Sports gambling's in-your-face relentlessness
Professional and collegiate sports used to see any relationship with gambling as strictly off-limits. Their embrace of online gambling is a serious problem, particularly as it preys upon youngsters.
Last night, settling in to watch Game 1 of the World Series, one of late comedian Rodney Dangerfield’s most memorable jokes came to mind:
“I went to a fight last night and a hockey game broke out.”
Only, in this case, it felt more like, “We interrupt this gambling commercial to bring you a baseball game.”
First, there was a graphic about the odds against each team, the Arizona Diamondbacks and Texas Rangers, making it to the World Series. Then came another graphic (see below), laying out the likelihood of two scenarios playing out, one apiece by sluggers on either team.
After the third inning, there was a FanDuel commercial that tries to entice new customers with a large potential payout ($150) on a modest bet of five bucks. (Sounds like drug dealers’ well-known tactic to woo new clients, right?)
At the commercial’s end were two logos: one for FanDuel, and the other for Major League Baseball. It’s a marriage that would have been unimaginable not long ago.
As has been well documented by various media outlets, in recent years professional and collegiate sports have gone from viewing gambling as strictly off-limits to keeping it at arm’s length to its current whole-hearted embrace.
These days, any athletic event comes with a heaping of ads by online gambling giants DraftKings, FanDuel, BetMGM and Caesars Sportsbook. Of course, those ads are sprinkled throughout the rest of our collective media diet, too.
Think about it: When’s the last time you went an entire day without encountering one?
Now that the multibillion-dollar industry has gained a foothold online, how much deeper will it go? And at what cost to those who struggle with gambling addiction, both currently and in the future? Which grade schoolers of today are predisposed to become the problem gamblers of tomorrow?
In their lifetime, an estimated 1% to 2% of adults will experience a gambling disorder—a chronic mental health disorder. Another 3% to 5% “will report a subclinical problem, which means that some gambling disorder symptoms are present but the psychiatric diagnosis is not warranted,” according to this February 2023 story at The Conversation.
By now, you probably can sense that I’m not a fan of the ease (simply click on a link or a button on your Smartphone) and prevalence (any time) of all this online gambling.1
The crux of my concern can be summed up by an excerpt from this July 2023 story in The Christian Science Monitor: there is “increased risk of addiction for people who are already vulnerable biologically and psychologically, or even worse, the introduction of gambling addictions to new people.”
When it comes to preying upon young people, consider the sub-headline in this November 2022 story by The New York Times: “In order to reap millions of dollars in fees, universities are partnering with betting companies to introduce their students and sports fans to online gambling.”
As the father of two college students, including one who has displayed a fondness for sports wagering, this is all very worrisome.
My Personal Gambling Journey
Personally, I’ve never wagered much on athletic events.
Only rarely—maybe once a year—do I invest a small sum, such as participating in an NCAA “March Madness” college basketball brackets competition. Given my passion for sports and numbers, I am grateful and somewhat astonished that I have not gotten hooked.
The turning point came around 30 years ago.
Each week, a newsroom colleague would come in with the lineup of the upcoming weekend’s NFL games. I would pick four games (applying the point spread, with the favored team having to win by a variable number of points to “cover” the spread). If I predicted all four correctly, my $10 bet would turn into a $100 payoff, for a $90 net gain.
Over a one-month span, I went 0-for-4, though at least once and maybe twice I was “only” one game shy of winning $100. Every passing week, I felt a mounting sense of “chasing” the money I’d wagered. At my wife’s encouragement, I stopped “chasing” those losses.
Looking back, my triumph—over the temptation to parlay my mathematical sports-mindedness into a gambling habit—was perfectly disguised in those $10 losses. If I had won, would I have had the good sense to walk away?
I wouldn’t bet on it.
Note my repeated use of “gambling,” not the watered-down “gaming” that has seeped into our culture. That’s not by chance, either. Those who profit from gambling losses push “gaming” because they know it sounds so much better. After all, it’s close to "game,” which has a fun, light-hearted connotation. To dig deeper, check out this article in the Columbia Journalism Review archives.
A bunch of separate thoughts....
I don't want to be someone who ignores research, and I know gambling addictions trace to Dostoyevsky if not before, but I wonder how much of the syndrome relates to other things, rather than an inexplicable need to gamble. I understand that Gamblers Annonymous does take a deeper view and tries to get inside gamblers' heads, but I don't hear a lot of talk that the problem may really relate to an unhealthy attitude about money in general, rather than loving the action and the chase. Of course, addiction is easiest to accept when there are chemicals involved, but I do understand about a compulsive attitude writ large -- I am far from a stranger to it myself. With any addiction, I would also cite that people just don't have enough positive goals in their life and don't realize how much they could be doing, and how much there is out there which is amazing. The substance or the thing is the thing that's in front of them; a created life is more work.
We all come to this issue from our own places, and to risk being overly personal, it crossed my mind that you be deeply resistant of any avenue that can turn out additions, given the struggles of your brother, and your father's struggles with alcohol. Then, as a religious believer, that also factors in.
Those are good foundations for having a value around this issue. What I think we need to watch is PREJUDICE against gambling. We may have heard about it in a certain way and for so long that it's hard to break ourselves of this. Given the way civilized society has looked upon it for so long, it's natural to have a deep distrust of gambling. And we have to look deep within ourselves and see if this is justified. Hence, some of my questioning whether it really has the magical property of being able to take hold of people and deserves special protections.
It does amaze me how much some people bet. I hear people who make under six figures just casually talking about betting $500 on a game. I get the feeling they may be betting four games a week. So they're betting more than their salary during a year! And these aren't even the most hardcore gamblers.
Yes, it is jarring to see the sports telecasts' employees turning on a dime and now shilling for sportbooks. Yes, it's hypocritical. But what gets me is something deeper. The idea that companies can buy us and we have no autonomy left, and that a company contract transcends an individual's morals. The people on these sets should be free to refuse to participate in the "playing along and offering bets." I am not certain this is true.
A parallel without quite the universal moral consequences is that, in horse racing, pretty much every stakes race is sponsored now, and when accounts are written of races or horses, the media organizations require you to include the sponsorship names (obviously, because the sponsors want that). No one knows the sponsorship names offhand, while they know the name of the old name of the race that the sponsorship precedes. The idea is like "the Capital One World Series," or whatever. But a 750-word story will often have 15 race names in it, and the end product ends up being unreadable. Basically every sentence with one of these sponsorships in it is ruined. Can a company own language? Force me to write badly? I refuse to be party to that.
I once worked for a market research company. I was young at the time. Thankfully, right before I joined, they lost a tobacco client. I was amazed that all of these people I respected had apparently just gone along their merry jobs and, not only not refused to produce work for this company, but sweated and worked just as hard for this client as any other. They seemingly didn't question their obligation. I just find the whole thing mind-boggling.
This attachment to contracts and documents....Lincoln wasn't for abolition before the Civil War because his reading was that slavery was protected in the constitution. It's good to at least believe in something, but jeez!