College Campuses Have Become a Front Line in America's Sports-Betting Boom (economist.com) 38
Since the Supreme Court struck down the federal prohibition on sports betting in 2018, 39 states have legalized the activity, and college campuses have emerged as ground zero for what appears to be a generational gambling problem among young men. A 2023 NCAA survey found that 60% of college students have gambled on sports, and 16% of 18-to-22-year-olds engage in what the organization classifies as problematic gambling. A Siena University poll from January found that 28% of men aged 18-to-34 who use sports-betting apps have had trouble meeting a financial obligation because of a lost bet.
Timothy Fong, a psychiatry professor at UCLA, says every one of his recent clients has been an 18-to-24-year-old man seeking help for a sports-betting or cryptocurrency addiction. John Simonian, a personal-bankruptcy lawyer in Rhode Island, says he never used to see young men filing for bankruptcy -- now it's common. On November 7th, the NCAA announced it had uncovered three separate betting scandals in men's basketball where athletes intentionally played poorly in games on which they or a friend had placed wagers.
Timothy Fong, a psychiatry professor at UCLA, says every one of his recent clients has been an 18-to-24-year-old man seeking help for a sports-betting or cryptocurrency addiction. John Simonian, a personal-bankruptcy lawyer in Rhode Island, says he never used to see young men filing for bankruptcy -- now it's common. On November 7th, the NCAA announced it had uncovered three separate betting scandals in men's basketball where athletes intentionally played poorly in games on which they or a friend had placed wagers.
A Fool And Their Money (Score:5, Insightful)
Target kids whose brains haven't fully developed. Rather predatorily. Some dopamine hits to get them hooked and then take them for all they have. Sadly, they can't see the reality, which is that everyone loses money. Sports betting wouldn't exist if those sites weren't generating over $13.7 billion in revenue last year (on over $150 billion in bets).
Re:A Fool And Their Money (Score:5, Interesting)
The dumbest part of the entire thing is - a college campus is one place where it should be like super easy to find some folks to wager with. Maybe like I dunno talk to some of the guys in your hall, activity lounge, wherever.
Setup some squares - everyone can photo the board with their phones so there isn't any funny business. You could even like socialize and watch some of the sporting events, maybe find girls like sports to watch as well get a couple bags of chips and some sodas and actually have a good time?
Oh the best part some of these people you call 'friends' win and maybe you win next time. There is no house taking a cut...
i don't think a little friendly gambling with people know is to likely to get anyone into addiction or encourage people to take risks they can't really afford but commercial gambling be it on sports, prediction markets, or stocks is down right predatory. The pattern-day-trading rule exists for good reason - its to prevent Etrade from turning into Draft Kings, and it has worked. We probably need something like it for Sports/Prediction market betting. If you can't find 25k worth of assets to park in an account, then you should be limited to handful of bets/plays a week. That way people don't get hooked, and hopefully you don't get people playing with money they can't afford to lose as often because, by virtue of the fact if you can keep it on account for x days you don't urgently need it.
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The thing is, these people aren't just betting on a single of their team that week. They're addicted. They're placing bets across dozens of games a week. They're betting on more than just who will win. It's causing some students to be in even more debt than they were just from student loans.
https://www.addiction.rutgers.... [rutgers.edu]
https://www.collegegambling.or... [collegegambling.org]
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Hell, I worked during the summers for money towards my college, along with parental help....and I had to do the old typical 'starving student' type thing.....save nickels and dimes for cheap beer/booze occasionally....pool funds for an occasional pizza...etc.
I didn't have money to wager.....
Is this what kids are using school loans for and racking up $100k's of debt over?
Sheesh.....and they they
FOMO (Score:2)
Everyone wants an easy win and to get rich quick. How many of those young men feel like a college degree is the way to a better life?
Re:FOMO (Score:4, Informative)
It is an unfair world and there are huge differences by race; but your racist views have blinded you to the facts.
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Do Two parent families vs single parent families.
Making it in this world is about making good choices consistently. Constantly telling people the world is stacked against them (it's true, but for almost everyone) and that trying is a waste (it isn't) is a huge mistake. Citing your skin color for success or failure is simply a crutch.
Do 4 things, consistently leads to above average outcomes, on average because most people can't do those four things. Life does not have guarantees but it does reward good choic
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Do Two parent families vs single parent families.
Shockingly, households with more working adults tend to make more money than households with fewer working adults. So what? By that logic, you should live your parents, especially while they are working because then you'd have 3 or maybe 4 working adults in the same household! So I don't get your point, other than maybe the racist idea that some people from some races don't work as hard as people from other races, or the racist idea that people from some races are not interested or not capable of living in
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You pointed out a correlation (skin color) and ignored the underlying causation (# of parents).
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There are more poor white people in USA then the total number of black people period.
But sure, keep trotting out that bullshit about skin color mattering.
A poor white kid on welfare is just as bad off as the poor black kid. Worse since they won't qualify for DEI hiring quotas the Democrats love so much.
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they sez, "households led by white individuals have ten times the median wealth ($250,000) of the median wealth held by households led by black individuals ($25,000). https://www.census.gov/library [census.gov]... [census.gov] "
you sez, "There are more poor white people in USA then the total number of black people period."
That seems to be a non-sequitur. What am I missing?
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First, clicking your link only show a 401 unauthorized access error.
Second, here is a quick result from DDG with the AI saying this when searching for "USA absolute numbers for poverty by demographic" https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab... [duckduckgo.com]
You'll see here that about 19.5 million white folk are in poverty. About 7.1 million black folk.
Third, it appears that yes I did embellish a bit, so I'll be upfront with that. It seems there are about 43.1 million black folks total. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=USA+... [duckduckgo.com]
Fourth. Acco
Re:FOMO (Score:5, Insightful)
There are more poor white people in USA then the total number of black people period.
So what? There are way more White people in the USA than black people. What difference does that make?
But sure, keep trotting out that bullshit about skin color mattering.
It matters because society made it matter, and chose some people to get access to wealth and others to not get that access. The data are extremely clear about this.
Look, scientifically, race isn't real. It is a thing humans made up to categorize people and hold people down, to enslave, to exploit, and to scapegoat. But the fact that race isn't biologically real doesn't stop the fact that we've made it matter by how we've treated people.
A poor white kid on welfare is just as bad off as the poor black kid. Worse since they won't qualify for DEI hiring quotas the Democrats love so much.
Ah, you want to play this game? Yes, poverty matters, and it matters for everyone. But even if you compare two children in poverty, a white child and a black child, the black child is STILL much more likely to be a victim of gun violence, to be in contact with police, to have worse access to health care, to live a more dangerous neighborhood, to attend a lower-funded school, and have worse health. Encouraging the hiring committee to interview one - just one - racially diverse person doesn't somehow magically solve all of that.
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It's probably because I've been the poor white kid in the same neighborhood as the poor black kids and my life was going just as well as theirs. I lived in the same apartments. Went to the same schools. Had the same shitty clothes, etc. Being white didn't make life any better or worse.
Instead, I got to grew up hearing how hard it was for the poor POCs yet I was literally in the same boat as they were. I was in a single income household, running out of food every month, etc. Just the same as those poor POCs.
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It's probably because I've been the poor white kid in the same neighborhood as the poor black kids and my life was going just as well as theirs. I lived in the same apartments. Went to the same schools. Had the same shitty clothes, etc. Being white didn't make life any better or worse
Yes, poverty sucks, and it sucks for everyone. And it really sucks when society only seems to help certain people, or seems to help people from certain groups more than others. Historically and statistically we can see the trends of what society has done on average, but within those groups there is still tremendous difference in experiences. And, in general, the U.S. has done a terrible job of helping those in poverty finding a way out or even having a decent life, no matter the race, gender, veteran's stat
College/gambling partnership deals⦠(Score:2)
Didnâ(TM)t some colleges even get into partnerships with the gambling companies?
The money sloshing around D1 football and basketball is bad enough. When I saw the partnerships, my thought was: âoesomeone just shut the lights out on your way out. You are no longer a college. âoe
Iâ(TM)m not saying Iâ(TM)m any better than these guys. But, any university doing this is no longer a university. Itâ(TM)s something else. Not sure what to call it. But letâ(TM)s dispense with the hy
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It's a sports franchise that runs an education side hustle. I did a job at UF, we installed a $2M digital video production system just for the Gators marketing department. I even asked "does the rest of the school get access to this which was no, they don't. Football only! This isn;t even the actual bradcast shit, this is just for asset creation. They have an indoor and outdoor practice field as well as the NFL sized stadium. It was ridiculous.
Now to be fair most of the money for this did come from a p
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Obviously that's what makes universities lots of money. They are just businesses. The point of being in business is to make money. Anything else that may come of it is purely coincidental.
So of course universities are part of the sports gambling pipeline. It's basically passive income.
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But letâ(TM)s dispense with the hypocrisy.
Most high level college athletes simply "attend" class online, anyway, and just do the bare minimum to stay eligible. I suspect we will see in the next 2-3 years a court ruling that does away with even that charade, and re-opens eligibility to college sports more broadly. And, why not? There are tons, for example, of unemployed football players (earning $0) who are better than starting collegiate players (earning six figures or more); and those unemployed football players are not allowed to compete to play
Previous generations (Score:2)
were smart enough to recognize that gambling has no benefit. And it really takes something from sports with people throwing games. Why we ever allowed it is beyond me, but money talks.
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What's changed is the ease of access. Today making a bet is a few taps away on a phone, whereas in the past you had to go to a bookie at the very least.
I'm not sure to what extent this can be fixed. I have a sneaking suspicion that even if all of these students were made to take a course that shows them how badly a casino, etc. will screw them out of their money that a few would just want to gamble even more because they think t
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I disagree. Making it illegal will place a dampening affect on the whole affair. If sports betting online was still illegal, you wouldn't see commercials for it. By having it legalized, you are encouraging the behavior. Government seems to only care about tax revenue and not what is good for the citizens.
Sure, people will always gamble with friends, coworkers but that's so tiny compared to having online gambling on your phone and as you said, a few taps away.
That it's legal just shows how corrupt our politi
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The biggest thing with legalizing gambling is you are giving the rubber stamp and saying its OK. It's not OK, it drains money from people that don't have it. It affects sports. It enslaves some people that can't walk away from the dopamine hit and aren't smart enough not to gamble. You will have illegal gambling whether you legalize it or not. We always have people running stoplights and that is illegal, but it's never OK.
College should not be the pro sports minor leagues (Score:2)
College should not be the pro sports minor leagues!
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College sports should just get rid of the college (Score:2)
Wait... college students have disposable income? (Score:3)
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Those were the days, my friend
We thought they'd never end
We'd sing and dance forever and a day
We'd live the life we choose, we'd fight and never lose
For we were young and sure to have our way
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Because men are weak (Score:2)
Look at who the loudest ones are to decry OnlyFans. Men.
Look at who the loudest ones are to decry pornography. Men.
Guess who are the largest purveyors of OnlyFans and pornography.
Now comes ease of gambling and once again, guess who are the loudest ones to complain they can't pay their bills.
If you don't want OnlyFans or pornography around, don't use it. That is the only way to hurt the industries. Don't hand over your money. Now guess what is a surefire way to not go into debt when gambling.
But nope, men
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Except "men" are not a monolith. I'm a man but I hate gambling and have never paid for sex in my life. I'm also not calling for the banning of online gambling or the online sex trade.
Neither trade is bad if consumed in moderation. The problem is that some people are more prone to addiction then others. I don't think we should restricts everyone's freedom just because a certain segment of the population has an inability to control themselves.
Why is it legal? (Score:2)