Discussion

When legal sports betting surges, so do Americans' financial problems

SoftTalker: 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: Fun turns to disaster when you lose. Sadly, many can't control it, destroying entire lives in the process.(Not passing judgment)

recursivedoubts: 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...

gruez: >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: 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: 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: 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?

chistev: 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.

gz5: 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

gruez: >+ C19 - states fast track the legalization of mobile sports betting and online casinos to secure immediate tax revenueThis 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.

gnopgnip: If you profit at sports betting they limit your bet size severely

skyskys: who cares what people do with their money, gambling is most peoples way out of poverty.

sidrag22: > 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.

evilduck: [delayed]

skdhfkdjfhsjk: It was a quaint, simpler time. Now we are much more sophisticated and modern.

unethical_ban: 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?

chistev: You can just jump bookies.

vkou: > 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 revenue.What it did is shift the state's tax burden towards people who play the lottery.

carefulfungi: > 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.

nikanj: 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 launchSummed up very nicely in https://oldcoinbad.com/p/long-degeneracy

revlsas: 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

conscion: 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.

toast0: 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.

anonym29: When legal alcohol surges, so do Americans' liver problemsWhen legal cannabis surges, so do Americans' memory problemsWhen legal junk food surges, so do Americans' obesity problemsWhen legal gay marriage surges, so do Americans' fertility rate problemsThe puritans never really give up, do they?

Acrobatic_Road: you can always go back and finish later...that's what I'm doing.

fasterik: Remember when alcohol was illegal? Ahh, the remote, halcyon, bygone days of the 1920s.How about we treat adults as adults and let them make their own choices?

deadbabe: All those serving hard time in prison for sport gambling crimes should be pardoned.

sandy_coyote: Pete Rose: reprehensible pariah or radical pioneer?

OptionOfT: 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.

SoftTalker: 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. 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.

1bpp: 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: We limit alcohol advertising because it also has an addictive quality.Limiting gambling ads the same way might be a good step.

toast0: My school expires credits after 7 years.

hgoel: I guess you also think we need to stop policing drunk driving? Because the reasons for regulating gambling are similar.

fasterik: 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 themselves.

hgoel: 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.

jeffbee: What about Frank Rosenthal? Admittedly these guys are extremely rare, that's why the handful of successful ones are famous.

chistev: Never heard of him