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The rising human cost of sports betting

nytimes.com

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Re: The rising human cost of sports betting

#241

Post by JohnWhigham »

lapetitejort wrote: post #197
nsxwolf wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people buy lotto tickets so they can spend a few minutes in blissful daydream before they come crashing back down to their financial reality. It's like a very cheap drug. It makes them feel good, so it serves a purpose. Feeling good is good.

Having read horror stories of people winning the lottery, I can't even daydream about being rich. I would much rather be an average wage-earner than have my life be destroyed by money.

I mean, when it's mostly stupid people playing the lottery, all that money isn't going to make them magically smarter.

Re: The rising human cost of sports betting

#242

Post by asdff »

jacobsenscott wrote: post #152
michaelt wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, there are various other modern trends: * All stock market stuff feels modern, because 15-year-olds don't talk about it but 25-year-olds do. So it feels like something that wasn't really around/popular when you were young. * Some would say retailer investors who want to buy individual stocks should be holding them for the long term - and that a mobile app, letting you trade on the go, is an anti-feature. * The r…

Apps like robinhood encourage and even gamify frequent trading at the expense of naive investors and because that's where brokers make money. Coinbase and their ilk do the same in the crypto market. Frequently trading stocks, and doing anything in crypto is just as much gambling as betting on a sports game, appeals to the same demographic, and is just as destructive. Yes, stock picking and penny stock scams have been…

Coinbase exposes an api that lets you do some pretty interesting and powerful strategies. Let's see a bank do that. No, seriously, I'd sign up tomorrow for a bank like that.

Re: The rising human cost of sports betting

#243

Post by vgeek »

wolverine876 wrote: post #74
philwelch wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sports betting has been legal in Europe for a very long time and we have yet to see a UEFA Champions League thrown.

That you know of. How does anyone know? Edits: Imagine the NFL learns that yesterday's NFC Championship game was fixed. What would they do? Make it public and destroy their entire enterprise? My guess is that many would hide it if they could, and the people involved certainly wouldn't want to talk about it. And imagine if they learn about it in 6 months, long after the Super Bowl. Just in terms of on-field results, h…

You can see what happens in an already dying sport that has its largest event tainted by a cheater (KY Derby & Bob Baffert). The cheater sues the company that issued a temporary ban due to his cheating. The fans are in the wind, the horse is now deceased (probably attributable) and the offender will probably end up with a shorter ban/wrist slap. He, and others, have been caught numerous times for the same types of offenses, but it normally gets swept under the rug until it boils over and hurts the sport even more by occurring on the largest stage of the year.

Re: The rising human cost of sports betting

#244

Post by dragonwriter »

gnopgnip wrote: post #225
Pet_Ant wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>([I] think you should be able to do pretty much whatever the eff you want with your body and money). ... The decision to let the exist is as arbitrary as the decision to allow them to only play when they [win]. How do you square that with giving people autonomy? You can do what you want with your money, but you can't play if you don't feel like you are gonna win... there is an inherent contradiction there.

If you are a business open to the public, you can't discriminate based on gambling skill the same way you can't discriminate against other types of customers.

FTFY: If you are a business open to the public, you can discriminate based on gambling skill the same way you can discriminate against other types of customers, so long as the basis is not a legally protected class enumerated in public accommodations law (for most businesses), or the specific law applicable to your business (for businesses in industries with indistry-specific anti-discrimination law instead of being subject to general public accommodation law.)

Re: The rising human cost of sports betting

#245

Post by asdff »

aidenn0 wrote: post #148
majani wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Referees in all the top leagues still get paid average salaries yet they are the most powerful person on the field. They are the point of failure in modern sports

Maybe other leagues pay less, but mean NFL referee salary is about $200k. I suspect it wouldn't be cheap to pay one of them off, since getting caught risks prison time, damages, and millions in future income lost.

City councilmembers in my city are paid about as much and the price for them is apparently only like 20-50k cash for quid pro quo that could land them prison time, according to the FBI investigations from the ones who got caught at least. That's nothing compared to what could be gained.

Re: The rising human cost of sports betting

#246

Post by asdff »

webkike wrote: post #21
ben7799 wrote: post #18

I think it's just a matter of time before we see a Super Bowl or World Series thrown due to the legalization of Sport betting... We have been here before and seen all of this before and it's really hard to believe history won't repeat itself. It's stupid all the way down.

Matter of time? The World Series has already been thrown, it was called the black Sox scandal and as far as I know it didn’t even require sports betting to be legal

Thrown with the astros recently too. Can't believe heads didn't roll for that scandal.

Re: The rising human cost of sports betting

#247

Post by philwelch »

wolverine876 wrote: post #74
philwelch wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sports betting has been legal in Europe for a very long time and we have yet to see a UEFA Champions League thrown.

That you know of. How does anyone know? Edits: Imagine the NFL learns that yesterday's NFC Championship game was fixed. What would they do? Make it public and destroy their entire enterprise? My guess is that many would hide it if they could, and the people involved certainly wouldn't want to talk about it. And imagine if they learn about it in 6 months, long after the Super Bowl. Just in terms of on-field results, h…

You're right, maybe it's all rigged. Maybe the 2020 election was rigged too, and 9/11 was an elaborate case of insurance fraud. Maybe birds aren't real. But unless there is evidence for these types of claims, there's no reason for anyone to take them seriously.

Re: The rising human cost of sports betting

#248

Post by asdff »

wolverine876 wrote: post #74
philwelch wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sports betting has been legal in Europe for a very long time and we have yet to see a UEFA Champions League thrown.

That you know of. How does anyone know? Edits: Imagine the NFL learns that yesterday's NFC Championship game was fixed. What would they do? Make it public and destroy their entire enterprise? My guess is that many would hide it if they could, and the people involved certainly wouldn't want to talk about it. And imagine if they learn about it in 6 months, long after the Super Bowl. Just in terms of on-field results, h…

This is hilarious because when this exact scenario played out with the MLB with the astros and the red socks not too long ago this is pretty much what happened. It certainly soured a lot of fans on the integrity of the league.

Re: The rising human cost of sports betting

#249

Post by asdff »

wolverine876 wrote: post #102

An interesting question (to me) is how legalization of gambling happened politically? For a long time, there was a strong political consenses against it. Where is the religious right, for example?

It happened simply because the rich wanted to gamble. Vegas was built into what we knew it because organized illegal gambling was pushed from the city of LA to the unincorporated sunset strip in what is currently west hollywood, and then out of california entirely. The very people that were prosecuted for gambling in LA found politicians in Nevada who had water and electricity from the hoover dam, but no people or industry, and welcomed their casino developments with open arms and made them into kings. What was criminal became legal, regulations penned by the regulatees, and Las Vegas became what it is today.

Re: The rising human cost of sports betting

#250

Post by throwawayboise »

missingrib wrote: post #158
margalabargala wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People like to say this because it's a nice sound-bite that lets people feel like they themselves are not among the stupid. It ignores the reality that poverty is a causative agent for lacking the appropriate math skill to recognize that playing the lottery is not a good financial choice, and self-perpetuates that poverty.

I think poor people understand the math behind the chances of winning the lottery.

Yeah, they figure they're going to be broke by the end of the week anyway, so might as well spend some money on the lotto and at least have the dream that they might win. They don't see a downside, because they don't see a way out of their situation.
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