Picture this. You are watching your favorite sports team, enjoying yourself, having a good time. But then a nasty little gambling website blasts its ad and interrupts your fun sports. Both you and I probably don’t really like these ads and personally I think these ads shouldn’t be on air anyways or if they are, they should be heavily restricted.
FOOTBALL IS BACK #Kickoff2023 🏈
Take it from @tonyhawk. Limits don’t have to be limiting. Have a gameplan so you can have fun.
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— DraftKings Sportsbook (@DKSportsbook) September 7, 2023
You can’t tell me adults and kids aren’t influenced by this.
From a morality perspective, I don’t think it is really right to be pushing gambling sites to people. You and I know that when it comes to gambling the saying “the house always wins” is true. It is the same when it comes to these websites. The difference here is, these sites attach it to sports, making it more sociably acceptable to be irresponsible with out money.
Another thing to note, is that when the big companies are pushing these ads, in some ways it promotes irresponsible attitudes when it comes to betting. When you were young you were probably taught not to gamble. But when these sites are being pushed and normalized people tend to forget that this was a bad thing. Also, when it is more normalized, of course, more people will do it. When more people do it, the more people will recommend it to friends and so on. It will just continue to spread these bad habits. Even I’m a victim of this and I wouldn’t be surprised if you were too. And when it keeps getting spread it can even spread to kids, and that’s another thing.
Promoting these gambling sites to kids is down right horrible. Gambling is known to be addict, like a drug, so promoting it to kids should never be okay. So why should these sporting companies be allowing these gambling sites to push ads? Kids enjoy sports so, it should be assumed that kids are watching these broadcasts and consuming these ads.
When it comes to a solution for this I have some. When it comes to the broadcasting companies involved, they should heavily restrict these ads. Limit when they can be showed, only show them after a certain time or limit what could be said or shown in the ad. Have it like alcohol. Alcohol ads are very strict, and that should be the bare minimum for gambling site ads. Personally however I think the ads shouldn’t even be there. If you know about sports betting you can do it, but it shouldn’t be put in your face during the games. This is definitely a sleeper topic in sports, but you and I should for sure talk about it some more, because maybe in the future this will turn into a bigger problem.