To bet, or not to bet, that is the question. Have you taken a shot at sports gambling yet? The whole culture around sports gambling over the past few years has grown expeditiously. As someone who’s done a bunch of small bets here and there, it’s crazy to see the expansion of both the gambling sites and the leagues acknowledgement on the topic. Should something change?
Pixabay / top10-casinosites
Before we get any further, I feel like it’s the necessary thing to say: please gamble responsibly. I’ve been sports gambling since the summer of 2020, when my interest peaked from a friend’s successful hockey bet. I’m lucky to say that I’m not down money since I began, but the past few months I’ve become a lot more conscious on the whole culture around sports betting.
Have you seen some of the NHL’s new advertisements on helmets? You guessed it, a few teams have actual sports betting sponsors that are on display whenever they play. Doesn’t that seem to counteract some of the league’s policies around gambling? To make matters worse, a massive 41 game suspension was just handed out to Senators’ forward Shane Pinto for “breaking” the NHL’s gambling policies. But get this, it wasn’t actually, or directly Pinto who was making the bets. Why can the rules not just be transparent?
Looking around the world at other major sports leagues, you might have seen similar harsh suspensions for NFL players who have made bets. But again, there are several examples of the league directly “promoting” its sponsored gambling sites, yet remaining silent whenever sports betting is mentioned in any “unofficial” matter.
Pixabay / Peggy_Marco
Perhaps the strangest recent trend when it comes to sports gambling is the direct promotion of odds and predictions during a live sporting event. Isn’t it annoying when it’s halftime and all of a sudden, the hosts say, “hey, here are the live odds of this game, what do you think will happen”. This doesn’t just happen at halftime; it especially happens before the games begin.
Having odds, prop bets, spreads, recent treads and other information thrown at you, sports bettor or not, is just not what should be shown on tv for sporting events. There seems to be this recent push to try to get as many new sports bettors as possible. Are they trying to make people feel more “a part of the game” or is there an “unethical” reasoning behind all of this?
Wherever the culture around sports gambling is headed, it’ll be interesting to see how the dynamic between the fans, league and the gambling sites develop moving forward!