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Addiction Markets

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Re: Addiction Markets

#91

Post by strgcmc »

matthewdgreen wrote: post #60
savanaly wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the only “responsible” choice is not to gamble online I don't gamble at all in any form, but I still firmly disagree. Some people enjoy gambling in a way that never hurts them-- I've known countless friends and coworkers who talk about doing a bit of it in Vegas or what have you. You're saying every last one is a degenerate gambler somehow concealing it totally from me? They know they're not going net positive on t…

These services make a relatively smaller piece of their profit from "responsible" people with a lot of self-control. In many cases, the business is probably not viable without problem gamblers. Problem gamblers account for anywhere from 51% of revenue for sports betting apps, to 90% in the case of casinos [1,2] and the numbers seem to be getting worse. [1] https://portal.ct.gov/-/media/DMHAS/Publications/2023-CT-FIN.…

I got curious and validated your source [1], to pull the exact quote:

"The proportion of Connecticut gambling revenue from the 1.8% of people with gambling problems ranges from 12.4% for lottery products to 51.0% for sports betting, and is 21.5% for all legalized gambling."

Without going into details, I do have some ability to check if these numbers actually "make sense" against real operator data. Will try to sense-check if the data I have access to, roughly aligns with this or not.

- the "1.8% of people" being problem gamblers does seem roughly correct, per my own experience

- but those same 1.8% being responsible for 51% of sportsbook revenue, does not align with my intuition (which could be wrong! hence why I want to check further...)

- it is absolutely true that sportsbooks have whales/VIPs/whatever-you-call-them, and the general business model is indeed one of those shapes where 50% of the revenue (using very round imprecise numbers), but I still don't think you can attribute 51% to purely the "problem gamblers" (unless you're using a non-standard definition of problem-gambler maybe?)

Re: Addiction Markets

#92

Post by gassi »

skippyboxedhero wrote: post #56
supportengineer wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> addictive products being engineered to be as addictive as possible and deliberately punch people's brains in such a way to make them stay The exact same argument could be used to make social media illegal.

Hopefully, the responses to this have highlighted the kind of people you are dealing with. No-one can use social media because some people in our society can't control themselves. Socialise the losses.

You can allow freedom of communication while restricting the algorithms that have poisoned an entire generation of children.

https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2025/05/430011/yes-social-media-mi...

Re: Addiction Markets

#93

Post by stocksinsmocks »

brettgriffin wrote: post #8

The problem isn't the 70M people who placed bets, its the ~25M with broken risk aversion. These are mostly men, and a very specific type of men. You can try to curtail their access to gambling but we're missing the underlying problem.

I would entertain the possibility that there are at least some who cannot or will not avoid that kind of destructive behavior. The only thing you can do for them is deny access. I know that nobody asked for a lecture on 12 step, but number one is an admission that you do not have control.

Do you enable the majority who can manage risk, knowing some will be destroyed by it or deny it to everyone to protect the minority who can’t?

Re: Addiction Markets

#94

Post by alphazard »

sakopov wrote: post #88

> Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong rattled off crypto buzzwords at the end of the Q3 call, resolving $84K in prediction market bets to "yes." https://x.com/Cointelegraph/status/1984161085780263322

Polymarket is not even close to the same thing. Sports betting allows a blessed few corporations to run rigged markets and intentionally prevent price discovery by keeping the smart money out.

Polymarket uses open orderbooks where you match against someone else who wants the other side of the trade just like the stock market. Prices are set by the market, as they should be.

Re: Addiction Markets

#95

Post by asdff »

nekusar wrote: post #30

People are also leaving out stuff like Pokemon, Yu Gi Oh, and Magic The Gathering. All of them also introduce rarities (arbitrary exclusiveness), hidden cards in a pack, and extreme gambling gamification. The only non-gambling MtG packs are the preconstructed commander decks. All 100 cards are published. But the packs and boxes? Pure gambling, especially for the chase rare cards. And before anyone asks, yes, my usern…

I feel like it only became rampant in recent years. As a 90s kid no one cared about the card packs. We all assumed they'd be junk cards and a waste of $7 or whatever. No, the move for card people back then was to wait for the card show and just buy the cards you actually want from a card dealer.

The thing is now people are marketing the pack opening. You have social media accounts of them pulling cards from packs and getting all hyped up about it. Again no one thought that was fun in the 90s, everyone hated that aspect of cards in the 90s but thats because the unboxing as an experience wasn't marketed by anyone at all. People just wanted cards they thought were personally cool in some way.

And likewise expansion of markets in the internet era means people start to have shared values of what is a valuable card based on market price vs just being interested in some certain cards out of your own interest.

Re: Addiction Markets

#96

Post by asdff »

belkinpower wrote: post #35
nekusar wrote: post #30

People are also leaving out stuff like Pokemon, Yu Gi Oh, and Magic The Gathering. All of them also introduce rarities (arbitrary exclusiveness), hidden cards in a pack, and extreme gambling gamification. The only non-gambling MtG packs are the preconstructed commander decks. All 100 cards are published. But the packs and boxes? Pure gambling, especially for the chase rare cards. And before anyone asks, yes, my usern…

The Pokémon card mania in particular is deeply weird to me. I play Magic at a local card shop a few times a month and it’s always full of people playing Magic, D&D, or various board games. I don’t think I’ve seen a single person playing the Pokémon card game. So who’s buying the valuable singles? What’s keeping the market afloat? It’s bizarre.

People in their 30s and 40s. It is the same thing with boomers and comic books. What was once in mass circulation in your childhood is now out of print and commanding real value among your nostalgic peers.

Re: Addiction Markets

#97

Post by stocksinsmocks »

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #70
matthewdgreen wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These gambling businesses specifically target that 25M. You absolutely can make that much harder for businesses to do, and it will significantly reduce downstream misery.

This is the logic behind the war on drugs and we all saw how that turned out. Obviously there's nuance to be had as I think some vices, in both type and magnitude, are worse/more destructive than others. But crusades against vice rarely turn out well. Instead you'll see the same people huddled around in underground betting rooms and backroom card game tables where organized crime or just other muscle-for-hire are rea…

I would not call the California strategy on drugs a success.

Re: Addiction Markets

#98

Post by asdff »

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #71

On a somewhat related note, there seems to be a huge interest in vice policing on social media. Gambling, sex, drugs, these are some of humanity's oldest vices. Why has it become so popular on social media to highlight these, along with a narrative of social or cultural decline?

Standard bible thumping. You will notice that there is also an emphasis on traditional family values as well both in the media and in the positions of politicians.

Re: Addiction Markets

#99

Post by BoorishBears »

snuxoll wrote: post #74
BoorishBears wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't let society keep inventing new vices for profit in an uninhibited way. It feels like a bell curve topic, where the most naive people think you should just ban all vices and have a strictly better world, the middle of the road thinks it's all down to personal fortitude, and then people who know how the sausage is made realize the level of asymmetry that exists. Weed isn't just weed anymore, it's fruity pebbl…

> You can't let society keep inventing new vices for profit in an uninhibited way. I agree, but: > It feels like a bell curve topic, where the most naive people think you should just ban all vices and have a strictly better world, the middle of the road thinks it's all down to personal fortitude, and then people who know how the sausage is made realize the level of asymmetry that exists. There's a wide gap in beliefs…

I'm ascribing the same level of sentiment to both ends, that's what a bell curve is.

They have different reasons for their disdain, but neither side tends to love it.

In general the more people learn about the process, the more they dislike the current system. There's outliers, but that's why the last decade has mostly been a decline in general sentiment around big tech, and even in the last year AI doomerism is going increasingly mainstream.

Even the people who make these experiences don't do it beliving they're making something enriching. And they're definitely are not clamoring for their own families to grow up on this stuff.

> So many states have put ID verification laws out for accessing pornography, exposing citizens to huge privacy risks in the process, but we've got casino empires draining their savings accounts and can't do anything about it? Please.

That's driven by politicians pandering to the naive side of the bell curve, why are you surprised it's not consistent with what's best for the people?.

Their actions are driven mostly by what looks good at the polls and doesn't hurt their own bottom line too badly.

States are raking in billions of dollars in taxes from gambling, so it's not going to get that treatment.

Re: Addiction Markets

#100

Post by kiba »

savanaly wrote: post #41
gcanyon wrote: post #16

This line from the ads always strikes me as darkly ironic: > if you need help making responsible choices, call… Like, the only “responsible” choice is not to gamble online. What do they even think we’re supposed to take away from that line of the commercial?

> the only “responsible” choice is not to gamble online I don't gamble at all in any form, but I still firmly disagree. Some people enjoy gambling in a way that never hurts them-- I've known countless friends and coworkers who talk about doing a bit of it in Vegas or what have you. You're saying every last one is a degenerate gambler somehow concealing it totally from me? They know they're not going net positive on t…

That's like saying drunk gave alcohol a bad name.

It's a net negative for society but we can't simply get rid of it because of the side effect of doing so, particularly since it's so easy to brew alcohol.

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