One thing about gambling, especially the online variety: the closer we examine it, the worse it looks. The Vox website provides an example (available to read or listen):

Sports gambling should have stayed in Las Vegas

Sports betting is bad for sports– and for gamblers

Some of the salient points made during the discussion:

  • Sports gambling has long been an institution in the US. Best estimate is that more than one in three Americans have bet on sports. Last year alone, sports gambling generated nearly $11 billion in revenue.
  • legal sports gambling appears to be following in the footsteps of other such businesses based on activities once considered to be ‘vice’.
  • The more successful such industries become, the more problems they tend to create for society. At some point, the costs will outweigh the benefits– leaving us with some difficult choices.
  • Disappointed sports bettors have become a major source of harassment for athletes, college and pro. For them, social media has become an extremely hostile environment.
  • During the interview, Charles Lehman reminds us that the major selling point for legalization of sports gambling was to generate all this tax revenue that could be used for the betterment of society. Unfortunately, those returns have fallen far short of expectations.
  • Meanwhile, the black market, including offshore betting, continue to thrive. Rather than contracting, the marketplace for gambling has expanded.

The article goes on to cite a massive study from researchers at SMU that concluded “…Only about 5 percent of people… withdrew more from the apps than they deposited.”

The other 95 percent? firmly in the “loss”column.

I suspect the same psychology is involved here as with the hugely popular Powerball lotteries. The odds against winning Powerball are tremendous, but the marketers only show us photos of the winners.

If they showed the losers– vast hordes of them– it would almost certainly discourage people from placing a bet.

And as expected based in experience, a small minority of consumers who qualify as heavy, frequent users will provide much of the revenue to the industry– which naturally goes out of its way to cultivate more gamblers who fall into the “heavy”  category.

A quote: “…about 3 percent of bettors drive 50 percent of sports gambling profits.”

Many in that category will be under age 25…