I absolutely HATE sports betting it is a plague and should be banned

Sam, I gotta admit your original point looks pretty good right now. The only thing is the legal and tax revenue pressure to legalize sports betting was too strong and keeping the finger in the dike was just not realistic.

Personally, I think all betting should be illegal but understand and accept that ain't about to happen.

 

the mavs getting the number #1 pick sealed it for me. Sadly you still have mavs fans holding signs saying "fire nico" like it was actually nico's choice lol

 

The Buss Family sold the Lakers at the perfect time.. whew

 

IMO it was a huge mistake for Sports to get in bed with Gambling, the temptation is to much for some of these guys.........the genie is out of the bottle unfortunately.

 

Gambling is one of the most damaging addictions, third only to drug and alcohol.

Pretty easy money for mobsters.

 

People forget about the smoking industry as well, getting huge revenue out of it.

Poker has become pretty mainstream, with all sorts of professional tournaments, made sense to sabotage and rig it.....

 

The campaign against smoking has been quite successful. It is no longer publicly acceptable social behavior even though it is still legal.

And the damage done by smoking is a lot milder than that of drug, alcohol and gambling.

 

Gambling is "easy" tax revenue for state governments also.

 

Death doesn't seem "mild" though.

We have done a great job making smoking unacceptable in the USA. When I travel to Europe I am always surprised about just how many people smoke there. Varies by country, I'm sure, but France, Spain, Portugal for three still have lots of smokers. Restaurants, public squares, buildings-- many all have smoking areas still

 

Actually having seen all 3 up close Gambling is by far the worst, for a few reasons. Firstly, for drug and alcohol users (drug users especially) there's a minimum amount of money you have to get to feed the addiction, you can't by 1 penny's worth of heroin or cocaine. That tends to mean that once the person's sold all the things they have access to themselves, they tend to **** up and get locked up quickly. You can't survive as a drug addict beggar and feed your addiction, you'll never support the habit. Same for alcohol, it's a lower number but it exists, and drunk and disorderly is really visible so you tend to again get locked up fairly quickly until you drink yourself to death. Gamblers can bet 1penny though. And they're insidious and obsessed in a way that drug addicts and alcoholics just aren't because they're not rational at all or capable a good portion of the time. Gamblers will spend everything they and everyone in their family has. Then chase more pennies to keep doing it.

In my early 20's I worked in a bookmaker/betting shop. Mostly middle aged men with money betting on horses and greyhounds alongside sports betting and other things like politics or whatever. We had a guy who used to beg outside and come in and out all day betting 1p, 2p, 3p bets and losing. One day somebody gave him a £1 scratchcard and he won £3000. He bet that in 2 bets, cash. And then went back out and begged for another 13p. Which he also lost. He then proceeded to go into the toilet and smear **** all over the floor and walls. He was not in any way intoxicated.

 

"Mild" in the sense that it takes years to kill you, whereas the ruining effects of drug, alcohol, and gambling come very quickly.

 

The tobacco industry is trying to comeback with e-cigarettes and vaping though by specifically marketing them to teens and young adults. Hoping to create a new generation of customers.

 

If what I see in the UK's anything to go by they more than succeeded. I smoked growing up from a young age but that was kinda relaxed on how easy it was to get hold of them. It got more difficult in my teenage years as rules tightened and I was 6'2 at 13 with a beard, but generally I'd say maybe 2 in 10 of all the kids I went to high school with smoked cigarettes. I live near to a high school and seriously I see every kid of every age with one of those bright coloured disposable vapes in their hand. It's messed up. The things that put a lot of kids off when I was a kid (coughing, bad smell, smoke/fire itself) just don't exist with vapes.

 

It looks that way but smoking causes lung cancer....some get it some don't, it is a slower, decaying process.

As I said earlier, sports betting is not really that serious in Europe......it is how you demote it and keep it in check.

Rozier makes tens of millions and is involved in some case that is yielding 100k......it does not make much sense to go to jail for something that is far less than what he makes.

The Mafia stakes at another place is probably higher.

 

I've never been in favor of gambling on sports. The cautionary tale was always the Black Sox scandal. Even if players did not change their performance, it gave incentives for corruption.

I have always preferred a Hall of Shame wing to the HOF rather than exclusion from it.

 

It's like Sam wrote this column for BSPN (but was heavily edited to seem more calm, ha):
Sports Betting Money is Good, But it's not Cheap - Wetzel
(sorry if already posted)

nuggets (bold is mine):
"Every other league can only look on and know that if there was ever a sure-bet, it's that this won't be the last time a parade of FBI and Department of Justice figures stage a news conference to detail a slew of indictments over unsavory behavior involving sports betting..."

"... And it is fair for fans to wonder exactly what they are watching. The indictment mostly hinges on players purposefully taking themselves out of games with injury to assure they hit the under on individual prop bets, but that still corrupts the competition.
The proliferation of legalized sports wagering allows criminal elements to place numerous small bets on the information (and hopefully not trigger suspicion) and cash in.

The fact that players and coaches on multimillion-dollar contracts could be susceptible -- Rozier was playing on a four-year, $96.2-million contract -- just adds to the concern. Good luck to college sports, where the NCAA is investigating 13 men's basketball players at six schools in a betting scheme.

"...Unless every athlete and coach and official and trainer and so on, heeds the FBI warnings to steer clear of this stuff, then the next scandal is assuredly coming. Not only could it be worse, there's a decent chance it will be."

 

Who could have ever seen this coming? Certainly not anyone here at the BBS.

And the article's right, it will only get worse. College athletes (who now have NIL money, not saying that's a bad thing) can now legally bet on pro sports (which I say is a very bad thing)...what do you think happens when they get in serious debt?