Gambling is the act of playing a game of chance for money, where you place bets on an outcome with money or something else of value. If the result is in your favor, you receive even more money, or you may lose it all if the results are against you. Win big, lose big. But the small chance that you can win big keeps you coming back for more and eventually, a gambling addiction may be formed. People often turn to gambling for socialization, stress relief, and/or the adrenaline rush, but it can quickly turn into betting more than you can afford to lose, borrowing money from friends and family, and the inability to stay away. This is when gambling becomes dangerous, both for yourself and the people around you. At this level, gambling can majorly affect your mental health, increasing anxiety, depression, self-esteem, and even suicidal thoughts. With these increased risks, you would think that gambling would be under a tighter legal leash, however, it remains extremely prevalent in communities across the country today.
Only two states, Utah and Hawaii, have completely outlawed gambling, including sports betting, casinos, and state-run lotteries. The remaining 48 states have varying levels of legalization where some states like Alaska, Tennessee, and Virginia allow some gambling, but no casinos and many states where casinos are tribal casinos or are located mostly on Native American land. Gambling is nearly legalized nationwide, despite the extreme mental health declines associated with it, and it has started to infiltrate common aspects of life such as sports and entertainment, rather than staying contained to classical ideas of gambling like casinos and the lottery.
Sports betting has been around nearly as long as sports have, whether in an informal way with small wagers against friends or on a big scale through betting websites like Draftkings Sportsbook. The legalization of formal sports betting became widespread in 2018 when the Supreme Court overturned the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act, and some states even include the Oscars in the category of sports betting. Betting for the Oscars is different from sports betting because there is no data that can support your bet, meaning you are betting blindly which is awfully similar to most gambling circumstances. Sports betting benefits sports leagues insurmountably by drastically increasing the amount of viewers of an event, which in turn creates multitudes of new loyal fans and a lifetime of unwavering support for a team/organization. Here we see that organizations have begun to take advantage of and profit from people’s inability to stay away from gambling, which only encourages and enables those addicted to gambling to continue feeding their addiction. By incorporating variations of gambling into everyday life, gamblers are excused from the negative connotations that used to be associated with gambling, and given a free pass to fuel their addiction under the guise of being a sports fan. Before more organizations look into how they can profit from sports betting, we need to step back and decide if the consequences (extremely decreased mental health along with an increase in gambling addicts) is worth the attention. There are many ways for an organization to earn more profits, and taking advantage of those with addictive personalities should not be one of them.
Great article, Jentrie. I think you hit the nail on the head with your last line: "There are many ways for an organization to earn more profits, and taking advantage of those with addictive personalities should not be one of them."
While gambling (and sports betting) once carried negative connotations (as they should), in recent years there has been a drastic shift in the public's perception of it. This is likely the result of widespread legalization and the corporate partnerships which ensued such that now it has become widely socially acceptable. Why is this? Well, like you said, it is about the money, just as most things are.
Australia is a great case study insofar as it relates to the…