about someone buying $50 of scratchers a day? Why
| conflate a reasonable habit on one thing with an
| unreasonable habit on the other when both can obviously
| be done reasonably or unreasonably?
| evilduck wrote:
| That describes someone with maybe an irresponsible but
| manageable gambling habit, not a gambling addict.
|
| Maybe it's because of pay-at-the-pump popularity now but
| have you never seen someone standing off to the side of
| the main gas station counter surrounded by a pile of
| scratch offs? People exist who will drop their entire
| paycheck on them in a single day. I've also seen people
| buy irresponsibly large stacks of Powerball tickets and
| not just the "oh, I like to fantasize about winning so I
| buy a ticket each week since you can't win if you don't
| play". It's gambling all the same.
| bl4kers wrote:
| The predominate reasoning for a long time now has been
| lotteries are addicting and bad but a small demand is
| guaranteed. Therefore, in the name of maximizing social
| benefit, only the government should run them and the profit
| is used to funds something less partisan (e.g. education,
| parks, conservation, gambling addiction services)
|
| For these private betting firms, it's open season trying to
| find whales like mobile gaming, and there's no end to their
| greed and exploitation.
| chistev wrote:
| Does it really make games more interesting? If anything,
| doesn't it add anxiety as you watch the game?
|
| Is anxiety interesting?
|
| And if you only bet a negligible amount of money, then the
| outcome of the game doesn't really matter all that much.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _doesn 't it add anxiety as you watch the game?_
|
| I don't generally like gambling. On a recent trip to Vegas I
| socially gambled with friends and won about $5k, but then
| lost $500 of it and was more annoyed about losing that sum
| than the net amount gained. Such is my personality.
|
| That said, a friendly game of poker is absolutely more fun
| with a $10 buy-in or whatnot. So I can see the general idea
| holding water. What we don't need are (a) ads or (b) large
| bets.
| emptybits wrote:
| > Does it really make games more interesting?
|
| > If anything, doesn't it add anxiety as you watch the game?
|
| > Is anxiety interesting?
|
| Yes. Adding anxiety generally makes things more interesting.
| Think of watching a story or a film or a game play out. Good
| stories often involve giving the reader some anxiety.
| Tension. Not knowing what's going to happen, but being
| somehow invested in it ... to stay engaged.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| "Someone did a bad thing, now we must do all the bad things."
| unethical_ban wrote:
| There are significant, real differences in betting on a random
| number generator once a week and betting constantly on the real
| outcomes of individual behaviors. Most notably with sports,
| institutionalized prop bets destroy the integrity of the game.
|
| At least with win/loss, the ability to outright manipulate the
| outcome for financial gain by players, coaches and refs is a
| lot harder to accomplish without detection. Prop bets? Who
| knows if a player or ref or coach made a decision on who gets
| the first 3pt basket of the second half?
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Yeah I've never made a prop bet, or even a points bet, that
| feels too degenerate to me. I have occasionally made a $10
| money line bet on a game and that does make it more
| interesting to me in that now I have a small stake in the
| outcome. YMMV.
|
| And people do spend stupid amounts of money on Powerball
| tickets too. I just think if the state is running a numbers
| racket, that they don't have much of a leg to stand on when
| they want to regulate other gambling.
| recursivedoubts wrote:
| remember when gambling was illegal?
|
| and the idea of advertising gambling on television wasn't even
| something conceivable?
|
| and, even more so, the idea that sports entertainment channels
| would be directly involved in the operation of gambling of was
| just completely beyond comprehension?
|
| ahhh, the remote, halcyon, bygone days of 2018...
| deadbabe wrote:
| All those serving hard time in prison for sport gambling crimes
| should be pardoned.
| prpl wrote:
| It would be interesting to make that sort of thing generic. A
| law couldn't legalize something without backporting the
| legalization.
| sandy_coyote wrote:
| Pete Rose: reprehensible pariah or radical pioneer?
| skdhfkdjfhsjk wrote:
| It was a quaint, simpler time. Now we are much more
| sophisticated and modern.
| fasterik wrote:
| Remember when alcohol was illegal? Ahh, the remote, halcyon,
| bygone days of the 1920s.
|
| How about we treat adults like they're adults and let them make
| their own choices?
| hgoel wrote:
| I guess you also think we need to stop policing drunk
| driving? Because the reasons for regulating gambling are
| similar.
| fasterik wrote:
| That's quite a straw man. Drunk driving is and should be
| illegal because it puts the lives of others at risk.
| Alcohol is legal because it only puts the health of the
| drinker at risk. Generally in a free society we accept that
| adults should be free to make decisions that harm only
| themselves.
| hgoel wrote:
| It's interesting to be arguing that gambling doesn't put
| others at risk in the comments to a post about a broad
| trend of collective harm associated with loosened
| controls on gambling. Do you think these people exist in
| a vacuum?
|
| On top of that, sports betting inevitably leads into
| match fixing, threatening of players etc.
| fasterik wrote:
| I believe most of the negative impacts you're referring
| to are covered by existing laws concerning fraud and
| consumer protection. I'm in favor of making truly
| fraudulent and predatory behavior illegal. I don't see
| any evidence that the "collective harm" you mention from
| the article is anything other than individuals making bad
| financial decisions.
|
| I believe that I, as a responsible adult, should be
| allowed to gamble for entertainment if I want to, and my
| right to do that shouldn't be taken away because a small
| minority of the population has low impulse control.
| bpt3 wrote:
| > I don't see any evidence that the "collective harm" you
| mention from the article is anything other than
| individuals making bad financial decisions.
|
| Legalized gambling establishments do very little besides
| extract money from visitors and project negative
| externalities into their surroundings.
|
| > I believe that I, as a responsible adult, should be
| allowed to gamble for entertainment if I want to, and my
| right to do that shouldn't be taken away because a small
| minority of the population has low impulse control.
|
| You can believe that, and be correct in theory. In
| practice, the "small minority" doesn't appear to be small
| enough under the current regulatory regime.
|
| It's no different than the regulation of controlled
| substances and other vices. Or do you have an issue with
| that as well, and feel you should have the right to
| consume as much heroin as you want?
| lux-lux-lux wrote:
| Problem gambling has a similar negative outcome profile
| (in terms of suicide, financial problems, etc.) as an
| addiction to hard drugs
| 1bpp wrote:
| These are systems completely designed to prey on vulnerable
| people, addicts who can't control their impulse to gamble.
| That's their purpose. I think it's worth regulating
| intentionally predatory and harmful industries.
| jfengel wrote:
| We limit alcohol advertising because it also has an
| addictive quality.
|
| Limiting gambling ads the same way might be a good step.
| miki123211 wrote:
| When making decisions like this, one should consider not
| just the desired consequences of the policy, but the
| difficulty in actually implementing it. Alcohol and
| narcotics prohibitions fall short here.
|
| It's hard to fully prohibit gambling (because you can
| play poker around a table, and it's better if that's
| legalized). It's much easier to prohibit banks from
| interacting with casinos and TV networks from letting
| them advertise, as those are large businesses who want to
| be compliant. That doesn't make gambling itself illegal,
| but cuts off most of its oxygen.
| raverbashing wrote:
| And yet you can't do a quick Google search to understand that
| "expecting adults to act like adults" is a ridiculous idea
| when 80% of people have NPC agency
|
| Prohibition was a mistake and it goes a long way of sorting
| how people will act stupid regardless
| umanwizard wrote:
| Adults can and do become addicted to gambling (and drugs,
| etc.) and ruin the lives of themselves and those around them.
|
| Recognizing this fact isn't treating them like children, it's
| treating them like the adults they are.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Remember when alcohol was illegal?_
|
| I don't really gamble. But I agree with you. Prohibition is
| never the answer.
|
| Our current regime, however, is one where bartenders face
| zero liability for their patrons' drunk driving. Making
| gambling companies liable for problematic gambling is a good
| start. Banning gambling ads, within apps and without, is a
| great end. I'd also argue for a cap on bet sizes, but I'm
| open to being talked out of that.
| Teever wrote:
| Let's combine the idea of hyper-targeted advertising based on
| mass data collection with custom tailored addicted
| substances.
|
| If I design a chemical that will specifically make _you_
| fasterik so dependent on it that you 'll do any sexually
| depraved things random strangers want so that they'll give
| you pocket change so that you can get another hit of that
| chemical should it be illegal for me to surreptitiously give
| it to you in a product that you buy from me?
|
| Why or why not?
| andrepd wrote:
| There's a fine line between prohibition and all-out attack,
| everywhere all at once, from TV internet and sports, trying
| to get everyone addicted to gambling, from 9 to 99 years old.
|
| Like... cigarretes aren't prohibited. But you're hard pressed
| to find anyone who doesn't agree that we're MUCH better off
| now with full advertising bans, indoor smoking bans, bans on
| sales to minors, steep tax, etc, than what we were in the 70s
| with disgusting cigarrete smoke everywhere.
| dandanua wrote:
| It increases GDP. Also, have you seen the Dow?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _It increases GDP_
|
| I want this rigorously studied.
|
| If it does, I'm more open to it. I don't think it does. It's
| a minuscule industry, macroeconomically spwaking, with
| massive negative externalities. I think regulating the
| marketing and conduct of industries proximate to addiction is
| something productive societies do. (On the other side of the
| spectrum we have the Qing.)
| izacus wrote:
| It's obviously a tongue in cheek comment sir.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _It 's obviously a tongue in cheek comment_
|
| But it captures a truth. States see lotteries as a
| funding source. Kalshi and Polymarket are combined valued
| at the GDP of Iceland (or alternatively, 13 Greenlands).
|
| Casinos are run as a productive part of Nevada's economy.
| Lotteries, too, on average, at least in some places. Our
| liquor and now cannabis industries are economic engines.
| It isn't ridiculous to expect gambling apps to wind up in
| a similar place.
| Ferret7446 wrote:
| Humans have tried to ban gambling for as long as gambling
| existed, and gambling has existed for about as long as homo
| sapiens. Gambling still exists.
| notTooFarGone wrote:
| Ah yea and 1 billion $ or 100billion $ it's all the same
| recursivedoubts wrote:
| Humans have tried to ban murder for as long as murder
| existed, and murder has existed for about as long as homo
| sapiens. Murdering still exists.
| gz5 wrote:
| and the US govt often helps facilitate gambling during downturns
| so we could see even more direct and indirect promotion of the
| problem. examples:
|
| + in stagflation of 70s/early 80s - states create state-run
| lotteries to help fix their budgets
|
| + 2008 great recession - states legalize casinos to recover lost
| tax revenue and prevent folks from traveling out of state to
| gamble
|
| + C19 - states fast track the legalization of mobile sports
| betting and online casinos to secure immediate tax revenue
| kotaKat wrote:
| "Lottos help your school!" they said. Until you're in rural
| bumfuck nowhere, and your lotto win suddenly drags your
| community's average income from "dirt poor" to "middle class"
| by becoming Spiders Georg and you end up costing nearly half a
| mil in state aid to go up in smoke.
|
| https://www.syracuse.com/news/2017/07/one_mans_huge_lottery_...
| bityard wrote:
| I'm not sure you read that article all the way through... The
| loss is $450k, but that's only 3% of the year's state aid and
| an even smaller amount of the district's operating budget.
| And it only impacted that one year. Inflation and random
| political feuds usually impact public school budgets to a far
| greater degree.
|
| The problem in this case is not that the lotto exists, it's
| that the formula for awarding school funding is (or was?)
| broken in this state. This is a textbook example of why you
| almost always use the median instead of mean on things that
| have a bell curve.
| gruez wrote:
| >+ C19 - states fast track the legalization of mobile sports
| betting and online casinos to secure immediate tax revenue
|
| This seems questionable given that covid-19 relief funds from
| the federal government left states flush with cash, causing
| them to spend lavishly or even cut taxes. It also makes me
| suspicious of the other examples. Recessions happen every 5-10
| years, and if you count the few years after a recession as part
| of the recession, it's not hard to pattern match a little too
| aggressively and think it's tied to economic downturns, when
| it's really a secular trend.
| bmitc wrote:
| American citizens have willingly given up their freedom and
| allowed themselves to be captured by corporate control.
| nikanj wrote:
| Gambling seems like a rational choice, when all the "traditional"
| rational choices just lead into a mountain of student debt, not
| being able to afford a home, and general failure to launch
|
| Summed up very nicely in https://oldcoinbad.com/p/long-degeneracy
| revlsas wrote:
| How could it possibly be the rational choice if the ev doing so
| is so ridiculously negative?
|
| Having student debt doesn't justify throwing away the rest of
| your residual income
| toast0 wrote:
| What's the ev for going to college once you factor in
| graduation rates?
|
| People that get two or three years of college debt and no
| diploma have a big hole to fill and a small shovel.
|
| Anyway, I think ev isn't the right tool to model gambling
| behavior; dollar utility isn't linear. It's more about a
| small spending for a large potential. But then you get into
| repeated small wagers and such.
| Acrobatic_Road wrote:
| you can always go back and finish later...that's what I'm
| doing.
| toast0 wrote:
| My school expires credits after 7 years.
| jeffbee wrote:
| If I borrow a lot of money to start a business and then
| don't start the business I would also be in the hole. So,
| don't do that?
| Aunche wrote:
| College graduates make over $1 million in their lifetime
| compared to high school graduates.
|
| > Anyway, I think ev isn't the right tool to model gambling
| behavior; dollar utility isn't linear.
|
| You're right. The more money you have, the less utility it
| gives you, which makes gambling for a windfall an even
| worse decision. Worse still if you include taxes.
| verteu wrote:
| > What's the ev for going to college once you factor in
| graduation rates?
|
| Very positive (IRR ~9%). It's been studied extensively: htt
| ps://openknowledge.worldbank.org/server/api/core/bitstrea..
| .
| watwut wrote:
| Seeing gambling as rational choice is spectacular fail of
| logic. It is an emptional choice of action.
| chistev wrote:
| The house always wins.
|
| I don't know of any long term profitable sports gamblers - but
| that makes sense because why reveal yourself and your methods if
| you're profitable?
|
| By long term I mean at least 1,000 bets while still being
| profitable. Even more impressive if they are making a living off
| of it.
|
| The only person I can think of is Picks Office on Twitter.
| gnopgnip wrote:
| If you profit at sports betting they limit your bet size
| severely
| awakeasleep wrote:
| Even if you don't profit but place what looks like smart bets
| michaelt wrote:
| A casino or bookmaker doesn't _need_ to heuristically
| identify betting behaviour that 's 'smart'. They don't need
| to spot evidence that could be hidden by good opsec. No
| need to find micro-expressions or hidden cheating gadgets.
| Nor to do background checks to know you've got a buddy with
| insider knowledge.
|
| All they need to do is check if you're cashing out more
| chips than you came in with.
| dmurray wrote:
| It's not trivial for the casino to track this against a
| determined adversary. If you're already thinking about
| "good opsec", you can get someone else to help cash out
| your winnings.
|
| A buddy from out of town, or a losing regular, or a poker
| player who the casino doesn't care if they win. In Vegas
| some casinos' chips are negotiable, officially or
| unofficially, in other casinos.
| chistev wrote:
| You can just jump bookies.
| NickC25 wrote:
| Except in the state of MA.
|
| They rightfully passed legislation banning such practices.
| The idea is that if casinos and bookies refuse to cap your
| downside, they have zero right to cap your upside.
| conscion wrote:
| Sports betting is the one place that "prediction markets" make
| the most sense. Instead of there being a house to win against,
| the market just skims a fee. The line is set organically by
| betters, not be the house targeting a profit margin, and the
| house has no incentive to restrict successful betters because
| they solely profit on flow, not losses.
| jfengel wrote:
| You do have to be careful to avoid letting whales manipulate
| the perceived market. There are ways to con other gamblers
| with carefully timed bets.
|
| The bigger the market the harder that is, so maybe it doesn't
| apply at the level of online sports betting. But organized
| crime could make trouble at horse tracks.
| jeffbee wrote:
| What about Frank Rosenthal? Admittedly these guys are extremely
| rare, that's why the handful of successful ones are famous.
| chistev wrote:
| Never heard of him
| yareally wrote:
| The movie Casino was loosely based on him. Worth a watch,
| but also actually looking the real guy up.
| n1b0m wrote:
| Tony Bloom, the billionaire owner of Brighton & Hove Albion FC
| seems to be managing it.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/football/2025/dec/05/brighton-ow...
| NickC25 wrote:
| Tony is also super smart in how he gambled. Your average
| degenerate is nowhere near as intelligent as Tony is.
|
| I have a very small edge in sports betting although I don't
| really do any of the deep overpriced/underpriced arbitrage or
| any special types of bets outside of wins/loses. And it's
| limited to tennis, a sport I've played my entire life and
| have followed the pro circuit closely for 3 decades. And even
| then my edge is _very_ small, and the strategy I use when I
| do bet doesn 't make me much in total return.
| sidrag22 wrote:
| > And research shows young people are particularly at risk of
| sports gambling problems, lured in by splashy advertisements
| often featuring celebrities and promises of low risks and high
| rewards. The Fed study found that the sharpest drop in credit
| delinquency rates were among people under 40 years old.
|
| There are so many portions of the post Muprhy vs NCAA world that
| bum me out, but this is by far what makes me the most annoyed.
| There seem to be so many objectives being achieved while hiding
| behind the guise of protecting the children. Yet we just let
| these advertisements slide by and infest broadcasts that children
| largely consume. Not like getting an older person to buy you a
| GTA game when you are 12 or something either, this is just
| watching any sort of sports broadcast, aimed at all ages.
|
| I see some other people here mentioning how we gave into
| legalized state lotteries and its why we arrived here, its such a
| stark difference though. There was a ton of back and forth for
| state lotteries, the results were tons of advertising
| restrictions, and the profits largely benefited the education
| system.
|
| Murphy vs NCAA was passed in 2018, we have legal sports betting
| now in 38 total states after ~8 total years.
|
| New Hampshire legalized state lotteries in 1964, from that point
| it took 32 years to reach 38 total states with some form of a
| state lottery.
| vkou wrote:
| > the profits largely benefited the education system.
|
| The profits didn't benefit shit. Yes, the money went into
| education, and that same education system saw commensurate cuts
| from regular tax revenue.
|
| What it did is shift the state's tax burden towards people who
| play the lottery... While permanently entrenching the lottery
| (How can we ban it! It would gut our education budget!).
| sidrag22 wrote:
| I agree with your point, its something i kinda didn't really
| consider how its perversely intertwining itself with the
| education budget and making itself effectively immune. I
| still think its a solid demonstration that comparable sports
| betting legislation surely lacked any sort of compromise at
| all, as it was all pushed through so aggressively fast.
| seanalltogether wrote:
| When I was in college I got lured into one of those pyramid
| schemes advertised in the middle of the night hoping to make
| extra money. I wonder how much money I would have lost if I had
| instant access to betting on a "sure thing" back then.
| gbacon wrote:
| Is there a causal relationship? If so, in which direction does it
| flow?
| carefulfungi wrote:
| > A 2024 Wall Street Journal report, for example, found that 70%
| of the profits from one online gambling company came from less
| than 1% of its users.
|
| Betting platforms assign highly profitable customers "concierges"
| who reach out and prompt them to gamble, offer incentives, and
| work to keep them betting. It's insidious and wrong - the
| platforms actively identify and take advantage of addicts.
|
| For most, a lottery ticket or an online bet is just buying
| entertainment - not much different from a movie ticket or steam
| game. Turns out, though, this majority isn't the target customer;
| we're just the top of the funnel as these platforms
| algorithmically search for personalities they can abuse, rob, and
| financially destroy.
| OptionOfT wrote:
| The same thing happens with in-app purchases.
|
| A friend of mine worked at Disney, and it is insane how much
| data they capture on their players/spenders and how they use it
| for the sole purpose of triggering a popup at the right time,
| at the right price, that would maximize spending/gambling on
| loot boxes.
| andrepd wrote:
| Algorithmic optimisation will be the death of us.
|
| Over-dramatic? Maybe, but this thought springs to my mind
| more and more.
| Triphibian wrote:
| The first time I heard "whale" mentioned in the video game
| space was at a GDC panel around a game called Puzzle Pirates,
| where the dev noted that the bulk of their in-game purchases
| were made by a small group of "whale" players. In 2003
| purchasable skins, pets, hats, etc were pretty new.
| dandanua wrote:
| > these platforms algorithmically search for personalities they
| can abuse, rob, and financially destroy
|
| With the AI progress, there will be no need in a search for
| personalities - algorithms will make you one. And this can be
| applied to any company producing entertainment (e.g. social
| networks), not just gambling.
| serf wrote:
| >Betting platforms assign highly profitable customers
| "concierges" who reach out and prompt them to gamble, offer
| incentives, and work to keep them betting. It's insidious and
| wrong - the platforms actively identify and take advantage of
| addicts.
|
| this isn't new. a relative is an MVP at a casino she dumps cash
| into. The pit bosses comp all of her meals and call her on days
| that she doesn't show up. It's all sold to the customer as
| friendly-people-who-care and the people eat that up, especially
| lonely elderly folks.
|
| She fell at one such casino and ended up suing them, she
| wondered why all her friends stopped calling her, so she moved
| casinos and low-and-behold she was able to make friends there,
| too!
|
| To be fair, like another poster mentioned, they do this
| everywhere people spend a lot of money, not just gambling. Car
| dealerships are _lousy_ with this kind of 'concierge'-ness.
| They, too, take advantage of elderly folks who have the money
| for a new car that they don't yet realize they need.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| To be fair, what you've describing strikes me as closer to
| hospitality than gambling _per se_. I live in a ski town.
| There are absolutely regulars at the Four Seasons who tip
| well in exchange for being "friends" with the staff. The fact
| that they never hang out outside work hours doesn't seem to
| bother them.
| kibwen wrote:
| This seems instructive for considering when a difference in
| degree makes for a difference in kind. Let's call this
| "whale potential": the amount of money that a power user
| can naturally funnel into a casino over a single visit is
| multiple orders of magnitude more than the amount of money
| that a power user can funnel into a ski resort over a
| single visit. For a casino, the act of a customer losing
| money is not merely a side effect of the activity, it is
| the primary effect of the activity.
| SaltyBackendGuy wrote:
| You're spot on (ex casino worker). There's no conspiracy.
| Speaking for myself, I was nice to people because it made
| me more money in tips (also, because I am not an a-hole).
| Made a lot of "friends" when I worked in the casino,
| employees and patrons. It's not any different than folks I
| work with in tech (i.e. some you connect with and have
| genuine friendships and some are work friends). They likely
| stopped calling her due to upper management telling staff
| to not engage due to legal liability (or they lose their
| job).
|
| edit: Additionally, there are whales and there are folks
| who's job it is to get them in the door (we had game
| managers for the big games).
| dcrazy wrote:
| Yes, I think the grandparent post conflates those whale-
| attractors with typical service industry behaviors toward
| repeat customers.
| anonym29 wrote:
| When legal alcohol surges, so do Americans' liver problems
|
| When legal cannabis surges, so do Americans' memory problems
|
| When legal junk food surges, so do Americans' obesity problems
|
| When legal gay marriage surges, so do Americans' fertility rate
| problems
|
| The puritans never really give up, do they?
| jjk166 wrote:
| I strongly suspect if one were to dig a little deeper there would
| probably be some common factors between loosening financial
| regulations, community economic problems, credit issues of people
| in those communities, and impetus to gamble.
| retired wrote:
| Gambling is massive in large parts of Europe. For Spain, in 2022
| 83.9% of the population participated in gambling. Every time I am
| outside I am confronted with gambling in some sort of way. I
| don't think society benefits from it.
| ginko wrote:
| > For Spain, in 2022 83.9% of the population participated in
| gambling
|
| Does that include the Christmas lottery? If so then that's not
| really comparable.
| retired wrote:
| It does. A large part of the country participates in that
| one.
| NickC25 wrote:
| I think the issue is a lot deeper than the article suggests.
|
| The problem is, society is fucking broken. The middle class is
| being decimated. People are going to take their destinies into
| their own hands, as seen by the growth of daytrading and sports
| betting. With wages being destroyed, billionaires avoiding taxes,
| COL skyrocketing for the middle and lower classes, and jobs
| evaporating, who's going to fucking blame someone for trying to
| figure out how to use what they know (in this case, sports) to
| make money?
|
| Plus, this generation has seen another class of gamblers (big
| banks) get bailout after bailout without any problem.
|
| Sports betting is the symptom, not the root cause that needs to
| be addressed.
| jimt1234 wrote:
| Honest question; sorta related: How long until prostitution is
| legalized in the United States? Sounds crazy, indeed, but when I
| was a kid growing up in Missouri - if you told me, someday,
| businesses will be open on Sunday, alcohol will be legally sold
| on Sunday, and there will be gambling casinos a few miles from my
| house, I wouldn't have believed you.
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