An award-winning ESPN producer resigned after 24 years over the network’s embrace of sports betting: “I’m not going to have blood on my hands.”
I absolutely loath how ingrained it has become in sports. They have specific segments during half times about betting odds and there are banners everywhere for the various betting site.
To a lesser extent, I also hate what fantasy sports have done for various sports as well, mostly NFL. I don’t think it’s as bad as explicit gambling, but I just dgaf about anyone’s fantasy scores, teams, or whatever. That they take time out to cover that shit is annoying and is amongst the various reasons I no longer watch the NFL after 30 years of watching the Packers religiously. The product as a whole is just not enjoyable anymore.
criss_cross@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
I’m not opposed to sports betting on its own, but I am absolutely appalled at how much it’s bastardized everything.
It’s one thing if it’s in small doses and you can sort of just ignore it. It’s another thing when EVERY FUCKING SITE AND PLATFORM has gambling odds, gambling ads, gambling sponsors. Etc. You can’t blink without these predators trying to siphon money from people.
If I were a recovering gambling addict and sports fan id be heartbroken right now.
4am@lemmy.zip 8 hours ago
It ain’t even just sport anymore. Election coverage on CNN includes Kalshi odds like it’s a fucking scientific study. Gambling is everywhere online too? Games, livestreams. Crypto casinos where they can get kids hooked.
Some of the initial friction between live streamers with the online left was when “gamba” became prevalent and they started calling it out.
It used to be illegal to have online poker like 25 years ago and now there are DraftKings banners in metro train stations and LeBron got $15mil annually to stump for Polymarket. What are we even doing?
MJKee9@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
It’s fucking back to the future 2…
JackbyDev@programming.dev 3 hours ago
The fucking prediction market odds during the news is insane, as if it has any bearing on reality.
ikidd@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 hours ago
What’s extremely scary about online sportsbetting is how they game the user into falling further into the spiral with dark patterns. I can’t see that anyone with a slightly addictive personality could possibly not get completely railroaded into massive debt.
This shit has to be addressed, and soon.
ElectricTrombone@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
We can thank Trump’s Supreme Court for this. They overturned a previous ruling with a case in 2018 and now here we are.
KC_Royalz@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
I had a friend once who got a call from a sports bettor trying to sell their picks and asked him how much he bet on football a season. He said about $500. The guy laughed and hung up
criss_cross@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
I knew a guy when I was in big tech that’d lost $40K plus in draft kings per year.
Fucking insane what people pour into these.