Make sports betting taboo again

https://jacobin.com/2024/08/sports-betting-taxation-robinhood-draftkings/

by PaulHoule • 2 years ago

84 85 2 years ago

I'd love to see what'd happen in a non profit casino where the wagers were exactly equal to the winnings less some modest operating expenses. Such an enterprise would address most of the inequity concerns in the article.

garblegarble2• 2 years ago

What would be the point in running such a casino?

apercu• 2 years ago

Money laundering.

rottencupcakes• 2 years ago

A steady income at a co-op style company?

tekla2• 2 years ago

Getting paid to removing fun from life

spacebanana74• 2 years ago

A social project to help gamblers lose less money.

tazu2• 2 years ago

less some modest operating expenses

Therein lies the rub.

RandomCitizen12• 2 years ago

Take what's in the article, reduce it by 5%, and that's probably what it would be. Sports bet rakes aren't huge (unlike horse racing).

awkward• 2 years ago

1. If there's expenses, there's a take.

2. Gambling will always be subject to one dynamic - if you're up, you're still in. If you're cleaned out, you're out. That asymmetry gives the house advantage even in roughly 50-50 stakes, and the downside of it ruins lives.

3. Gambling addiction is real and not fully subject to rational control. Gamblers with a cushion of savings or income will always be less susceptible to ones that don't have that cushion.

spacebanana74• 2 years ago

Ideally such a casino wouldn't take any risk/reward on its own balance sheet. So there'd be no upside for the house on how any particular bet played out. Kind of like hosting your friends poker game where you're not playing personally.

Even if you allowed gambling addicts to play, would there be much harm? They'd never lose money on average and you could impose affordability tests to mitigate people getting cleaned out.

dgfitz5• 2 years ago

Gambling will always be subject to one dynamic - if you're up, you're still in.

I appreciate this point, but I don't think it is a blanket rule. I have been to a casino twice in my life. The first time I was playing with a foreign currency and had no idea how much I had won. Turned out to be like a 7x on what I had started with. I got lucky a few times, cashed out, bought a cigar. Second time was the same: hit a few lucky plays, cashed out.

FWIW I regularly do the same with sports betting. I think my ratio of withdraw-vs-deposit is like 9:1 at the moment. Paying the taxes isn't super fun though.

JKCalhoun2• 2 years ago

A coop. They split the profits with the patrons (minus operating expenses) at the end of the year. (So they can go right back and gamble away their share.)

spacebanana74• 2 years ago

You could even extend this by making a rule that gamblers can only wager money they've earned through shares. So there'd be no financial harm to their external life.

The cold start problem of such an enterprise could be solved by only imposing this rule after a year, using charity, or - in the worst case - buy ins.

HelloMcFly• 2 years ago

I'm pro legalized gambling, anti-gambling advertising.

heyitsguay• 2 years ago

Agreed. Gambling legalization (like drug legalization) should be viewed primarily as a tactic to cut off the money supply to organized crime, with a legal environment established such that it is just marginally more convenient than seeking out black market alternatives. Boring, minimally advertised, with plenty of clear and non-judgemental offramps for addiction counseling and treatment.

horsawlarway• 2 years ago

This is my stance as well.

Let the vice be legal because people will do it anyways and I don't feel like additional punishment really makes sense to spend time/money on.

Treat it like the vice it is and don't try to pitch it to my family/kids on TV constantly.

Honestly, I'm basically "anti-advertising" entirely at this point, but the gambling ads soaking into every aspect of sports are genuinely disgusting.

You want to gamble? Fine - bad choice but it's yours to make. You want to entice people to make that bad choice for profit? I'm fully in favor of fining you out of existence or throwing you in jail.

Larrikin2• 2 years ago

I'm fine with sports betting being legal. If people want to gamble that's their decision.

But I believe any kind of advertising of it during a game should be made illegal. It is ruining the broadcast, with updates on the betting line and worthless statistics to non betters.

ToucanLoucan5• 2 years ago

If people want to gamble that's their decision.

Is it? Is an alcoholic's decision to drink, or a heroin addict's decision to shoot up? Is it a person with attention issues' decision to spend unreasonable amounts of money on micro-transaction-powered games? Is it anyone who suffers from a neurodivergency that fucks with dopamine's choice to engage in these activities because their brains are just plain more vulnerable to it?

I don't have a moral objection to any of these things in the slightest, like I think most here, I would land at a position of "do what you want, as long as you don't hurt anyone." But that gets tricky if you consider how many people are harmed via addictive products peddled by (often extremely) profitable enterprises, including in this case, the actual government in many places.

Like, I have my vices, and they are all controlled. I don't feel I have any addiction at present. But I have friends and family who have struggled with these things, and this hand-wavey "make better choices" stuff just doesn't cut it for me. Some of these people I'm thinking of right now are blindingly intelligent, absolutely brilliant people, but no matter how smart you are, sometimes all it takes is the right kind of bullshit to turn your brains to mashed potatoes and suddenly you're giving away your life savings for more of it.

Like, genuinely, good for you if you, like me, can just control your vices and not succumb to them like many can. Genuinely, I'm happy for you (and me!) but like... what about everyone else? Is having the wrong kind of brain just damn you to spend your entire life being robbed blind because "freedom"?

bigstrat2003• 2 years ago

Is it? Is an alcoholic's decision to drink, or a heroin addict's decision to shoot up? Is it a person with attention issues' decision to spend unreasonable amounts of money on micro-transaction-powered games?

Yes. Obviously the choices involved are easier or harder for individuals based on their predilections. But at the end of the day, it is still their choice.

tekla2• 2 years ago

Like, genuinely, good for you if you, like me, can just control your vices and not succumb to them like many can. Genuinely, I'm happy for you (and me!) but like... what about everyone else? Is having the wrong kind of brain just damn you to spend your entire life being robbed blind because "freedom"?

Yes. I have my own vices, but yes. I do not want to impose religious values on others.

Eridrus• 2 years ago

I think the drug war has been such a colossal failure (often doing more harm to many of the people it was ostensibly meant to protect) that trying to make comparisons to drugs doesn't make the argument that you want.

I think sports gambling is clearly less addictive than drugs since underground gambling was never as big an industry as the drug trade, and I think that makes it far easier to deal with like a normal activity with externalities.

dgfitz5• 2 years ago

Is it? Is an alcoholic's decision to drink, or a heroin addict's decision to shoot up? Is it a person with attention issues' decision to spend unreasonable amounts of money on micro-transaction-powered games?

Of that list, the only one that doesn't have commercials is heroin.

webkike2• 2 years ago

A human can become addicted to literally any behavior. The solution isn’t to make illegal the behaviors that can be harmful when done in excess, it is to provide addiction counseling resources at no cost funded by the people who can control themselves. And higher amounts of control, like allowing users to ban themselves, or indicators that flag users as problem gamblers.

Making the behaviors illegal doesn’t actually help people you mention, it just drives them to less safe avenues and jail. Hardly help if you ask me.

People also have a right to discover for themselves that something is dangerous to them personally. It sucks, but not everyone is going to know off the bat that they have alcoholic tendencies.

mrsilencedogood• 2 years ago

Humanity is going to face a reckoning about free will and agency at some point, I think.

If the gambler is but a slave to their lizard brain, then isn't the murderer too? Surely no-one sits down and performs calculus and determines "I will gamble" or "I will murder", they both come from an impairment of our higher senses of reasoning by our baser instincts of rage or pleasure.

I'm obviously not advocating for murder, to be clear. But maybe if we better understand our position philosophically, maybe we'll end up with less brutal prisons ("they're not in here because they are ontologically evil, but because their hardware predisposes them to harm others and we have to contain them for the good of the many") and more sympathetic/realistic laws that focus on controlling harm and are less caught up in vague notions of "freedom" (the freedom to have your hardware bugs exploited by gambling companies?) that are too shallow in the face of a better philosophical understanding of what free will and agency look like for creatures whose programming is primarily informed by a billion years of evolution to crave orgasms and sugar.

BLKNSLVR• 2 years ago

Looking at it through that lens, I can't see the advertising of gambling as any different from advertising suicide.

It's a personal choice after all.

Fuck those people who are already degenerate suiciders, they should just get some control.

(/s to the last two sentences).

Advertising bright shiny new toys to children.

Advertising big 4wd trucks to adult males who haven't progressed to emotional maturity beyond the level of the children to whom bright shiny new toys are advertised.

Advertising as a whole is a fucking shit show. Swap your hard earned for this thing that might make you feel like your life is slightly more worthwhile for a few seconds. Pbbbt (flapping lips and tongue noise).

sebastiansm• 2 years ago

What could be a solution to balance the freedom vs harm of those services?

For an adhd brain most of the internet is addictive, at least for me. My solution was to delete my social media accounts (still youtube is a problem), but I wouldn't want to be banned from those services just by my pre-condition.

silisili• 2 years ago

The big problem for me (outside of the annoying betting line during broadcasts) is that it ruins the integrity of the game. How can we be sure it's even a real contest anymore, and that a player(s) aren't throwing the game?

Sure it's a problem old as time, but it feels like today it's a lot easier to get caught up in with the massive amounts of money swinging by.

dgfitz5• 2 years ago

I would posit that it is easier to get caught now than it has ever been. I've heard of more players getting caught and banned in the past few years than I have in the past 20.

Larrikin2• 2 years ago

I think player's salaries in the big leagues are high enough for players to not ruin their income for the most part. The few players that get caught are banned and punished extremely harshly.

nradov2• 2 years ago

Some teams have intentionally thrown games just to get higher draft picks for the next season.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-astros-tanked-their...

adamrezich2• 2 years ago

This is why election betting being legal and even frequently cited these days is kinda crazy to me.

maxerickson• 2 years ago

They have been setting the rules to make games more suited for television broadcast for decades. It's entertainment as much as it is sport, gambling or not.

bill_joy_fanboy4• 2 years ago

If problem gambling were a rational decision, there would be no problem gamblers.

I don't think you have a good grasp on the psychiatric issues at play here.

ASalazarMX• 2 years ago

Let's invest in mental health instead then. Gambling is not a disease, it's a symptom of a deeper psychological need that isn't getting addressed or managed.

Even hands-on statistics and probability education would be a great benefit to gamblers, as they find how wearing their grandmother's lucky ring has no influence on the statistical rewards of slot machines.

mrinfinitiesx3• 2 years ago

I agree with your sentiments that advertisement during a game should be illegal.

Addiction hits people hard. Not just people.. FAMILIES. Life is hard enough and people without knowing they can fall in to it unexpectedly, or are peer pressured to try it. You get that dopamine hit. One little win. One win here, one win there. Betting more and more. Then it's all gone. Yeah, it is their decision. It's their decision to quit too, and that's hard.

Internet gambling hits kids with video game skins/trades, I don't agree with that either.. it sets them on the wrong, and I do me very wrong path. It's an epidemic. I live in a small town where indian reservations collect everybody's social security checks. They sit there like zombies and press the button hoping for a return, never getting one. Push. Push. Push. Money gone. Many of my friends lost themselves to betting and gambling addiction, and addiction over all. While I agree, it's their decision, addiction takes the best humans in my opinion.

I believe in things that better people, we may not always know what they are, but a positive influence from somebody can start right here: I believe in you, and if you're out there and have a gambling addiction, there is hope and you can fight it, and you aren't lost. https://www.ncpgambling.org/help-treatment/help-by-state/ - https://www.ncpgambling.org/help-treatment/treatment-facilit...

And if you want to just talk about it, my e-mails in my profile and we can message from there.

I'm completely anti-gambling, but to each their own if somebody wants to I won't try to persuade them.

aaomidi• 2 years ago

Gambling is effectively taking advantage of a subset of society that is significantly less likely to be able to stand against the “allure” of it.

This is why IMO in a civilized society it should be banned. But we’re not living in a civilized society so…

Apreche• 2 years ago

This is the same idea that I have been spreading. There is one problem with this idea.

The advertising isn't just a means to convince fans to gamble. It's also the way that the gambling revenues are shared.

If not for buying ads, how else can the gambling companies give any of the money to the league, broadcasters, or media?

And if the league, broadcasters, and media don't get a share of the gambling money by selling advertisements, why would they even allow the gambling in the first place?

5555624• 2 years ago

And if the league, broadcasters, and media don't get a share of the gambling money by selling advertisements, why would they even allow the gambling in the first place?

Because they're greedy and want any money they can get. They don't "allow" gambling, the law permits gambling. If it was illegal, no one would advertise it and they wouldn't get a dime.

Why is it legal? Taxes. Legal gambling means the government collects taxes.

tazu2• 2 years ago

In the post-ZIRP era, I think separating newly-printed money from the hands of irrational market participants is a good thing.

John238323• 2 years ago

I honestly think that the new found emphasis on betting in sports/sport reporting, is symptomatic of the "financialization" of literally everything. How can X company extract profit out of Y, where Y is the total set of all habits.

All companies now no longer exist to create a better product, but to prop up revenue/profit quarterly. To sustain this house of cards, companies must see all avenues of revenue. This includes the sports leagues and entertainment companies. Recurrent revenue is best, which is why there is a draw to subscriptions, and addiction is the peak subscription.

Low end customers/society be damned because, as the old saying goes, "price/spend dictates quality of customer". The firm's responsibility is to the shareholder, not society.

I haven't even gone into how I think it affects the quality of the actual sport play (hint, it hurts it).

Ba humbug.

JKCalhoun2• 2 years ago

Yeah, tough one. When I was around twenty, a friend called the state lottery a tax on stupidity. At that time his comment seemed kind of amusing due its abrasiveness but I couldn't think of a serious retort that wouldn't come across as "we should protect people from themselves".

I'm not sure I still have an answer for that. And I now view the subject to include other forms of gambling (where you statistically stand to lose), helmet laws.... Why require seat belts?

I think you can defend laws, like speed limits, that serve to protect others from the would-be transgressor. Maybe you could make a case for the former if there are family involved that depend on the income of the person who might be fritting it away on Lotto tickets.

I have a friend who "gambled" on the stock market with his disposable income (and that there is an obvious distinction between the former cases, FWIW) because, he explained, he was never going to cross that next threshold and become "rich" just from stashing his gains away.

So, I don't know. I'm 40 years older now and still on the fence as to whether we should allow someone to wreck their life.

zztop44• 2 years ago

One response might be that stupidity isn’t something the government should be taxing.

JackFr• 2 years ago

a friend called the state lottery a tax on stupidity.

I'm pretty sure that virtually all of the stupid people buying a lottery tickets understand that lottery tickets have a negative expected value.

But so does insurance, and yet people rationally buy that.

Higher moments matter. When you have wealth you pay to reduce variance. When you lack wealth you pay to increase it.

dgfitz5• 2 years ago

I buy a lottery ticket maybe once a year or so. In addition to being one of the least-expensive purchases one can make at an establishment that sells lottery tickets, I'm happy to pay $2 for the hours of entertainment I get from thinking about winning, knowing full well I'm not going to win.

carleton• 2 years ago

You can continue thinking about winning, even without wasting the money on the ticket. I also fantasize from time to time about winning but I’ve never bought a ticket before.

fwip3• 2 years ago

We require seat belts because we've decided that our society is better when we have fewer people dying in car accidents. The disruption & trauma to their loved ones (and other driver), plus the loss of life, are perceived as worse than the inconvenience of wearing a seat belt.

Similarly, we could decide that the personal freedom to become addicted to gambling is less important than the potential impact to that person or loved ones.

All laws are about restricting freedom for the benefit of the larger society. There is also no individual that does not impact their society in some way - a harm to them is (often) also a harm to others.

nostromo• 2 years ago

There will always be tension between social safety nets and expansive views of freedom.

If the government provides my healthcare, then it’s in their interest to make sure I don’t smoke and eat right.

If the government provides financial assistance to the poor, then it’s in their interest to make sure it’s not gambled away or spent on drugs and alcohol.

People in Europe seem fine with giving up a bit of freedom in exchange for more social programs. But in America there seems to be a desire to have it all.

oldandboring• 2 years ago

The first paragraph of the article struck a chord with me. I listen to a fair amount of sports talk radio and have for most of my life. Even back into the 80s and 90s I remember noticing that these guys on the air seemed to speak the language of betting. Odds, spreads, etc. They would often talk about the games in this context. But, this being before the legal/online/casual betting age we're in now, it always struck me as both sad and out-of-touch. I would think, these sports radio hosts are all such degenerate gamblers, they probably don't realize that most of their listeners are actual sports fans. I would also think, maybe I'm the outlier? Maybe the hosts AND the listeners are all gambling and I'm the only one who doesn't?

But now, the cat is totally out of the bag. And the gateway drug, I think, was online fantasy sports leagues.

Anyway, I enjoyed this article and agree with many of its points, and for an article on Jacobin that's saying a lot coming from a died-in-the-wool centrist like me.

dgfitz5• 2 years ago

I listen to a fair amount of sports talk radio and have for most of my life. Even back into the 80s and 90s I remember noticing that these guys on the air seemed to speak the language of betting. Odds, spreads, etc.

I have also listened to sports talk radio for many hours a day over decades. My take on sports talk hosts chatting about gambling covers a few thoughts. Betting lines are talking points. "How is TeamA -125 on the moneyline, their star player is nursing an injury!" "TeamA just got their star player back, and they're playing at home with one of the better home records in the league, and they're the underdog?!" "Boy, I sure thought TeamA was going to win that game, Vegas didn't, and I was wrong" Are all things I have heard in the past 6 months.

Their job is to talk about sports. Telling listeners what Vegas thinks will happen in a game is almost part of the job description.

Professional line-setters are pretty damn good at what they do. Checking what "Vegas" thinks will happen in a game gives you more information, not less.

But, this being before the legal/online/casual betting age we're in now, it always struck me as both sad and out-of-touch. I would think, these sports radio hosts are all such degenerate gamblers, they probably don't realize that most of their listeners are actual sports fans.

You have made a few pretty judgmental assumptions here. When people bet on horse racing, is that sad and out of touch? Going to a casino, sad and out of touch? Buying a lottery ticket? 50/50 raffle?

I would also think, maybe I'm the outlier? Maybe the hosts AND the listeners are all gambling and I'm the only one who doesn't?

Yep, you're the outlier. Give yourself a pat on the back. Or, more productively, maybe stop being so judgmental.

jimhefferon• 2 years ago

I'm concerned about the effects of the staggering amounts of gambling money on the sports themselves. It all quickly gets to where you ask yourself if what you are watching is real, or is it professional wrestling?

matanyall• 2 years ago

Gambling has a similar addiction profile to cigarettes and other drugs, so why not have the same kind of labels on every bet and app, something like, "FanDuel is legally required to tell you that sports gambling has been shown to cause massive financial losses and is a major cause of divorce."

I am also against specifically state sponsored gambling like the lottery. At least (non casino style day trading) investment in stocks has upside at all.

bill_joy_fanboy4• 2 years ago

In terms of the biology of the brain, gambling is more similar to alcohol and opioids than to cigarettes.

But, yeah, informing people of the risk is critical. Most people develop addictions early in life without a full grasp of the danger to which they are exposing themselves.

Advertising and other marketing techniques and social pressures pull them into the behavior patterns that lead to addiction. Once the addiction is formed, it's usually too late at that point.

kens• 2 years ago

The article says that Robinhood has "an undisclosed $10 fee on every $100 investment." That seems absurdly high. But is it true? I did a minute of research and couldn't find any fees like that.

purpleblue• 2 years ago

I love gambling. I play poker every weekend and go to Las Vegas several times a year, sometimes for less than 24 hrs just to gamble.

Even I think that gambling is ruining sports. I like it when it's off to the side, when people are betting in Vegas and gathered around the sportbooks, but when it's factored directly in the game with TV ads, it's really offputting and highlights how easily sports can be manipulated by corrupt people that want to skew the results.

Benlights• 2 years ago

The author mentions an undisclosed $10 fee on every $100 invested in Robinhood. I've had an active Robinhood account since 2017 and I've never been charged a fee to invest.

bluSCALE42• 2 years ago

Why was this flagged?

John238323• 2 years ago

Thinking the same thing. Weird

fwip3• 2 years ago

No idea - it's a good article. Maybe somebody on staff got upset that it's from the Jacobin.

brodouevencode• 2 years ago

It's fairly off-topic per the guidelines.

bill_joy_fanboy4• 2 years ago

https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/?query=sports%20bettin...

fwip3• 2 years ago

Ah, thanks for pointing that out.

pickledoyster• 2 years ago

Sports betting and the spread of gambling is a symptom. Much like professional sports being a vehicle for advertising due to the teams' brand value. Or like a team having brand value due to the spectators it attracts. Or spectating someone else's physical activity.

There's inequity at every step here. And the fact that even a Jacobin article only addresses the terminal symptom should tell the reader how unimaginative our society has gotten.

Here's a thought: the guys in the article could have placed the same bets on themselves before their pick-up basketball game instead of draftkings. Should those bets that actually encourage physical activity be taboo too? The author suggest betting for a few pushups – great, but is that not gambling?

Of course, I'm ignoring a few other symptoms in the puzzle: states like Illinois facing _budgetary issues_ and taxing _addicts_. Limiting gambling availability might be a good band-aid for some of the symptoms, but I'd wager that solving root causes might be more worthwhile.

bluSCALE42• 2 years ago

I absolutely hate the visibility of all forms of gambling. I hate going into a bar and seeing the big, bright machines that remind my children of Candy Crush. I agree with the overall sentiment here, if gambling is to be legal, it should be a hidden thing; no advertising. Seeing it everywhere makes it seem like something you should try at least once, like it's a rite of passage thing to becoming an adult.

snide• 2 years ago

Even prior to the bill being passed into law, DraftKings and FanDuel issued a warning to the government, essentially promising to rig the spreads even further for Illinois residents, hiking their vigs and offering less appealing odds.

This is the real scary bit in this article and the crazy spiral. Yes, we can legalize gambling. Yes we can tax it (and keep increasing the taxes). But if we both make it very legal, and tax it a lot, the businesses who run the gambling will need to adjust their odds to make a profit, making the end situation a very easy way to gamble in "safe" ways that unfortunately are much less likely to return money to the gambler.

This is a complicated issue beyond just saying "gambling should be legal". As soon as taxing is involved, there's a scary tornado of nobody winning in these situations and it feeling like a wink-wink grift.

Make sports betting taboo again

Related Stories