On principle, I think sports gambling should be legal. But people quite clearly can’t handle it, so it’d be better for society if was illegal on apps.
It is a little messed up but not having to publish the odds should be regulated. "hey get a token that's increases your odds". They could go from 1 million to one odds to 999,999 to one and no one would know
Oh for sure. The problem is people are doing it with money they need. The first rule of gambling is don’t bet money you can’t afford to lose. Hell I put a parlay together for $25 to win $1.4 Million for tomorrow. I know it’s losing
I like this post a lot and agree with you. I tell people all the time, sports betting is supposed to be fun. Don’t go into to make money, bet a small amount of money, and now you can watch any type of sport and have a rooting interest in it
I'm a degenerate but semi responsible, I think to slow down gambling it would be wise to cap wins. Say you hit a parlay at +1700, it's rare but you hit it, you then chase the next one and so on, just shooting from the hip but if you limit a player to something like a +3000 weekly amount they would be more likely to withdrawal the money at least instead of losing it all back trying to hit the next big one. Obviously casinos would lose more but it's the only way I see slowing it down and as always these are all personal choices
there’s a very good argument that the stock market has become an underregulated dream casino. The vast majority of retail investors would be far better served with an employee pension
In the like 5 news reports/documentaries I've watched on this seemingly everyone stops enjoying watching sports unless they have money on a game. As someone who can watch pretty much any sport and be entertained it just seems pretty sad if someone gets to that point.
You're very correct. For me it really matters what sport. Football/Basketball/Hockey/tennis, I can watch all of it. Now something like if a soccer game is on tv, the only way I’ll be interested in it, if I put some money on it
Something that doesn’t get talked about enough is the possibility of match fixing. there’s billions of dollars at stake and the average official makes fucking peanuts. the only thing surprising about the Tim donaghy scandal is that we haven’t uncovered 10 more since
It’s the smaller leagues you have to be concerned about. Match Fixing in lower level tennis is massive and by far the easiest to fix since it’s 1 v 1. There is lower level called ITF and Challenger. If you lose 1st round of qualifying in challenger, usual rankings are 300-900 in the world. The loser will make like $300 from the tournament. Now think about the gambling side, there’s millions being bet on the match.
I bet it happens all the time. I mean hell the alabama baseball coach did but luckily he’s the biggest idiot on the planet
I also hate that an increasing amount of sports coverage is tilted toward gambling. I like the Cover 3 podcast, but find their gambling advice boring and bad. And when having a conversation with acquaintances about sports and immediately all they want to talk abut is there bets and why I don’t gamble on sports.
Love the altruism but some of these solutions don’t seem to be anchored in the reality of our current moment or the appetite for regulation or for that matter the general exploitative nature of who decides what in America.
It’s extremely prevalent in e-sports too. Virtually impossible to detect and tremendously profitable to people making $3k a year
I know the people championing legalization always harped on the bookmakers being able to pinpoint potential fixing because the amount bet on a particular game were way above normal. I'm sure that's true to some extent but I have no idea about any particular procedures or whatnot.
I’m sure the bookmakers know when the fix is in, they just don’t care. they try to combat it by having low limits on weird shit like e sports and third division European tennis
This is a great article on match fixing in tennis. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/interactive/2023/tennis-match-fixing-itf-grigor-sargsyan/ It's sad because being Top 150 in a sport in the world, and you can barely turn a profit. I've literally made more money betting on a match than the guy losing the match does.
It 100% makes it easier to find match fixing with the legal sports, it's why you always see people getting caught in Europe well before it was caught in America.
Tennis is a world sport compared to like NFL. You're not getting the volume in USA but around the world its crazy. Tennis used to be the 4th most bet sport in the world behind Horse Racing, Soccer & Cricket.
Gambling is a disgusting industry and this was so predictable in the U.S.. Why oh why was it liberalised as precisely the worst moment?! I used to enjoy that US sports media was largely gambling free, or at least it was a nod and a wink and specific media that did it.
said this in another thread but as scummy as it is, it's more a tax avoidance scheme than it is predatory different version of shitty