Was lurking a bit at the old place, and there was a thread asking who had never bet on CFB*, but the discussion went more into how legalized sports betting has affected fans’ engagement with college football. I am in a weird place, as I can’t come up with a lot of good reasons to specifically ban it when so many other forms of gambling are legal. It can also of course be done to a healthy degree, and even if someone is enthusiastic and engages with the sport in a gambling-centered way, who am I to say that’s “wrong”?
That said, I do fucking hate it at a personal level when people care more about the lines and the spreads or how their fantasy roster is doing in contrast to the rivalries and the stories and the analysis as a competition. I feel like these people, and particularly the media catering to them, are nudging team sports closer to the liminal space currently occupied by boxing and horse racing, where there is a hardcore base dedicated to the sports themselves, but the broad appeal is for gamblers and the occasional looky-loo spectacle. I can’t argue for any particular measure to stop it, but I sure don’t have to like it.
So, for those of us still hanging around in the very stupid offseason we now have with no real transfer restrictions and plenty of NIL to push players to leverage that fact, how has the explosion of sports betting affected your relationship with CFB?
(* - One $10 bet, well before 2022, on TCU to win the natty while in Vegas for other reasons, and one very boring season of buy-in fantasy football, though now that I type it, I guess that was betting on the NFL)
Sports betting shouldn’t be banned, but it definitely needs a lot more regulation than it has, especially when it comes to advertising. Think along the lines of tobacco industry regulations.
The current state of sports betting involves incredibly predatory marketing practices that are intentionally cultivating addictions, and literally profiting off of others’ misery. Vice bans never work, but when gambling interests have overrun sports so heavily that it’s becoming more important than the sport itself, something’s gotta give.
Yes, I think I could definitely go for drastically increased marketing restrictions and subsidized prevention and recovery programs. Kind of something where we’re not going to support “hobbies” that tend to be destructive at much higher rates than others, but we’re also going to be realistic and not tilt at windmills trying to micromanage people’s behavior.
Selfishly, this would also revert some of the media coverage back to the level of stupid that I’m more accustomed to.