Online sports betting hurts consumers

[douglas9]

In 30 states, as well as DC and Puerto Rico, everyone over the age of 21 is effectively walking around with a mini sports casino in their pocket.

We’ve both written pieces warning that the widespread and mostly unregulated push towards legal mobile sports gambling could have dangerous consequences. At the time, we knew that total sports wagers had grown to well over a hundred billion dollars annually and states with legalized mobile sports gambling had seen a corresponding rise in calls to addiction hotlines. We also knew that previous forms of legal gambling (state lotteries) had disproportionately hurt the financial well-being of poor Americans, and that the extra tax revenue from legalized gambling likely wasn’t worth the cost of addiction. But we lacked data that proved mobile sports gambling led to widespread financial hardship in the states that legalized it.

Now, we have it.


https://www.slowboring.com/p/online-sports-betting-hurts-consumers

[no_hypocrisy]

1. A cogent argument can be made to support the argument that

the Lottery(ies) have the same effect. Regularly, I see food customers make a beeline for the Lottery after their purchases. Money down the rabbit hole.