I have realized I am increasingly becoming radicalized against the concept of sports betting. I have previously viewed it with the same sort of libertarian attitude I have to most vices - acknowledging the danger associated with it, but thinking people who do it responsibly should not have their fun ruined on account of people who cannot. But with the growth of the industry and the increased access and reduced barriers that’s come with mobile apps, and the the growing interconnectedness with professional sports leagues and the promotion that goes with it, I am increasingly coming around to the thought that it cannot continue in its current form
This is from a piece I read today and I think there is no way to see this as anything other than predatory and socially damaging
One of the YT channels I follow did a good video (I thought) about this just the other day:
Usually a comedy channel, but shone a bit of a light onto just how predatory and normalised sports betting has become.
It’s not something I’ve ever been into, and being as tight as a duck’s arse thanks to my Scottish ancestry I doubt I ever will, but I can see how if you’re that way inclined it could be a very sharp, slippery slope.
I have a major downer on betting in general. I’m not sure if that is a personality thing, a maths thing, or having seen people’s lives ruined by it.
As a kid, I had an uncle who used to spend a fortune on the horses (or, more usually, donkeys). He actually knew a fantastic amount about the sport and often could pick out half the winners on a race card but would put his money on something else because “the odds were too low”. Occasionally his long-odds nags would come up trumps, and he would instantly forget about the wads of cash that he had flushed down the toilet.
I remember hearing a Glasgow bookmaker talking about meeting his punters in the street. He said that they would always tell him how they had cleaned him out with this or that bet. In fact he said that he couldn’t work out how he could still run his Rolls Royce.
I find the advent of online gambling quite dispiriting. I could understand that someone going to the Bingo or a race meeting, even just an afternoon with a bucket of coins at the bookies, could have it’s social element. The gambling was just a MacGuffin to get people together.
With online gambling, it is the equivalent of sitting alone in the kitchen with a bottle of cheap vodka.
Add to the already mentioned problems the permanent threat of match fixing. With that kind of money involved, comes the temptation to influence the odds…
Back to the topic though, I think the larger problem is that discipline is quite a nebulous concept. People have different levels of discipline at different points in time, even within the day itself. Depending on your energy levels, your stressors, and everything else.
This idea that it’s because too many people not having any discipline is not very far from saying that people in poverty are poor because of some moral failing. It ignores the very real structural issues that mean that their action space is limited, which often means they don’t have much of a hope against something like that.
It’s similar to the lottery, right? If you have no hope of earning something close to a middle-class income, why would you not keep buying lottery tickets in the hope that you will one day strike it rich? In that perspective, it’s not hard to see why someone would think that’s actually a rational decision, even if it might not be true in the grand scheme of things.
Sports betting to me is actually more similar to other addictive substances, because it feeds on a particular psychological weakness. I think it should be far more regulated than it currently is, but then again, so should alcohol and nicotine but…
I appreciate it might seem like that, but if you look deeper at it, the psychological mechanisms it preys on are like why people in poverty tend to have more addictions.
It’s not because of the addiction that they’re in poverty, it tends to be because of the poverty that they’re in addiction. Similar concept. A healthy person doesn’t usually end up addicted to gambling either.
They aren’t making massive amounts of money from poor old John on benefits though are they?
You know what age the most gambling happens currently.
Around 11-12 it’s due to computer games and games in general.
Oddly I’m actually trained in addiction support and specifically this area.
It’s the line it crosses but stand in a casino which we were doing the training in for about 20 minutes at 10am in the morning you’ll notice this isn’t just people in poverty.
I’d agree, but my point was that ascribing a moral failure to it is wrong, but as per usual I went on a tangent with the whole poverty thing instead of focusing on the important point.
Yeah, this is where my opposition is coming from. I have one friend who has caused himself some real problems with the way he cannot control himself in a casino, but the opportunities for that are obviously limited. The things the casinos do to make you spend money once you are in are quite exploitive, but you have to go out of your way to put yourself in that position. At that level it is a vice I am quite libertarian about.
The modern situation, with it being heavily promoted on whatever sports you are watching with an app giving you 24/7 access, is very different. In that context, the psychological tricks used by the casinos to get you to spend your money have been ramped up to 11 by these apps, are far more pervasive and, to my mind, unethical to the point of me not being ok with it.
It’s an addiction. Those ‘rules’ can be applied to anything; human nature is not designed to be permanently moderate and reasonable - we evolved to adapt to feast and famine and addictive behaviours are natural offshoots of this.
@Iimiescouse is right and his should not be seen as a ‘radical’ position
Gamblers, especially addicted ones, like drug abusers, affect more than themselves, that is always the issue. They affect their family, people around them, children who grow up in incomplete families, becoming bitter and many more ills. That is while I accept the right for anyone to choose what they want to do, but embrace the idea of punishing enablers of vices to the biggest extent.
Not sure how it’s done there, but in Singapore, we have a system where the addict can either exclude himself from casinos or his family members can apply to exclude him from casinos. It does not take away the addiction immediately but at least reduce an avenue for further harm.
