If you’re a fan of watching sports on TV, you’re probably familiar with the idea of sports betting. You hear it constantly from those who participate in it and claim that it makes the game “more interesting.” You even see celebrities – like Kendall Jenner – advertising sports betting in commercials, echoing the same idea.
The rise of the popularity of sports betting and the legalization of sports betting ads in 2018 are leading to a culture that encourages gambling for the pursuit of entertainment. This is a major issue.
In 2005, the global internet gambling revenue was $14.3 billion. This increased to $65.8 billion in 2021.
On their own, gambling and sports betting don’t necessarily need to be illegal. Alcohol and cigarettes are still legal despite being extremely unhealthy and dangerous because adults are old enough to make their own decisions and know the risks involved.
Gambling ads have been shown to get younger people, such as adolescents, into gambling. While you have to be 21 to gamble in Illinois, and most online gambling apps do require ID verification, bypassing this by using a fake ID, a friends ID, or a VPN to change your location to a state that allows gambling at a younger age, is relatively easy.
Targeting teens and young adults with gambling ads not only encourages this behavior, but also normalizes it going into adulthood. An individual seeing gambling ads from the time they’re 13 to the time they’re 20 will increase the likelihood of participating in gambling when they turn 21, if they don’t use a loophole first.
Gambling ads are also dangerous for those who already have financial issues. A person may try to fix their situation through gambling, lose more money and ultimately be worse off.
Additionally, advertising gambling makes it seem like a more normalized thing to do, rather than something that is harmful. This normalization is allowing people to be ignorant of all the risks that go into gambling. Casinos, the most popular outlet for gambling, are regulated to prevent rigging, but the gambler is still at a disadvantage due to house edge. Typically the chances of winning slightly favor the house, making a gambler’s risk that much higher.
Sports betting is not the only area in which gambling is encouraged. In many video games, gambling is promoted through loot boxes that contain a variety of random items that someone may or may not get from opening the box.
These mystery boxes are purchased either with in-game currency or real money. The idea of spending money on something that you’re unsure of what it will contain is the whole idea behind gambling. Kids who play these games are getting an early exposure to this feeling, which may lead to an addiction in the future.
There are even some mobile games that are free to download that are essentially just a big slot machine. Games like Monopoly Go! feature a slot machine that requires spins to activate and has a variety of rewards that give different amounts of currency. You can use multiple spins at a time to get an even better reward.
With this currency, people can buy buildings and upgrade them to create a bunch of cities. When someone runs out of spins, they are immediately prompted with the option to buy more spins with real money, encouraging them to keep playing for a price.
Games like these do not advertise themselves as gambling games and are even very colorful and appealing to kids. When kids download and play games like these, they are essentially getting an early exposure to gambling and just how addicting it can be.
These games are advertised in similar ways that sports betting is: by showing just how much fun it can be and how much you can win. But in reality, you’re only likely to win that much if you put significantly more than that amount of money into gambling.
It’s clear that gambling is a severely damaging addiction that can, at best, waste your money and, at worst, lead to financial ruin. The message that gambling ads present is an extremely dangerous one that could lead to even more financial hardship in the world.
Gambling rarely ever pays off and can dig people into a hole they cannot escape from, so advertising it as anything other than that is misleading.
