What Would a Nation of Sports Gamblers Look Like?

[bittraffic]

The Circa opened at a time when online sports betting, which is now legal in more than twenty states and the District of Columbia, was in full march across the United States. This meant that the Circa not only faced stiff competition from well-funded competitors such as DraftKings, FanDuel and Caesars but it also was trying to sell an in-person experience that might very well be woefully out of date. For four of my friends and me, renting one of Circa’s “Millionaire’s Row” football-watching booths on an N.F.L. Sunday required a twenty-five-hundred-dollar drink-and-food minimum, with a mandatory five-hundred-dollar tip. Instead of just firing off bets on our phones in front of our own televisions, on our own couches, we had to stand in line to place bets at a window. Some of the modern innovations in sports gambling, which include live betting, where you can wager in the middle of a game, and elaborate parlays, where you can string together multiple exotic bets for one giant payday, are harder to find at a brick-and-mortar casino like the Circa. On an app, you can also bet on everything from South American soccer leagues and global cricket matches to political races, most of which were not offered at the brick-and-mortar Circa sportsbook and likely not at the smaller sportsbooks in Las Vegas.

In interviews and in the press, Derek Stevens, the owner of the Circa, has seemed a bit coy about why he built this place. But here’s my theory: Stevens intuits, perhaps correctly, that widespread sports-gambling legalization will bring what once was a barely clandestine culture fully out into the open. Betting apps, then, aren’t really his competition but, rather, client-outreach vehicles that could help lure people into his casinos, especially for big events like March Madness and the Super Bowl. He has created, in essence, the Disney World of sports gambling—a place where large groups of people go a few times in a lifetime, and splurge on everything from bets to cabanas and spa packages. All he needs for the vision to work is a nation of sports bettors ready to open their wallets.

Creating a nation of sports bettors would presumably require the participation of the nation’s most populous state. (Thirty per cent of visitors to Las Vegas last year came from California.) The state has two sports-betting-legalization measures on this November’s ballot. Proposition 26 would allow sports gambling, but only at brick-and-mortar tribal casinos and racetracks. Proposition 27 would legalize online sports betting, and passing it might result in something like the app-based, heavily marketed gambling blitzes we’ve seen in New York and New Jersey.

The supporters and opponents of both proposals have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to saturate Californians with ads; this has led to a great deal of confusion among voters. Nobody seems to know which proposal does what, which ones are supported by the tribes—an important political concern, especially within the progressive nonprofit space—or even what the bills will actually do. The Web site for YESon27, for example, mentions very little about sports gambling at all. Instead, it focusses almost exclusively on the money the bill would raise to ease homelessness through a monthly ten-per-cent state tax on sports betting: the funds would first be used to cover regulatory costs, but, after that, eighty-five per cent of that money would go toward addressing homelessness, and the remaining fifteen per cent would be distributed to Native American tribes that are not involved in sports betting.

Most of the money to stop Prop 27 has been raised by gaming tribes that operate casinos that, along with a broad coalition that includes the California Democratic and Republican parties, have brought up everything from the addictive properties of gambling on your phone to tribal-sovereignty issues. Their argument relies on the premise that online gambling is much worse than going to a casino in person, which, of course, is totally fine. In fact, the big gaming tribes seem to be saying that in-person betting is so fine that everyone should support Prop 26 instead and allow sports gambling—but only in racetracks and, of course, their casinos.

It’s all a bit silly and disingenuous. One side uses the homelessness crisis as a cover for legalizing sports-betting apps; the other pretends that they alone can provide a safe gambling experience. Neither proposition is polling well—a recent U.C. Berkeley poll showed that a mere twenty-seven per cent of voters support Prop 27, a response that is doing only slightly worse than that for Prop 26, which is seeing support from just thirty-one per cent of likely voters. The marked lack of support has pushed the proponents of Prop 27, which include the big app companies like FanDuel and DraftKings, to mostly give up and wait until 2024 to try again.

None of this means online sports betting is dead in California; in fact, all it really highlights is that many powerful interests appear to be cornering what they think will be a lucrative market. The amount of money at stake and the other states that have already bought in may actually broker some sort of compromise between the tribes and the app-based gaming companies. The tribes could also spend the next few years trying to build their own apps, and trying to control the market themselves.

Online sports betting, as I wrote last year, seems to fit in with Robinhood, stock-trading apps, and cryptocurrency trading in getting users—usually young, impressionable men—hooked on losing their money. It took New York State about a month after legalization to become, for a while, the largest sports-betting market in the country; thanks to aggressive customer-acquisition campaigns that included incessant ads and free bonuses and bets, gamblers in the state wagered $2.8 billion in the first seven weeks. Some studies have shown that sports betting is five times more likely to lead to problematic play than other types of gambling. Other studies say that online gambling is more addictive than analogue casino betting. (Though it should be pointed out that, at least in California, the casinos are helping to push that narrative.) Because the big online-gambling companies can roll out their services almost immediately after legalization, and have a seemingly unlimited amount of money for promotions, they will likely outpace whatever support infrastructure that can get built to help addicted bettors.

I’ve spent way too much of my adult life in casinos and cardrooms and sportsbooks, where I’ve met more than my fair share of problem gamblers. I’m still not sure if app-based sports betting is much worse than betting in the Circa sportsbook, where a few steps in any direction run you directly into a slot machine. The idea that it’s somehow healthier to place your bets at a racetrack than on your phone doesn’t really pass muster. Gambling addiction is, in many ways, built on sensory compulsions: the smell of the grass at the track, the sound of a roulette ball bouncing across the face of the wheel, the sharp edges of the dice digging into your fingers. It’s still an open question as to whether the apps can match up to the sensations of physical spaces that have been designed to suck the cash out of your pockets.

There’s a well-worn maxim in gambling that says you should assume everyone is lying to you at all times. This rule also seems to have carried over to the debates about online sports betting, where the only thing you can really trust is that every press release and every commercial is specifically aimed at cutting someone into the action or cutting someone else out. Instead of trying to cloak the issue in more palatable talking points such as tax revenue and homelessness funding, politicians, lobbyists, and the corporations who want FanDuel and DraftKings in their state might do better to just ask the question in a more up-front way. Because Americans, on the whole, do seem to want to become a nation of sports bettors—this year, Maine, Kansas, Minnesota, and Massachusetts passed sports-betting legislation. The will of the dudes in Instagram shorts with a few expendable dollars to put on a game will be served.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/what-would-a-nation-of-sports-gamblers-look-like

Prop27 focuses thier ads across the country exclusively on tax from sports betting being used to ease the homelessness problem.
Most supporters of Prop26 are just in favor of in-person betting than online gambling because it's much worse.

The politics related to these propositions are at work that gaming tribes want to control the market while the other side is where big online gambling companies like FanDuel and DraftKings want a bigger share of the market. But as the author said, the tribes can build thier own app to compete in online sports betting platforms in the future if prop27 wins. This leads to debate about online sports betting in the end and as he said you should assume everyone is lying at all times.

The author is still debating which prop he favors but he drifts to pointing out NY took about a month to become the largest sports-betting market in the country after legalization because online sports-betting companies can immediately roll out their aggressive promotions. Although he is unsure if app-based sports betting is much worse.

It doesn't matter whether you are a sports gamblers who sits in front of a big screen betting on football matches wearing football jerseys and baseball caps they wore backward or the sports gambler who just sits down wearing pajamas at home betting with thier phones. I think it drifted far enough to see what we look like upon deciding on online betting legalization. Wearing a cosplay costume will probably just apply on metaverse if there is ever a possibility of this. Would you wear a costume on Meta?

As a sort of compromise, both parties I think can just arrange not to decide until the tribes are ready to launch thier online app as well for better competition. For the sake of fairness. This is just about making money so in order to not cut each from opportunity, they could work out instead of resisting the future development which is going online betting and perhaps adopting crypto as well which I think is what they could next be dealing with. Things are going in this direction.

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[Don Pedro Dinero]

I see two things here. The first is that I am surprised that there are a lot of states in the USA where gambling is not legalised. Gambling has its bad things, like alcohol for example, but it is more than proven that by prohibiting it you don't eliminate it, you leave it in the hands of mafias and you stop collecting taxes. And this brings me to the second part, that part of the taxes will be used to help the homeless seems to me to be a poor argument. What we have to do is to attack the root of the problem and try to avoid, or at least reduce the percentage of homeless people.

Then, as for the clothes that people may be wearing, I consider that a secondary issue.

[bittraffic]

I see two things here. The first is that I am surprised that there are a lot of states in the USA where gambling is not legalised. Gambling has its bad things, like alcohol for example, but it is more than proven that by prohibiting it you don't eliminate it, you leave it in the hands of mafias and you stop collecting taxes. And this brings me to the second part, that part of the taxes will be used to help the homeless seems to me to be a poor argument. What we have to do is to attack the root of the problem and try to avoid, or at least reduce the percentage of homeless people.

Then, as for the clothes that people may be wearing, I consider that a secondary issue.

I actually see this a fight for old and new mafias.

Everybody likes the noble cause and if anyone oppose the Prop27, those guys will really look like a villain in the eyes of the society. The gaming tribes will  definitely look like they are the ones preventing the advancement of the legalization measures. But both party have politicians on thier sides which I guess this is going ot be a numbers game.

[swogerino]

I see two things here. The first is that I am surprised that there are a lot of states in the USA where gambling is not legalised. Gambling has its bad things, like alcohol for example, but it is more than proven that by prohibiting it you don't eliminate it, you leave it in the hands of mafias and you stop collecting taxes. And this brings me to the second part, that part of the taxes will be used to help the homeless seems to me to be a poor argument. What we have to do is to attack the root of the problem and try to avoid, or at least reduce the percentage of homeless people.

Then, as for the clothes that people may be wearing, I consider that a secondary issue.

It is exactly like this,true.They prohibited gambling where I live in 2019 and guess who took it in their hands offering it underground in the web and different physical locations controlled mostly by them,yes the bad people,the outlaws,criminal bands.The government has made it legal again starting from 2023 because of this,so this is true,any thing you prohibit it will be used even more but just under the radar,that is why many groups here call for legalizing marijuana,legalizing public houses and many other things because in here even public houses are forbidden.

I don't like a nation of sport gamblers as they would be in default debt really soon because no one would really work,all of them would have their mind in their betting  .

[Queentoshi]

I don't like a nation of sport gamblers as they would be in default debt really soon because no one would really work,all of them would have their mind in their betting.

A nation of sport gamblers will have the problem of having citizen who are mostly Irresponsible. The gambling will not affect everyone making everyone irresponsible, but it will surely have the number of irresponsible people more than the responsible. The irresponsibility is people who gamble without control, and those that will do anything just to keep getting money to gamble including involving in crime.

[Fivestar4everMVP]

I don't like a nation of sport gamblers as they would be in default debt really soon because no one would really work,all of them would have their mind in their betting.

A nation of sport gamblers will have the problem of having citizen who are mostly Irresponsible. The gambling will not affect everyone making everyone irresponsible, but it will surely have the number of irresponsible people more than the responsible. The irresponsibility is people who gamble without control, and those that will do anything just to keep getting money to gamble including involving in crime.

I totally agree with both you, here my country Nigeria, i dont have to go far to see how a city or nation of sports gamblers would look like, i just go to the ghetto, the rural part of a city, there, it is filled with youths of all ages, even old men who are so lazy to work but would rather sit at the betting shop all day chatting and ranting about stuffs that make absolutely no sense while smoking and drinking.

Indeed, a nation of sport gamblers, to me , would be one of the most useless nation in the world as such a nation will be filled with irresponsible men and woman and even children, everything in such a nation would be at their waste state both basic amenities, health care etc. as none would pay any attention to making sure this things are put in place and working as it should, all they will always think of is gambling, gambling and gambling.
May such a city or nation never come into existence in this world.

[traderethereum]

I don't like a nation of sport gamblers as they would be in default debt really soon because no one would really work,all of them would have their mind in their betting.

A nation of sport gamblers will have the problem of having citizen who are mostly Irresponsible. The gambling will not affect everyone making everyone irresponsible, but it will surely have the number of irresponsible people more than the responsible. The irresponsibility is people who gamble without control, and those that will do anything just to keep getting money to gamble including involving in crime.

It will really cause problems for the government if its citizens cannot be responsible for gambling and will make many citizens addicted to gambling.
They also will not think about how their life will be because they are more busy thinking about how they can have money so they can gamble every day.
And it can also trigger crime rates to rise sharply because if people lose a lot, they will think about having more money, which can lead them to commit crimes.
Perhaps the government needs to modify the regulations on gambling and enforce them strictly so that its citizens not only gamble but can also be responsible for their lives.

[mindrust]

I see two things here. The first is that I am surprised that there are a lot of states in the USA where gambling is not legalised. Gambling has its bad things, like alcohol for example, but it is more than proven that by prohibiting it you don't eliminate it, you leave it in the hands of mafias and you stop collecting taxes. And this brings me to the second part, that part of the taxes will be used to help the homeless seems to me to be a poor argument. What we have to do is to attack the root of the problem and try to avoid, or at least reduce the percentage of homeless people.

Then, as for the clothes that people may be wearing, I consider that a secondary issue.

Gambling makes people poor and in a country like the US, you are literally fucked if you are out of money.

Smoking and drinking alcohol will ruin you financially too. See how expensive your health insurance will get when you consume both.

People in the US don’t smoke or drink alcohol, not because they hate these products. It is because they have done the math and they don’t want to get robbed by the big pharma.

Gambling on the other hand has nothing to do with your physical health (your mental health is another story) and that’s why there isn’t any entity to keep you in line other than the government and the government always ban the stuff which can’t have it under control.

[Baofeng]

I don't like a nation of sport gamblers as they would be in default debt really soon because no one would really work,all of them would have their mind in their betting.

A nation of sport gamblers will have the problem of having citizen who are mostly Irresponsible. The gambling will not affect everyone making everyone irresponsible, but it will surely have the number of irresponsible people more than the responsible. The irresponsibility is people who gamble without control, and those that will do anything just to keep getting money to gamble including involving in crime.

For a country like us, since when I have the ability to understand what gambling is, I saw a lot of problems as well. Crimes for one, and then parents becoming irresponsible like would just go and play all day without taking care of their kids. However, this is just prominent in provinces here because of the proliferation of illegal betting, underground cockfighting and others and it is being control by a group of powerful men and that they have corrupted and bribe the police and even government officials. On the other hand on the city, we have big casinos and you can see the same pattern though. Because when I go, I see a lot of gamblers who really trying their luck, just average joe who want to make it big by winning. We have a term here, "one day millionaire", and that's what their goals is. So I guess I have witnessed what a nation of not just sports gamblers, but gambling in general looks like.

[ethereumhunter]

If a nation decides to legalize gambling and allow its citizens to gamble freely, the government must be prepared for the following problems. Maybe the problem will be financial problems, mental health, to losing everything that people have because they can experience big losses in gambling. This will be even greater if they are not responsible for themselves when playing gambling so they will continue to gamble until they forget the time. And if that is the case, the government should help those who are having problems because they will not be able to solve the problem if they are not aware of it.

[YOSHIE]

Indeed if we talk about Las Vegas never ending in the world of the gambling industry, there are always new ideas and tricks that are applied to make gamblers feel happy and enjoy when placing bets, especially sportsbooks carried out by Circa Casino.

I just took the point that was conveyed by Derek Stevens, his goal was to build a sports gambling place only for clients who visited Circa Casino in Las Vegas from various nations, even though it's only once in his life to seek thrills in the online sports betting arena, he likes it when nations visit there betting sports betting, drinking, have fun and plus with the ladies of the night, it's a great gambling place and brilliant idea done by Derek, because casinos in other countries the rules are not the same as those in Las Vegas in the United States.

[qwertyup23]

I don't like a nation of sport gamblers as they would be in default debt really soon because no one would really work,all of them would have their mind in their betting.

A nation of sport gamblers will have the problem of having citizen who are mostly Irresponsible. The gambling will not affect everyone making everyone irresponsible, but it will surely have the number of irresponsible people more than the responsible. The irresponsibility is people who gamble without control, and those that will do anything just to keep getting money to gamble including involving in crime.

I do think that what the government is trying to do is by preventing addiction rather than curing it.

Though this may be the case, I find it too restrictive to the point that there are states that completely prohibit online gambling. But, this kind of problem may easily be remedied by visiting other states and gambling on it. While it may be inconvenient for you, but it relatively solves the issue of complete prohibition done by some states that prohibited gambling.

Again, while I am not in favour of completely prohibiting gambling, I do understand the implication that the government did by making this move.

[Cryptomultiplier]

My imagination has traveled far and around, once I saw this thread.
 Well, it may not be as bad as one might assume, because I believe for a nation to agree to such, knowing fully well the pros and cons involved in gambling, stringent measures to ensure it is controlled will be put in place. However, with the way I see it, legalizing gambling, is as good as saying yes to other vices that symbiote with it.
No nation wants to have to exhaust its resources in keeping up with ensuring gambling is in moderation, and also provide security or medical/psychiatric free or paid sessions because of those who don't know how to call it quits during a game.

[noormcs5]

Gambling on the other hand has nothing to do with your physical health (your mental health is another story) and that’s why there isn’t any entity to keep you in line other than the government and the government always ban the stuff which can’t have it under control.

I don't totally agree with this. Gambling directly affects your mental health too. Do you know why people become a gambling addicts? This is because they play too much gambling that their mind fails to recognize how much gambling is good or bad for them. They are unable to make the right decisions and this is directly linked to mental health.

Also if people start to lose in gambling, they will become tense. They will have a very adverse and bad effect on their mind. Just like winning in gambling and getting a lot of money can have a good effect on the mind, losing money will have a bad effect on the mind.

[serjent05]

I don't like a nation of sport gamblers as they would be in default debt really soon because no one would really work,all of them would have their mind in their betting.

A nation of sport gamblers will have the problem of having citizen who are mostly Irresponsible. The gambling will not affect everyone making everyone irresponsible, but it will surely have the number of irresponsible people more than the responsible. The irresponsibility is people who gamble without control, and those that will do anything just to keep getting money to gamble including involving in crime.

Isn't the world have already lots of irresponsible people?  I don't see any difference in statistics even with sports gambling being the trend since being irresponsible is all in the trait of a person whether the Nation is a sports gambler nation or not, if a person decided to be irresponsible, he will be irresponsible.

Gambling on the other hand has nothing to do with your physical health (your mental health is another story) and that’s why there isn’t any entity to keep you in line other than the government and the government always ban the stuff which can’t have it under control.

I don't totally agree with this. Gambling directly affects your mental health too. Do you know why people become a gambling addicts? This is because they play too much gambling that their mind fails to recognize how much gambling is good or bad for them. They are unable to make the right decisions and this is directly linked to mental health.

Also if people start to lose in gambling, they will become tense. They will have a very adverse and bad effect on their mind. Just like winning in gambling and getting a lot of money can have a good effect on the mind, losing money will have a bad effect on the mind.

I greatly agree gambling has an effect on a person's whole being.  The moment the person is engaged and starts gambling, his time routine has already changed.  Whenever there is a change in time schedule, our body always react to this.    Every changes in environment and routine there is an effect to our physical and mental health.

[Gozie51]

I don't totally agree with this. Gambling directly affects your mental health too. Do you know why people become a gambling addicts? This is because they play too much gambling that their mind fails to recognize how much gambling is good or bad for them. They are unable to make the right decisions and this is directly linked to mental health.

Also if people start to lose in gambling, they will become tense. They will have a very adverse and bad effect on their mind. Just like winning in gambling and getting a lot of money can have a good effect on the mind, losing money will have a bad effect on the mind.

The reason people become gambling addict is because they lose and they keep playing. If you lose a game there is the tendency that you want to go back chasing the money that you have lost and you find yourself always playing and like you said it gives a tense feeling and hatred, anger or envy may develop from this and this change the character and the way the person behave. You see a gambling also doing drugs because of such effect on their lives.

[Maestro75]

A nation of gamblers would be a nation of irresponsible citizenry. The constant fights that will often come on will be a thing of worry. Take for instance communities where gamblers are much and see the irresponsible living in that community with youngsters not wanting to get proper jobs or do anything meaningful with their lives. Everybody wants to hit it big so they can display their wealth. Morality and communal living will be lost in such nation and people can kill in such communities at the slightest disagreement.

[AmoreJaz]

A nation of gamblers would be a nation of irresponsible citizenry. The constant fights that will often come on will be a thing of worry. Take for instance communities where gamblers are much and see the irresponsible living in that community with youngsters not wanting to get proper jobs or do anything meaningful with their lives. Everybody wants to hit it big so they can display their wealth. Morality and communal living will be lost in such nation and people can kill in such communities at the slightest disagreement.

you have a point on this scenario. we can't tell the repercussions of having all gamblers in the house, with different degree of addiction to this habit. a sports gambler will focus on the sports he wanted to bet on, and being addicted with it will give him other emotions that may not favourable to many if he got lost with his bet. so having to deal with such kind of emotions for all people, will be a messy and chaotic one. i don't think everybody will have their peace of mind when they go to sleep. certainly, this will create unhealthy environment for all. would not be advisable to happen in any country.

[dothebeats]

If they are capable of self-control I think this is okay. I don't think gamblers are irresponsible as a whole, but I don't think this would work as intended in the long run. There ought to be a problem (eventually) when the citizens are doing the same thing for the longest of time. A nation needs diversity of its people in order to survive, and that includes what they do to make money and what they do as a hobby, as gambling isn't a very viable industry to focus on for a nation.

[Hydrogen]

Back when I was serious about sports gambling. Efforts were made to use math, science, psychology and other avenues of study towards anticipating the outcome of matches.

Sometimes you can tell how hungry and motivated athletes are going into events simply by watching their interviews and paying close attention to their body language and responses. It is also possible to tell when they're unmotivated and distracted.

When Cain Velasquez fought Francis Ngannou. Cain Velasquez was sweating heavily despite not moving or exerting himself much at the open workout. He looked out of shape or injured. I used that indicator to bet heavily on Ngannou and won. Later it emerged Velasquez had a knee injury and wasn't able to run much to prepare his cardio for that bout. There were other occasions where I tried to use the law of large numbers and other aspects of math, science and strategy to be successful in gambling.

A nation of sports gamblers might study the psychology of sports and cold reading athletes to gauge performance at events. As well as strategy and math for better understanding odds and strategizing. A nation of gamblers wouldn't necessarily have to be a decadent or regressive trend. It could actually encourage people to embrace fields of study which might be useful for being profitable in the industry.