The online sports gambling experiment | Hacker News Reader

The online sports gambling experiment

thezvi.substack.com

124 pointsA_D_E_P_T127 comments

Lots of people saying things along the lines of "this is bad for society, therefore it should be banned," and kind of making the implicit assumption that the counterargument against "sports gambling is bad" is "sports gambling is good."

I don't think that's it at all - the counterargument to "sports gambling is bad" is "we live in a society that places an incredibly high value on personal freedom, so we should err on the side of allowing people to do what they want, even if it results in some amount of harm, because the inherent value of allowing freedom of choice is high."

That's not to say we can't ever ban things - obviously there is a degree of harm that is high enough that we should sacrifice particular freedoms (e.g. you can't have a nuke). And FWIW I think this one certainly sits close to the line of being worth banning, but the point is that it's not a clear case just because the direct benefits to society of people gambling (which are minimal) outweigh the harms (which are substantial).

I think the most helpful way to consider the tradeoff is by using examples of what we allow in society now. Alcohol's a good one - without question a hugely harmful substance overall, but we allow it. Is gambling more or less harmful than alcohol?

Most gambling (and alcohol) addictions are the result of mental disorders, not freely chosen.

Not aving things in society which actively prey on people with atypical dopamine response patterns to the point of them committing suicide, harming others, and going into deep financial and physical ruin is ... an easy "tradeoff."

Most alcohol addictions are the result of mental disorders, not freely chosen. We know how that ended in the US.

I can count the number of times I consumed alcohol on one hand (I.e. I would not care at all if he hit Prohibition 2). But I'm not society. So where do we draw the line between "healthy" consumption of a nigh objectively bad thing and "this is a genuine danger, ban it"?

> even if it results in some amount of harm

I think society needs to draw the line when the bad thing harms innocent people. Addictions always impact the entire families, not just the person with the addiction.

The problem with banning alcohol is the enforceability is impossible. Enough people wont agree with the ban and we can't just throw everyone in jail. Similar cases include gun control or tobacco.

As the article discusses you don't need to ban alcohol you can just make it more awkward: - tax it - restrict the sales by age, location and time(see Nordic countries for a really strict version of this) - minimum unit pricing - warning labels Etc. You can argue if this is the right thing to do or not but it is enforceable and there's good evidence that these measures reduce consumption and harms.

I would be all for making sports gambling legal and unrestrained if society wasn't expected to pick up the mess if something goes wrong. The same argument with drug legalization: if we are morally on the hook for millions of dollars in rehab costs, then no, you shouldn't be allowed to do hard drugs. Alcohol and tobacco use are similar vices where I'm not ok with unrestrained access if society is expected to provide the resources to pick up pieces of bad results. Freedom with responsibility for your own actions is fine, freedom without responsibility is not ok, it simply isn't a feasible option.

I fail to see though how we can do this correctly either way though.

Option 1: full ban on alcohol and hard drugs because we have safety nets in place - basically similar to hard drugs today, but the bans are impossible to enforce and society is still constantly getting f*ked (take a walk anywhere in SF).

Option 2: libertarian style, no bans on any vice but personal responsibility is in full force, no bailouts for those who get in trouble. Problem is the addicts will still make a huge mess of things for the rest of us and they won’t clean up those “messes” themselves so we either put up with massive crime and addicts everywhere… or grudgingly pay for them anyway.

I’m not saying any of this to rebut and say you’re wrong, rather, I agree with you that those would be the ideal combos but I don’t know how we could make them a reality.

But then we are just stuck between option 1 and 2 as we are right now. My point is option 3: libertarian no-ban but full social safety net is the opposite of ideal, while options 1 and 2 are ideal but not achievable.

So here we are with some rules and some safety net, because its the only workable option?

Option 1: Increase punishments. Singapore handles this quite well.

Option 2: Goes back to 1. What does “messing” things up even mean? Losing everything and committing crimes? Increased punishments for the crimes.

After that we need to focus on making the cost of the punishments cheaper.

Thank you. I was waiting for someone to stir the pot and start to bring in alcohol. Keep it going this is good stuff.

This site is puritanical, although I have noticed this a lot with the left wing. In addition to speech policing the nags are going hard after gambling and alcohol. I’m very surprised they haven’t tried to outlaw porn to Save the Women

Outlawing pornography is a right wing speech policing platform. I think you have noticed more what you want to see instead of what is real.

https://politics.stackexchange.com/questions/88318/what-do-t...

In the US 'the left' (and it's various offshoots) is pretty much a straight-line descendent of Puritanism, albeit stripped of it's direct religious motivation. So while the right may ban porn because 'evil woman parts leading us astray', the left will ban it because 'exploitative patriarchal degradation of women'. In reality they've just found a different rationalization for a cultural choice that was made when the Mayflower first dropped anchor.

> So while the right may ban porn because 'evil woman parts leading us astray', the left will ban it because 'exploitative patriarchal degradation of women'

Your whole comment is pretty silly considering only one of these things is actually happening.

Neither has happened yet.

Age verification laws are becoming common in red states. Meanwhile CA is the porn capital of the world

Where did you get this from? We are as close to anarchism/libertarianism as you can find.

BS. This website has abandoned whatever liberalism it ever had and embraced trump.

Im a revolutionary leftist and I couldn’t disagree more. This crowd is not swayed by demagogues and is very much in their own category.

> Is gambling more or less harmful than alcohol?

Not sure if a serious question, but, yes, it is a lot, a lot more harmful than alcohol. I'm close to mid-40s and by this point in life I got to know both alcoholics (the dreadful '90s here in Eastern-Europe was full of them), a group which would include member of my family, and gambler addicts, which would include very close friends, and the latter are by far the most wretched human beings, it's not even a contest.

I've known alcoholics but not gamblers, how do they differ?

I've been in GA since 1998. How they differ is fundamentally this: you can't drink your entire week's wages worth of alcohol in a week. You can gamble your entire week's wages in a few minutes. An alcoholic or drug addict cannot indefinitely hide their habit due to the physiological effects that eventually become apparent. Compulsive gamblers can keep gambling for years, appearing to all like a functioning member of society, gambling way beyond their means before they get caught. Gambling addicts that turn to crime typically commit the biggest/longest running thefts/fraud. Gambling addiction has the highest suicide rate by far.

Aside from the "ban/don't ban" dichotomy, I think the other option is to basically add some legal friction to doing something to the point where those who really want to partake still can, but its difficult to the point where a lot of people who might otherwise participate don't bother. I take this as the main point of the article, its not that sport betting was impossible previously, but you used to have to travel to a casino or sign up for sketchy, illegal web sites.

Now there's almost no friction. You can place bets just by clicking on your phone, and not only that, there's now a ton of ads and other media reminding you that you can do so. Its pretty clear that this change has caused a huge increase in the harm done by gambling, so even if we don't want to straight up ban it, it seems worthwile to impliment at least some of the limitations that article suggests

Or tax it highly enough that you can afford to mitigate some of the societal ills without driving the market underground.

Fwiw, for reasons I don’t question, I’m up about 7800% with online sports betting. I regularly cash out, and claiming the winnings on taxes is painful. It wipes out whatever tax write offs you thought you had.

Why is paying income tax on income from gambling painful?

It's basically a case of heads you win 60%, tails you lose 100%. In almost all cases the taxes that you're required to pay on winnings is much more than the writeoff that you can get from losing, e.g. https://turbotax.intuit.com/tax-tips/jobs-and-career/can-you...

I cannot imagine how it would benefit society to provide full deduction of gambling losses, and can conceive of avenues for corruption to expand if it were offered.

That's true but the complaint that gamblers have (at least those who pay taxes in the US), if you win a big jackpot in January, say $10,000, and over the course of the year you lose all $10,000 so that you're even, you still have to pay tax on the jackpot (as normal income) but can't reduce the amount by the subsequent losses. Yes there is some ability to deduct some losses as expenses but it's not an even trade. It's hard to win at gambling, much harder the way the US tax code is structured. Keep in mind that many countries don't tax gambling winnings at all, so many people feel the US rules are unfair from the start.

Too late to edit my own comment but technically it is incorrect. If you keep meticulous records of the offsetting losses, the IRS may allow you to claim zero gambling income in that fiscal year and relieve you of having to pay tax on income.

What I stated above is true across fiscal years. If you win a $10,000 jackpot on December 31, and lose all $10,000 on January 1 (or at any point over the next 12 months), the above comment is true. You don't get to reduce your income in the next year by the $10,000 of losses, or edit the previous year's return, or offset the earlier win in any way.

If I’m at the point, as a hobbyist sports gambler of keeping meticulously accurate records, I’m no longer a hobbyist.

I could shorten that to “why is paying income tax painful” but if you don’t understand taxes, it’s like a micro version of winning the lottery, you don’t get all of it.

Or were you just being a prick?

> I could shorten that to “why is paying income tax painful

Yes, that was my point.

Welp either I’m dense or you didn’t make a point. We can go with the former.

Cheers.

Sorry, I just meant the original comment sounded like there was something especially onerous about income taxes on gambling winnings compared to tax on other types of income.

I dunno, it’s hard to describe. Imagine $10,000 on $47 and realizing that half that money never existed. I don’t mind paying the taxes on it, but claiming gambling winnings basically defeats any sensible financial tax strategy.

I think I’m the only person I know who claims them. I’m about to give it up because I never needed the money, it’s just fun to beat the house. The taxes really do suck.

You’re right, this website educated me on some of the inconsistencies/drawbacks compared to other income:

https://www.lhd.com/the-edge/if-you-are-a-recreational-gambl...

As a US taxpayer, if you win $10,000 on one day and then lose $10,000 the next day gambling, then you have to report $10,000 net gambling income for the year and pay taxes on that - even though you actually made zero.

Yes, this website educated me on some of the inconsistencies/drawbacks compared to other income:

https://www.lhd.com/the-edge/if-you-are-a-recreational-gambl...

Not true if you itemize.

I doubt that OP is talking about taxing player winnings. He's probably referring to taxing the betting companies. Anyway, I'm sorry you had to pay income tax on the income you made. Truly painful.

I hope you feel silly.

Just my two cents, but I think the appropriate compromise with highly addictive activities that we know can be harmful is to pass regulation surrounding advertisement/marketing. Particularly on advertisement/marketing to children. That way we allow freedom of choice while also assisting those who are more vulnerable to addiction.

I do not think it's appropriate to be constantly bombarded with ads for gambling when attempting to participate in sports culture. As of right now, it is unavoidable, whether watching on TV, going to the stadium, at the stadium, listening to sports commentary, or in the wider fan ecosystem (podcasts, YouTube, etc).

The problem here is the argument in favor of extreme freedom of choice is "I do what I want" is not a mature or rational ideology. Other than circular rhetoric around the idea of "freedom" no attempt is even made to justify the public or societal harms that this ideology opens the doors to. Why a simple cost benefit analysis isn't sufficient to plonk a ban in place is something of a mystery if you remove catering to petulant individuals as an objective.

Edit: If you think there's something incorrect with dismissing individuals ability to externalize harms to other blameless individuals I've got a 50 gallon drum of spent motor oil I'd like to externalize on your lawn. Explain why that's problematic.

Also just to be clear, the article is not arguing that sports gambling should be banned, just easily accessible sports gambling on your phone.

The argument "is it worse than X which is already allowed" is a nice legal argument, but it is completely unmoored from the reality that now you have twice the actual damage to society.

If I invent a new addictive substance that has the same risk profile than alcohol but doesn't displace it, alll ivve managed to do is create another new problem of the same magnitude. Rinse and repeat until your "standard" wrecks society.

There is a very actual example with COVID: "it's just the flu". Well, even if it were true (it isn't, BTW), we now have two "flus" knocking off our workers, fragile citizens and healthcare...

I believe there are 4 common types of the virus influenza.

I’m all for people having the freedom to throw rocks. Can you try not to hit me in the face with rocks, though? It’s annoying.

Similarly, if you want to place a wager, that’s great. If you want protection under the bankruptcy code because your executive function is poor, please try to avoid sticking me with the bill. It’s annoying.

What about the negative externalities? Sports betting has led to more mental illness, bankruptcy, and people who resort to government benefits and crime. The libertarian philosophy is generally live and let live as long as it doesn't harm others.

Part of the issue is how "the thing" (in this case, gambling) mutates post-legalization (and also via technology). Sports betting was a minor pastime that a small percentage of the public engaged in, mostly just occasionally and usually for minor stakes. Part of that was the inherent friction - you needed to either be in Las Vegas or have an illegal or offshore bookie. And still, you needed to place bets in person or on the telephone. Today it's in your pocket 24x7, every sport available including international, and instead of betting on a game, you can bet every quarter, every player, every play. The degree to which sports gambling has penetrator society has multiplied probably 100x over what existed prior to legalization.

Oh, and sports is just a doorway to full mobile casino gambling (slots, blackjack, video poker, etc), already legal in a few states, growing quickly, which will ultimately be a much larger gambling market.

> Alcohol's a good one - without question a hugely harmful substance overall, but we allow it. Is gambling more or less harmful than alcohol?

an exceedingly lazy skim of the literature has alcohol with all cause mortality at about an odds ratio of 1.27 [0], gambling disorder about 1.8 OR for all cause mortality w/ 15 OR for suicide [1]. So gambling is comparable to substantially worse than alcohol.

Perhaps the better rephrasing of your counterargument is "we live in a society that places an incredibly low value on public health." Gambling is an emerging public health crisis and allowing i-gaming is most certainly the wrong choice. Which probably means we'll allow its expansion at great cost to society. At least the gambling companies will get some cashflow though :3

[0] https://academic.oup.com/ije/article/53/2/dyae046/7632292?lo... [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-020-01045-w

Ideally alcohol would also be banned. Obviously that doesn’t work because of enforcement challenges so we shouldn’t ban gambling either. But that doesn’t mean we need to make it super easy.

This article touches slightly on how online sports gambling is ruining sports for non gamblers as well in the “The Product as Currently Offered is Terrible” section. We don’t get interesting stats or in-depth analysis by commentators now. All we get is the odds, over/under, etc. I will see pregame shows where commentators will pick 5 leg parlays (who benefits from this?) Sports as a product is shifting completely to a means of online gambling. I suspect it is because they make more money from a gambler than a viewer.

I agree this is true, but I think it ignores the way commentary went before sports gambling - it was rambling anecdotes, random stats and lots of repetition (and that was the good commentators). Every once in a while you'd get a really entertaining color commentator (I personally love to listen to Jeff van Gundy rant about anything) or a very insightful former player (think Tony Romo calling out the defenses before the ball is snapped), but for the most part sports commentating has always been mediocre because the essence of the job is filling hours of time per game with talking.

I agree that commentary was rambling anecdotes, stats, and repetition, but when I turn on the tennis channel and I see the commentators talking about the “Fan Dual match of the day” and the current match line odds, it makes me think the commentators are no longer for me (non-gambler), but for fan dual customers themselves. I do not have a problem with anyone gambling, but I would like prohibition of sports betting ads for content broadcasters, or at least limit advertisements to commercials only, no more integrating with the broadcast itself. Could you imagine commentators talking about the best F150 deals or any other commonly advertised product every 10 minutes? (Please don’t give advertisers any more ideas)

"but when I turn on the tennis channel and I see the commentators talking about the “Fan Dual match of the day...”

This sort of promo message is almost as old as sports broadcasting itself. Go to a baseball game and everything is "Seventh Inning Stretch brought to you by Tire Plus" and "The Schweigert Sausages Mascot Race" and "Bud Light Fan Cam" and a million other sponsored messages. This is no different really, except it's for a product you find objectionable.

Gambling might be a math problem, and it might be a grift, but it’s definitely not a product.

The ad's aren't for gambling itself, they're advertising a specific gambling platform. An advertisement for Absolut Vodka isn't strictly an ad for alcoholism, it just also happens to contain that message.

Well said. For me, watching anything regarding the NFL in the past ~8 years is borderline intolerable. The godawful commercials with loud as shit volume, every broadcast "segment" needing a fucking ad spot, the sappy 20 minute stories about the running back's 2nd cousin's wife's childhood babysitter going through an oh-so-hard time with cancer that was only made to get more women to watch, the political grandstanding...I can't take it. I've barely watched any games this year.

Gambling in general is a scourge on society. Legalizing online gambling, enabling mass gambling advertising on the internet/TV/radio/etc in many countries has only exasperated what I'd consider an already desperate position for the most vulnerable.

Gambling for me very much falls into the category of “if you’re dumb enough to do it then you deserve to get what’s coming to you” type activities - as in, how do you preserve the practice for adults who enjoy it responsibility, while restricting access to those who’d be better off without it? Who makes that decision? Abolition clearly isn’t a realistic option - so what to do, apart from education and sin tax?

Regulation against dark patterns.

gambling /is/ a dark pattern, it's basically the archetypal example

True, but there are people who get paid to make games even more addictive. You don't see many old one-armed bandits in Vegas anymore because the newer games are more alluring and addictive, therefore profitable.

I think gambling should be legal as it is possible to do responsibly. But I'm no libertarian. I think that money would be better spent elsewhere and I'd support restrictions on advertising.

If you’re stupid enough to get depressed you don’t deserve to rot in bed all day. If you’re stupid enough to get sick you don’t deserve to go into debt.

But I think that’s the difference between seeing gambling as an activity and an addiction.

>If you’re stupid enough to get depressed you don’t deserve to rot in bed all day.

Given how much my country invests in mental health clinics, I think that's what many people up top think, yes.

* Don't allow advertising for it, period.

* Standardize the UI. No animations. No cartoon characters. No flashing, sounds. It should look more boring than Craigslist. No A/B testing. No hiring psychologists to "optimize" the UI.

* No "retention team". No freebies, kickbacks, offers, comps.

* Implement a voluntary ban list, and enforce it strongly. Someone that decides to ban themselves from gambling for life should be unable to bet even a penny.

* Setup a "qualified gambler" program, similar to "qualified investors". You can bet $1,000 per year, or 20% of your YoY growth in net worth, or 1% of total net worth, whichever is greatest.

How about just "Don't allow advertising period"?

I love the idea of a qualified gambler. Stealing this for conversation!

I would like to subscribe to your newsletter. Also I volunteer to design the gambling UIs. I will use Microsoft Excel 97 as my inspiration.

I love the idea of gambling having all the appeal of options trading, that is to say, something that looks and sounds kinda complicated and confusing to the uninitiated.

the article proposes that placing bets should be done in-person at specific locations. no mobile apps or websites.

This is addressed in the article. The idea is that it shouldn't be made illegal, but it should be made annoying.

Do what they do with tobacco and alcohol in most of the world. Sin tax and education are possibilities, but also limit advertising, enforce age limits (annoying age checks are also a deterrent for adults), have people go to a designated physical location (what the article suggests), mandate the display of anti-gambling messages, forbid 24/7 service, etc...

Physical casinos are typically heavily regulated, and often limited to select areas (ex: Vegas), why not online sports gambling?

And if a husband is stupid enough to gamble, his wife deserves the increased likelihood of domestic violence? And his kids deserve for the household to go bankrupt?

These aren’t hypotheticals. The article demonstrates that they are real, measurable effects of gambling.

Correct. Folks here don’t even begin to talk about Dave and busters or Chuck E. Cheese with their own terrible betting systems designed for kids were the company script (tickets) buys sugar poison at prices that would make your local robber baron jealous of you!

But no one cares that we begin the stupid-person-to-gambler pipeline right at those moments. No one calls to ban Chuck E. Cheese. In fact, it’s the opposite. We embraced those companies with horror games like five night at Freddie’s - horror games whose characters were rapidly used for internet degeneracy similarly to the overwatch characters.

I think excessive gambling is a preview of the ugliest face capitalism could show from time to time. After inflicting pain on the society we’ll learn to keep gambling away and in very restrictive settings such as casinos and places that require determination to go to. By then the investors will have collected their loot and moved on to some other exploitative endeavor.

Im not against gambling per say, but the dark patters and exploitation of human psychology are what irk me. I had some friends whose lives went down the drain due to gambling.

I feel similarly - there is a real dystopian feeling, for instance using UK as an example, of every other shop on high street being a shiny colorful betting shop. Seems like more and more the surviving/thriving business are vice related and it is creepy and depressing, to me at least.

I place a couple of online bets a year on big events. It's a bit of fun and i can afford to lose what I stake

What you need is good regulation, which is pretty much what we have in the UK.

I'm American but lived in Toronto from 2022 until a couple months ago.

I was astounded by the amount of online gambling ads just literally pasted everywhere in Toronto. When I got YouTube ads, a huge percentage was for these. They were pasted over the whole body of streetcars and in transit stations throughout the city.

I don't know much about the current status in the U.S., but Ontario at least seems to be completely infected by gambling ads. They must be making insane amounts of money off exploiting people's gambling addictions, as well as creating new addictions daily.

> I'm American but lived in Toronto from 2022 until a couple months ago.

Just for clarification, do you mean you were astounded by the amount of ads in Toronto? Or in the US?

> I don't know much about the current status in the U.S., but Ontario at least seems to be completely infected by gambling ads.

I just live in a small farm town, so I'm not really exposed to ads or billboards in my daily life. Online gambling ads aren't in our local newspapers yet, at least.

Sorry that I wasn't clear. This was in Toronto. I've yet to see quite as many such ads here in the US, but it's possible they were just pushed out by political ads during this period.

My hypothesis is that the disenfranchised young men complaining that they don’t have enough money because of inflation have really just been blowing their money on online sports gambling and refuse to admit it.

I think the most interesting part of this is that people treated it as an experiment when the externalities of gambling were widely understood and very negative.

Even in the well regulated cases things like state lotteries they are effectively taxes on the poor, and the best arguments we've got are "we should let anyone do what they want" - sure, but we shouldn't make it easy for corporations to exploit anyone in any way they want.

If you want to setup with a local bookie and deal with that you're going to filter out a huge portion of starting gamblers.

Anyone publish a study about the harmms of legalised stock trading (day traders), currency traders, auction hunters, real estate speculators, collectables, crypto hoarders etc you get the point. The only difference is time between sessions, wager amount and tangibles. The next revolution in gambling will add some ownership element, akin to bitcoin.

There is a difference, though. Stock trading is a non-zero-sum game, investment can result in an overall economic growth.

Betting is _literally_ a zero-sum game that doesn't provide any economic benefits.

Amazing you had to point this out. Some people are so used to thinking of the stock market as a gambling platform that we forget it serves an actual purpose, and is probably one of the primary drivers of our society’s prosperity.

That said, I’ve worked in consumer trading, and almost all of the profit margin comes from customers engaging in gambling-like behavior (e.g. crypto and options day trading). It’s a big reason I don’t work in that space any more.

>that we forget it serves an actual purpose, and is probably one of the primary drivers of our society’s prosperity.

We chose to give our fate of "prosperity" to monopoly money and we wonder why people became lonelier, more depressed, and hopeless in life.

When services cease to serve society and instead this speculation for people well off enough to participate, it should be no surprise Goodheart's law is minmaxed towards enshittification over quality. Shittier but higher engagement algorithms, price hikes on a whim, ads everywhere on your screen real estate, paywalls for essential news. And subscriptions for things that have no business being a subscription. So many subscriptions. I could go on all day.

And ofc the final optimization of this phenomenon is reducing costs on the mode expensive part of a business: labor. Automate it away or become a US shell company when 95+% operates in a 3rd world country paying well below US minimum wage. That's exactly what society needs, less reasons to get out of bed.

But if it made a few dozen billionaires even richer, I guess that's all that matters in the end.

I’ve traveled a bit and it’s pretty clear that the US has extremely high material prosperity. It’s not universally distributed but it is widely distributed. It’s not purely smoke and mirrors and creative accounting.

Certainly there are things that matter more in life than material prosperity, and there are many alienating things about western society.

Less than zero, really

Money spent transferring share(s) ownership doesn’t impact the companies cash flow unless it’s new shares emmision (eg if I buy issued coca cola shares, only the broker gets spendable cash).

Regarding gambling being a zero sum game, someone has to design, manufacture, service, install and operate the machines. Lots of employement building those machines. And taxes earned operating them. You do know that approx 5% of state revenues come from gaming activities.

Matt Levine had an interesting point/counterpoint here:

> There are a lot of ways to put your money into the stock market; some of them feel mostly like “fun gambling,” while others feel like “boring sensible investment of retirement savings in the long-term growth of the economy.” A lot of retail brokerage accounts will let you do both. If you are young, carefree and confident, and don’t have very much money, you might gravitate toward the gambling stuff. And then later, as you get more money and responsibility and grow up a bit, you will get more curious about buy-and-hold investing in low-cost index funds.

> And you can do both of those things — and transition between them — in the same brokerage account. This is good! Arguably it is socially useful for brokerage apps be competitive with, say, sports gambling apps, to be as fun and easy-to-use and exciting and risky as sports gambling. Because investing is competing with sports gambling for young, risk-seeking people’s attention. But the brokerage app is better positioned to transition those people into boring responsible investing. There is no analogous transition in sports gambling. Here is a recent paper finding that sports betting “does not displace other gambling or consumption but significantly reduces savings, as risky bets crowd out positive expected value investments.” Zero-day options are, arguably, a bit better than that.

> Again you cannot get too carried away with this theory. Is it socially beneficial to introduce riskier and zanier financial products to retail brokerages? Well, if the zanier products lure customers away from sports betting, and start them on a road to mature sensible investing, then yes. If the zanier products lure customers away from index funds, and start them on a road away from sensible investing, then no. I’m not sure there’s an a priori answer.

I'd still argue it's all gambling, even though there are many safe and boring bets. We can't guarantee Gold won't be obsolete in 40 years or thst we find some insane vein or synthesis process that deflates the value. We can't guarantee we hit some depression right when you want to cash out.

Leaving your money to banks with the hopes you end up on top is pretty much gambling no matter what. Even if it's safer than most traditional gambling.

It does fit the second dictionary definition of gambling: "take risky action in the hope of a desired result". However at that point almost everything you do in life could be called 'gambling' so it kind of loses all meaning. Buying a Big Mac? Gambling that it isn't infected with e coli. And so on.

I've never thought of this theory. By analogy I suppose it says 'brokerage apps are to sports gambling as vapes are to cigarettes'

Sports betting is bad because it is gambling and not productive. Stock trading is good because it supports creating value like new sports gambling companies.

We're also only one scandal away from destroying public trust in a professional sports league. That would be bad for the culture too. It's always seemed shortsighted to me that the leagues are directly partnering with gambling apps.

MLB and NBA have already had corrupt officials and players altering the game for gambling purposes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_League_Baseball_scandals

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_NBA_betting_scandal

NFL also has players that NFL itself “punishes” for gambling, although I don’t think any refs have been caught yet:

https://www.nfl.com/news/nfl-reinstates-five-players-who-wer...

Add earlier this year Jontay Porter of the Toronto Raptors was banned for life after he was found to be betting on himself and throwing games/stats[0]

It was kind of swept away that it appears many players are now betting.

https://www.npr.org/2024/04/17/1245301982/nba-bans-jontay-po...

Since when were they trustworthy organizations? Seriously I've always been under the assumption it's run by a bunch of deep pocket fat cats.

I don't follow sports but even I know that the baseball champions a few years ago were cheating. That wasn't enough to destroy trust?

I'm glad op rethought it. But how the hell do you go into the casino business and not realise you're doing something that is a social net negative. Have you not heard of the film Casino. Or how do you not realise you're going into the casino business, I guess?

I enjoy gambling on sports for small sums. I put $500 or so in a book a number of years ago and I've basically stayed even over that time. But I do not think the current climate is healthy, and it's definitely predatory. An signs of sophistication shown by bettors gets you banned or limited real fast, but meanwhile losing players are showered with incentives to keep playing. I would very much be for banning advertising and promotions.

I've seen engineering job postings for sports books and daily fantasy sites, and while I think those problems would be really fun to work on, I don't think I could work at a place so predatory. I already work for a rapacious mega-corp, I'd rather my next job not be even worse.

I don’t gamble but the emphasis on it is turning me off from sports. Betting lines have metastasized on the broadcasts and much of the commentary.

The silver lining is that it’s pushed me to watch more of my towns local teams. I’ve realized what I like about the sports is less professionals at their best than a competitive game well-played.

I can get that at the high school level.

In Brazil there is a recent trend with gambling called "fortune tiger" aka "tigrinho". It's just a ridiculous ugly slot machine. You can pickup and play in a second.

You see people playing while working in the cities. Mostly poor people playing.

YouTube is completely inundated with videos revealing the, I kid you not, "best strategy".

These are made with a special version of the app for influencers that have a higher chance of gain, apparently this is well known.

Here's a recent video from just yesterday with a "strategy" https://youtu.be/sDQdIUl777M?si=-0tZ0OMN3HeQtFdn

Here's reporting on the issue 11 months ago.

https://youtu.be/FU5e5TLvol8?si=cqmLkZXR96ucgvIi

The worst part of it is the corruption of the sports themselves as gambling encouraging fixing of competitions (by refs, etc) and other forms of cheating. But this breaking of a recreational game's rules isn't enough to justify the use of violent force against those that gamble (ie, the old status quo of it being illegal). As with most things you can only control your own behavior and refuse to participate. What others do is up to them.

The best solution to a societal gambling problem is genuine economic growth. Debt fueled "stimulus" mostly finds its way into the hands of the well-connected. Inflation hurts the poor the most, increasing the severity of an already desperate situation. Real economic growth, on the other hand, gives opportunity and hope to the lowest in society (who are more likely to be gambling what they can't afford).

I've heard sports gambling as an explanation for why people don't feel prosperous despite low unemployment ,wage gains, etc.

This is an extraordinary claim that needs evidence.

I'd love to read more about this if you have links.

Red state-ers are the king of scams, MLMs, pyramid schemes, and most other forms of terrible good for nothing businesses. This is the party of the payday loan shark and of the buy here pay here used car scamsman.

It seems like even a year ago there were not many online gambling ads in my vicinity, but today they seem ubiquitous. From the ad spend they are willing to do, my assumptions about their ROI suggest I should not be doing any sports gambling.

Legalizing Sports Gambling Was a Mistake

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41659458

Well, my state voted for it way back in 2022 (or was it 2020?). I think that was one of the few times I left a choice blank.

The theme of the 2020's has been people voting against theirs or society's best interests zo it's just keeping on theme.

Should Sports Betting Be Banned?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41665630

Everything is gambling. Kalshi, polymarket are the apps du jour. Before that robinhood and crypto. The culture is pervasive now.

Yep, sneakers (which is now crashing hard), collectibles (also mostly crashing for non-functional cards like sports), etc, are all the same as well. COVID and stimulus checks were a turning point imo.

This article was so poorly founded with its thesis hoping that the reader has the naïveté of a serf.

The point of regulating gambling isn’t to protect the gambler, in my mind. It is to protect those around them, i.e. to reduce externalities. Kids can’t protect themselves. Women who, through no fault of their own, suffer 9% more beatings when their home team loses.

On the other hand, there is more than one alternative to libertarian hands-off approaches that completely ignore externalities.

I would not be suprised if in future gambling activity gets rolled into an aspect of credit worthiness/background checks that employers conduct on staff.

Gambling debts make people desperate.

Being blackmail-able has been part of a background check for sensitive roles dating back to well before the Internet. Illicit drug use, gambling, marital affairs are all fair game if you wanted to work at, eg, the FBI.

Yes, but I am talking more about non-sensitive roles.

Eg. Businesses with cash handling functions may be willing to pay to find out if potential hires have gambling activity recorded (in addition to the usual credit and criminal activity checks).

Who would realistically ban this?

I don't think it's an unreasonable guess that sports bettors are more likely to have voted Republican in the recent election: they are likely men, and men that stereotypically like watching sports at that. Republicans are anti-regulation, Trump in particular wants two pieces of regulation removed for any one regulation added (whatever that means).

Democrats are not in power and remove sports betting "for your own good" would make them even less popular with this demographic, which does not respond well to that sort of thing.

Great article.

And, the bonus story is that a bunch of libertarians think this is worthy of regulation and prohibition. That's a fascinating discussion.

What's the point of working hard? Many industries have no upward mobility. Your reward for working harder is that your boss fires your coworkers and keeps you at the same pay so you can do their jobs, too. You're supposed to just hustle until you literally drop dead.

I can understand why people decide they're better off just gambling and hoping for the best.

We should establish a Haidt of online gambling so we can have another merry-go-round into how there isn’t enough conclusive evidence to correlate gambling to shitty outcomes.

Any volunteers? We are all here in the breeches waiting for a champion to rise up and give us the arena for the smorgasbord of shitposting that is about to commence from the vultures that benefit off of societal decay.

Edit: not sure why the downvotes. This is exactly what’s going to happen.

Edit 2: Bingo. See one of the top posts in this thread defending gambling by trying to draw parallels to alcohol. Let the shitposting begin.

A worry about the incoming American president has nothing to do directly with the proliferation of sports gambling nor the harms it brings, but the sudden absence of formerly available data that might-just-might contradict the narrative of an industry that's unzipped its change purse and let Trump have at the mic stand inside (a horribly multi-mixed metaphor, but apt).

"That data set you got there, UC Consumer Credit Panel. Sure would be a shame if something happened to it, you know, if, say, somebody decided to publish a post tying bankruptcies to our donor's lil $300 billion enterprise here. Capiche?"

That's happened with climate data during his previous term, so expect more (of less).

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