Comment by hoistbypetard | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hoistbypetard | Hacker News Reader

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I was just having this conversation with friends a few days ago. We do still watch games, but we all used to also watch sports news/talk shows (e.g. morning pre-football coverage, SportsCenter, and the like) and most of us have stopped. Some of the shows are now exclusively focused on betting.

I'm all for consenting adults to be able to legally place wagers at outlets that are not swindling them, or offering the kinds of loans that could get a person's legs broken.

But I'm so tired of ALL THE COVERAGE being about betting. It was more fun when the coverage was mostly sports, and Al Michaels had to sneak in the odd mention of what the point spread was for a game he was broadcasting.

Even my friends who enjoy gambling don't like the media coverage of it. I guess we're not a representative sample.

> Even my friends who enjoy gambling don't like the media coverage of it.

You may well be representative; it’s just that all these parties directly invested in gambling would rather expand gambling as much and as fast as they can, at the expense of turning off their whole audience.

Much like politics, it's been decades since the coverage has had anything substantial to say about the issues or the candidates, it's all treated like a horse race now, who's gained or lost 1% in the polls.

Yes this is exactly what I mean. Coverage of the sport has been replaced with coverage of the gambling games around the sport.

Honestly it's a lot like the alcohol ads being everywhere. I don't have a problem with drinking alcohol but this is supposed to be a sport enjoyed by the whole family, and there are broadcasts where the inning break is filled almost entirely with hard liquor advertisements. Even at the ballpark it's hard to avoid advertising for beer and other drinks.

Sort of? I mean the actual news shows have been replaced by things like ESPN Bet Live[1], which are focused on betting. I'd also like the alcohol ads to be fewer and farther between, but the gambling thing has expanded into shows too, not just ads.

[1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ESPN_Bet_Live)

Is there so much discussion of betting related to all the ads purchased by gambling companies?

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