Sports gambling and betting on games could be fun until you lose over $200 due to betting on the wrong team or one of the star players got hurt. Betting on games is slowly ruining sports as well as people’s lives and will be a disaster in our future.
As sports become more popular, so does sports gambling. I never noticed how much the effects of sports gambling were until I went to my first sports game.
Sports gambling was originally illegal but in 2018 was legalized by the U.S. Supreme Court- which now makes sports betting legal in 38 states, according to a May. 3 CNN article.
Now, on average households spend $1,100 a year on sports gambling, and states that legalized betting saw an increase in bankruptcy by 28% according to a Jan. 10 Investopedia article.
When I went to my first Golden State Warriors game in 2022, the fans around me started talking amongst themselves, discussing how much they were betting on the game. When an unexpected foul happened against the Warriors, I saw some fans start screaming at referees while cursing out the players and left the game out of anger.
It was astonishing what betting could do to the people who do it and the effects it could have on players and coaches.
It was estimated that Americans have wagered about $450 billion on sports games ever since betting got legalized in 2018, according to the same Investopedia article.
People are not watching the games anymore. Instead, they are too focused on a player’s stats and how many rushing yards they had in the game or touchdowns they caught.
Detroit Lions running back, David Montgomery, had suicidal thoughts throughout his rookie year, he had said in an Oct. 11 Sports Illustrated interview.
The people who play fantasy football were messaging him claiming he ruined their year, according to an Oct. 22 Baylor Lariat article.
The National College Athletic Association (NCAA) looked at athletes in sports that attracted the most betting interest. The NCAA noticed, when March Madness arrived there were 4,000 comments and posts that were threatening towards athletes, according to a May. 17 ESPN article.
About 15-25% of the abuse that was directed at players, coaches, and officials who are a part of the popular college sports were all related to betting, according to the same ESPN article.
The Super Bowl is one of the most watched events in the country, estimating around 123.7 million average viewership last year, according to a Feb. 11 Yahoo Sport article.
However, it starts causing more people to wager more money. Especially with how famous the Super Bowl is and the high stakes there are in the game.
With the Super Bowl just passing by, there was an expected record of $1.39B betting legally. This is more than last year’s Super Bowl with $1.25B according to a Feb. 8 NPR article.
No one is watching the game for fun anymore, but instead watching it to see if their bets were correct or not. Online casinos have become such a big thing because they let people bet from the access of their homes such as FanDuel, DraftKings and BetMGM.
Online casinos added $7 billion to the sports betting sites, according to a Jan. 14 Legal Sports Report article.
The advertisements for sports betting are becoming too normalized.
Before games are about to start, the advertisements are rolling and you start hearing about all the possible bets that are made.
A research conducted by CBC’s Marketplace and the University of Bristol had analyzed seven sports games and found that there were betting advertisements that took up 21% of each broadcast they had looked at, according to a Jan. 22 CBC article.
I see sports betting ruining the love of the game just for there to be an increase in money in the league.
I find it interesting that betting companies fund sports companies since it also causes for the game to be corrupted.
There have always been rumors about players who secretly placed bets on themselves.
Jontay Porter the former Toronto Raptors player was investigated by the NBA who benched himself early from games to help those who were betting on him to know they could win a lot of money by betting on Porter to be underperforming, according to a Jan. 13 Associated Press News article.
Sports betting could be fun but there are always repercussions to it such as damaging the fun in sports, tarnishing the name of players and causing an unhealthy habit on people’s lifestyles.
