I remember a time when Gambling was poison to professional sports. I’m not talking about office fantasy teams, or small bets between friends. I’m talking capital G Gambling. Professional Gambling run by businesses and gaming commissions. Professional sports tried very hard to distance themselves from gambling, so much so that Vegas didn’t have professional sports teams. Now there’s a ribbon on the screen showing Gambling stats the whole game. It’s ridiculous.
Now I know we can’t put the genie back into the bottle. Gambling apps are here and they’re not going anywhere. We can stop the ubiquitous ads. We’ve done this before with cigarettes. It wouldn’t be hard. Take down the ads, stop showing betting lines during the game, remove any mention of it. Cause right now it really looks like professional sports and gambling are joined at the hip and before too long American professional sports will be more about gambling than the game. Which lets face it, professional sports are about being a profitable business first and a sports team second. We’ve just completely forgotten about the game to make another quick buck.
Cause right now it really looks like professional sports and gambling are joined at the hip and before too long American professional sports will be more about gambling than the game.
i thought that already happened in the NBA and NFL. MLB, maybe. Pete Rose and Michael Jordan come to mind.
Yeah, not to be pithy but the first step is admitting there’s a problem. That’s where we’re at now (or trying to get to).
It’s so weird to me that sports/gambling have become so conflated. Clearly a lot of money has been thrown at the businesses running professional sports to land us here.
Cigarettes is a perfect analogy. It’s not even an extreme comparison, both are undeniably a net harm to people, but are somehow normalized.
It really is. Tons of people still smoke. Some people chain smoke so much that it’ll kill them before they’re 50. We try to convince them stop smoking but if they want to smoke 5 packs a day we won’t stop them. We don’t advertise cigarettes. I mean they’re cigarettes, they advertise themselves. So does gambling. The apps aren’t advertising gambling, they’re advertising their app against the other gambling apps. Gambling sells itself just fine.
I remember a time when Gambling was poison to professional sports. I’m not talking about office fantasy teams, or small bets between friends. I’m talking capital G Gambling. Professional Gambling run by businesses and gaming commissions. Professional sports tried very hard to distance themselves from gambling, so much so that Vegas didn’t have professional sports teams. Now there’s a ribbon on the screen showing Gambling stats the whole game. It’s ridiculous.
Now I know we can’t put the genie back into the bottle. Gambling apps are here and they’re not going anywhere. We can stop the ubiquitous ads. We’ve done this before with cigarettes. It wouldn’t be hard. Take down the ads, stop showing betting lines during the game, remove any mention of it. Cause right now it really looks like professional sports and gambling are joined at the hip and before too long American professional sports will be more about gambling than the game. Which lets face it, professional sports are about being a profitable business first and a sports team second. We’ve just completely forgotten about the game to make another quick buck.
i thought that already happened in the NBA and NFL. MLB, maybe. Pete Rose and Michael Jordan come to mind.
Yeah, not to be pithy but the first step is admitting there’s a problem. That’s where we’re at now (or trying to get to).
It’s so weird to me that sports/gambling have become so conflated. Clearly a lot of money has been thrown at the businesses running professional sports to land us here.
Cigarettes is a perfect analogy. It’s not even an extreme comparison, both are undeniably a net harm to people, but are somehow normalized.
It really is. Tons of people still smoke. Some people chain smoke so much that it’ll kill them before they’re 50. We try to convince them stop smoking but if they want to smoke 5 packs a day we won’t stop them. We don’t advertise cigarettes. I mean they’re cigarettes, they advertise themselves. So does gambling. The apps aren’t advertising gambling, they’re advertising their app against the other gambling apps. Gambling sells itself just fine.