I listen to a lot of basketball podcasts and they are all, even the biggest national ones, trying to get people to gamble
It seems like it's gotten a lot worse after COVID, though
It seems like it's gotten a lot worse after COVID, though
Now the NBA is heavily pushing gambling and the revenue that comes with it, In addition the NFL is also pushing fantasy football which is veiled gambling, a few years ago every commerical for an NFL game had 50% of its ads set to either draftkings or fanduel which are both gambling sites. So I see a huge predatory gambling cloud enveloping all sports which is a really sad turn of affairs.
I follow soccer, and right after that mlssoccer.com started publishing vegas betting odds for all the games, and ESPN FC started using UK betting odds for EPL and EUFA competitions.
They're definitely warming up Americans to the idea of normalizing betting and sports betting in the mainstream.
Keep in mind that black market sports betting is/was a multi billion dollar industry in the US so much of what you are seeing now is just more visible.