In case you still thought the sports industry isn’t evil…
Practically all sports stars are perfectly happy to advertise and work with scummy companies (like aforementioned gambling companies), and countries like Israel or UAE. As long as they’re paid nice money.
Same for sports events. They’ll all happily take money to advertise billionaire pedophiles’ companies or terror states.
It’s almost impossible to spend any money on sports-related events or merchandise without supporting gambling or contributing towards genocide. Maybe some local ones? Maybe…?
All I needed to know was to pay attention to the terminology and optics of NFL drafts and the power dynamics following it. The fact that those in power are a-okay with problematic stuff like that, strongly suggests they have skewed ethics and likely apply that ethos everywhere.
Yea man I barely see any beer commercials anymore. Won’t anyone think of the alcohol companies??
I watch only torrents of sporting events and all the commercials are removed.
It’s amazing 99% of the time. 1% of the time I discover the result prematurely.
Which reminds me, time to watch game 1 of the Stanley Cup Finals after I hit send, or I’ll blunder across the results.
Low effort engagement bait from someone who buys upvotes on Reddit.
If you can’t watch a sport without a wager, then you’re into gambling, not sports.
How exciting is horse racing on its own? (It isn’t)
Yup, I fell into the sports gambling world for a few years. I originally just played fantasy football and thought it was fun then quickly started gambling on each fantasy season which then just became gambling each game and then became gambling on sports I didn’t watch like golf.
I was able to break the addiction but I cannot watch any sports anymore do to a fear of falling into that all again. Its actually nice to not to give a fuck about these rich athletes anymore and just enjoying things I can do.
I fucking love horse racing man, and no i dont gamble (anymore lol)
doing it or watching it?
Watching, or going to the racetrack is awesome, i love going to the stables and seeing the horses before they race, but i watch on TV too.
I switched to UK streams of F1 for this exact reason. It’s out of hand.
I stopped watching F1 2 or 3 races in this year. has it improved? the constant pass and repass is boring and not what F1 is supposed to be in my opinion.
It’s still that sadly, they tried fixing it with new rules mid season and it slightly got better but it’s still the same more or less
that’s a shame, truly. it is what it is. there plenty of more interesting series like WEC and IMSA and WRC I think are more fun to watch at this point.
I just paid for F1TV via an Indian Apple account. Very cheap and better commentary than SkySports. Plus it has extra analysis videos.
I’m really hoping that legislation will be in place to curb this sort of thing by the time my kids are old enough to want to watch sports. I’m not thrilled at the prospect of those ads marinating in their young brains, and I don’t relish the thought of trying to explain to a credulous 8-year-old that we can’t win millions of dollars betting on hockey games.
Hoping is different than expecting, unfortunately.
What you’re hoping for is that governments go back to protecting people instead of being used by the rich to transfer wealth from the citizenry.
Everyone knows gambling has zero social benefit and does a lot of harm. But none of that matters because you can show up to a few congressmen with a few thousand dollars and they’ll do what you tell them, and no other congress critters will get in their way because every other congresscritter wants support for their grifts.
Government is working hard to find a million ways to redistribute wealth upward. Public advertising of gambling is just one more sign of corruption.
But you can win it’s practically gaurenteed!
-Ads.
Seriously, why don’t these things have warnings on them like cigarettes. I see ads for the local casino that say stuff like “riches are just 3 exits down,” it’s crazy. Should also say “GAMBLING IS ADDICTIVE AND YOU WILL LOSE MONEY” or something.
Nah, ads should just not be allowed to lie in any form whatsoever.
Yes, this includes Redbull if it does not actually give you functional wings.
They do have that in Australia
But of course, they rely on people thinking “yeah, but that won’t happen to me because I’m somehow different”
They’re obviously the dumbest
As Dr Karl says: gambling is a tax for being bad at math
Meanwhile, Pete Rose is still not in the Hall of Fame.
Sports are completely not interesting to me, so gambling would be maybe the only option to get me thrill from this
You just described the 99% of sports fans nowadays, at work a bunch of dudes who hated sports in high school would skip practice and go smoke or something instead, now they spend their entire weekends gambling on football.
I will say, sports are fucking amazing beautiful and great for your health, and you don’t need any tv or screens at all to participate in them. IMHO nothing better than going to a local high school game and cheering on the kids. Some of them are actually pretty good! But it’s like anything else, hollywood doesn’t define what acting is, top chef doesn’t define what cooking is, and NFL doesn’t define what sports are either. Fuck whats on tv go out and experience something for yourself IRL.
I never understood how people can enjoy gambling or be addicted to it.
Yeah I get that it’s exciting, but spending money on actual goods and services can be exciting too.
If you find gambling using a $1000 exciting, wouldn’t using that $1000 on other things be even more exciting?
Winning money is only fun because said money can be used for fun. It wouldn’t really be a problem if it was points instead of currency. If what gives gambling its excitement is spending your winnings, just spend money from the get go.
Idk, I just don’t get it.
It’s “intermittent” or “unpredictable reward” coupled with the addict’s brain wiring. The thrill and relief of a win is addictive.
If you’re not wired that way you simply aren’t going to “get it”, same as not really understanding any other addiction - at least in any way other than intellectually.
This is like the complete opposite feeling I had the one time I went to Vegas. I played slots for all of an hour and I felt sick at all the money I flushed down the drain, even though I ended up pretty much breaking even. I spent the rest of the time there just wandering the strip people watching and taking in the sights.
It’s the variable reward that does it. That’s also true for animals. Give a pigeon a button that when pressed gives sometimes nothin or some food and they go haywire and become addicted to pressing the button.
Then the money men saw it works the same in humans. Hence loot box mechanics everywhere. Press bottom and get variable reward. Whaddya know, some folks are really susceptible to this and hit that button like a pigeon.
Sports betting is the same, but with the illusion of skill around it.
Same, but many people are wired very, very differently from you and I here.
The diversity of the human mind is truly the most wonderful and terrifying thing about our species.
Gambling addiction is about the high like any other addiction. It comes down to brain chemistry, and personality. There’s the high from anticipation, and a second from the payoff just like every addiction. Gambling is just easier than most because it’s money, something we all have to use. Like food addiction, it’s something we all need to consume.
It’s basically a skinner box + the unknown, if I spend $1000 then I’ve spent $1000, but if I gamble $1000, I could win all this money, or I could lose it all, no one knows, and every time it’s new + dangerous. It also just ruins your perspective/ respect for money, because if you gained/lost 20k in an afternoon, what are you going to do go back to working for $20 an hour for half a year for what you made/spent in 2 hours?
I don’t gamble, I just buy pallets of equipment at auction in the hopes that I can resell it for a profit.
I dont gamble, I just bid on abandoned storage units and hope for the best.
That’s different though,
Both gotcha games and loot boxes start with the user wanting to use money to get items. The chance factor is just there to mask the cost since the user might just get a rare on their first try.
My point was gambling to win money isn’t like normal addiction cause you already start with what you want.
I guess it just taps into greed and the desire to always have more? Why spend the $1000 when that can become $2000? Wonder if gambling is more of a problem in our capitalistic system as we are all trained to be as greedy as possible.
you don’t get a real gambling addiction from losing, you get it from that one proper win. get lucky winning 50-60k once (average yearly salery, for working class american) and it really fucks with how you view your own time. why would you spend 30-40hr a week all year just to make that again?
I think it’s because they think they’ll win more money. I’d be happy having fun while getting money at the same time.
I’ve been gambling before and it was fun when I won money. The thing is I know how, with few exceptions with games like poker and blackjack (and only then if you’re skilled), you will ALWAYS lose more money than you win over long enough of a time period.
I’m a big, walking math machine, though, so I’ve been the person getting a little too tipsy at the roulette table and telling everyone exactly how probability works and that numbers are never “hot”. The roulette dealer was surprisingly amused.
Reading your comment, I’m imagining that the “likes gambling” trait has much overlap with the “temporarily embarrassed millionaires” trait. These are people who do not get excited from regular purchases because regular purchases do not strike them as a way to get out of their temporarily embarrassed rut.
I swear half of these gambling websites end their ads with “this is not a gambling website”. I’ve never looked into in (because fuck that I’m not going on those sites) but I assume it’s some mobile game shit where you buy gems or something and can’t actually win anything tangible.
Fun fact: you CAN win money because they operate in a legal gray area calling themselves “prediction markets”.
Basically you buy percentage shares in an outcome and if that outcome happens all of those that bought the shares get a payout. At least that’s my understanding of it.
Do I do it? Fuck no.
Do I know more than a few people that do? Literally more than half of my coworkers do and a few people in my friend group do.
Bonus “fun” fact: they’re not limited to just gambling. If you managed to miss it, not too long ago people were gambling on events in the Iran War.
If it wasn’t obvious I’m very much against this practice. Shit’s fucked.
This is really just a common foot in the door tactic. We didn’t have such widespread issue with gambling couple of years prior - now we’re desensitised to it appearing within ads. Its sad, because no one really wanted this; and because of it, all we are getting in return is manipulation.
I just can’t imagine pulling something like cable TV into your home intentionally.
Sports gambling is so fun though. If I cant catch the fight I can just put $100 on my favorite fighter and its the same satisfaction as if I watched it live. If I dont think my favorite fighter will win I can put $1000 on him losing and it softens the pain of seeing him getting slimed out cold.Plus you basically get paid to gamble.
Caught a master baiter in the wild.
Haha nice bait
Already put my bet on, £1 for the sweepstake at work.
![All Hail Gamblor [PizzaCake]](https://slrpnk.net/pictrs/image/2d9c12ff-0566-41ef-84b1-bd75003eb91a.webp){kind=link}