Sports gambling is perverting sports. When ESPN has special segments on good bets you know we have lost our way.
Americans increasingly see legal sports betting as a bad thing for society
181–190 of 525 posts
Re: Americans increasingly see legal sports betting as a bad thing for society
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sports betting is not a game of pure chance, but bookmaking is arguably ethically quite problematic. Most individuals are going up against these very sophisticated statistical models created by teams of quants working with huge datasets that you have to pay substantial amounts to access. I think most bettors don't know what they're up against. And the bookie business model is intrinsically anti-consumer: if you win t…
> Most individuals are going up against these very sophisticated statistical models created by teams of quants working with huge datasets that you have to pay substantial amounts to access. There are two things you might do as a bookmaker: (1) Perceive the truth of who is likely to do what, and set odds reflecting that perfect Platonic reality, but with a percentage taken off for yourself. (2) Adjust the odds you off…
I have worked in the betting industry for several years. And the reason I'm writing is to tell you that while (2) sound logical, it was not used during my time in the industry. Or to be more precise, of course the odds are adjusted all the time to balance the market, prevent arbitrage etc, but it was also very common to have a 'loss leader bet', usually on the favourite, where the betting company would take a loss or make very little money if the favourite wins (but if that happens the customers still don't make a lot, because the odds are already low, and betting on a favourite is not a winning strategy because the real fav loss probability is higher than the odds would suggest). OTOH what is also often done is when 'real odds' are very high (low probability), the odds that are offered are way lower than the probability would suggest. So if 'real odds' are 100:1, the company would offer 50:1, so, even taking into account the company margins, you as a customers are never offered anything close to the real probability and as a consequence unless you are exceptionally good can never make money (and if you do your are banned).
Re: Americans increasingly see legal sports betting as a bad thing for society
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would say gambling in itself isnt immoral. The problem is that a small % of people get addicted and end up spending all their money and more on betting. And that the industry makes almost all their profits on those that are addicted.
Sure, we could get into a discussion on the morality of gambling itself, but if we look at pretty much every global ethical tradition (Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, etc.) it is frowned upon strongly. It seems to me like widespread gambling = negative social effects is a pretty widespread, obvious conclusion that most civilizations have reached. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambling#Religious_views
> widespread gambling = negative social effects
Though this is conflating correlation for causation. As you note yourself in GP, dire social conditions is what makes people see gambling (or risk-taking more generally) as one of the only viable options to get out.
Re: Americans increasingly see legal sports betting as a bad thing for society
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
> you might as well throw your money at something that has the possibility of making your rich I don't think anyone is getting rich from sports betting. It's not like the lottery, where the jackpots are massive and the odds are very long. And the jackpots get massive in the lottery because they accumulate when nobody wins, whereas in sports bettings, the gambler always either wins or loses, based on the outcome of th…
You are right customers are not getting rich from sports betting, but the true reason is that once 'the house', the betting company sees a consistent winner, it will ban them or lower their betting limit to discourage them from betting again. There are people that would get rich otherwise. Also betting companies are coordinating their odds to prevent arbitrage. And also, of course: there are gangs influencing the out…
> There are people that would get rich otherwise.
This is highly unlikely. Nobody has the magical ability to predict the outcome of sporting events.
> there are gangs influencing the outcomes of the sport events and selling the bets or organizing betting on them. Fraudster bosses, if they are smart, are absolutely getting rich.
This is highly unlikely for most of the things that Americans are gambling on, such as NFL games.
> But you didn't mean those.
It doesn't appear to be what the OP meant.
Re: Americans increasingly see legal sports betting as a bad thing for society
#185Is it bad for society? It's certainly bad for individuals, and by extension their families. I guess if it scales up such that a serious chunk of society is affected, then yes its bad for society. Let's start with the obvious- in all forms of gambling the gamblers make a net loss. The games are hosted by very sophisticated companies, that have better mathematicians, and make money. $x is pumped into the system by the…
I do think advertising is the lowest-hanging fruit here. There's no good reason we should be letting sportsbooks run ads during games that are watched by kids
Kids are the majority of people I know who bet a lot. Mostly teenagers on the ski lifts talking about parlays and long shots.
Re: Americans increasingly see legal sports betting as a bad thing for society
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, we could get into a discussion on the morality of gambling itself, but if we look at pretty much every global ethical tradition (Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, etc.) it is frowned upon strongly. It seems to me like widespread gambling = negative social effects is a pretty widespread, obvious conclusion that most civilizations have reached. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambling#Religious_views
> widespread gambling = negative social effects Though this is conflating correlation for causation. As you note yourself in GP, dire social conditions is what makes people see gambling (or risk-taking more generally) as one of the only viable options to get out.
Just because the causation goes one way doesn't mean it cannot go the other way, too. We call those vicious cycles.
Re: Americans increasingly see legal sports betting as a bad thing for society
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are right customers are not getting rich from sports betting, but the true reason is that once 'the house', the betting company sees a consistent winner, it will ban them or lower their betting limit to discourage them from betting again. There are people that would get rich otherwise. Also betting companies are coordinating their odds to prevent arbitrage. And also, of course: there are gangs influencing the out…
> There are people that would get rich otherwise. This is highly unlikely. Nobody has the magical ability to predict the outcome of sporting events. > there are gangs influencing the outcomes of the sport events and selling the bets or organizing betting on them. Fraudster bosses, if they are smart, are absolutely getting rich. This is highly unlikely for most of the things that Americans are gambling on, such as NFL…
> This is highly unlikely.
It is my experience from working in the sports betting industry for several years, including the risk reporting and risk managing part. In fact I'm pretty sure several people lived comfortable life by going around our risk management by using a loophole that was possible at the time in our country - it was possible to bet anonymously in person. So while we could limit maximum winnings per bet, we could not tie particular bets to persons, and they just placed several bets in different locations, or they used helpers.
I'm not going into speculations how they acquired the knowledge. Some people are just nerds, others sit at the stadiums and place bets right from there etc., but I'm pretty confident there are customers who are able to make money on sport bets and are not fraudsters.
Re: Americans increasingly see legal sports betting as a bad thing for society
#188What I'd like to know is why did legalizing sports betting = complete change of the sports media landscape? Like the question asked doesn't seem to be around how sports betting has been integrated. it's just "is sports betting good or should we ban it."
Im fine with sports betting, what Im not fine with is my hockey games being saturated with ads, odds, and commentary about something that they keep telling us is tangential and not supposed-to-be-taken-seriously!
The whole thing is pathetic and I don't see how it's sustainable. There's going to be a Mothers Against Gambling movement or something after enough lives get wrecked.
And I'd like to add that most of the people throw the term around "lives get wrecked / ruined" flippantly around this, but that's exactly what it is. Your life is wrecked, you can't fix it, nothing can fix it. If only you never started gambling...
Re: Americans increasingly see legal sports betting as a bad thing for society
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
> There are people that would get rich otherwise. This is highly unlikely. Nobody has the magical ability to predict the outcome of sporting events. > there are gangs influencing the outcomes of the sport events and selling the bets or organizing betting on them. Fraudster bosses, if they are smart, are absolutely getting rich. This is highly unlikely for most of the things that Americans are gambling on, such as NFL…
> This is highly unlikely. It is my experience from working in the sports betting industry for several years, including the risk reporting and risk managing part. In fact I'm pretty sure several people lived comfortable life by going around our risk management by using a loophole that was possible at the time in our country - it was possible to bet anonymously in person. So while we could limit maximum winnings per b…
> several people lived comfortable life
> in our country
A comfortable life in which country?
And "several" means "more than two but not many".
> they used helpers
So, this doesn't sound like just ordinary people who have lost hope.
The thing about lottery tickets, as opposed to sports betting is that the lottery requires zero skill. You buy a ticket, and if you get lucky and your numbers are randomly chosen, you win. Anyone can hope to win the lottery. But becoming a professional sports gambler, or a professional poker player, for example, is not really the usual response to losing hope.
Re: Americans increasingly see legal sports betting as a bad thing for society
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
Gambling (without very strict rules) has a net negative outcome. You're not doing anything valuable, nor neutral, by gambling. So it could well be viewed as immoral.
Gambling is addictive because it gives you a dopamine rush. That’s why people gamble because it’s actually enjoyable. I personally don’t see the argument for categorising it as immoral on the basis that’s it’s not useful. The same could be said about plenty of other enjoyable things. However exploitation is clearly immoral. That’s where I have issue with gambling. Gambling operators don’t get rich thanks to the avera…
Most Americans regard as immoral any substance or activity to which ordinary people become addicted at a significant rate.
Addiction breaks social ties. For example, when an addict starts to struggle to continue to pay for his addiction, he often starts to steal from friends and family members.
The average view on this on HN is quite different from the American average. Personality psychologists have observed that people who do well in software development and entrepreneurship tend to be high in a trait called "openness to experience". Maybe HNers are more tolerant of addictive substances and activities than the American average because addictive substances and activities tend to be interesting experiences.
(I am restricting my universe of discourse here to the US only because it is the country I know best.)