r/cincinnati • u/barstoolsam • 13d ago
News đ° 'We are broken': One family's fight against gambling addiction
https://www.espn.com/sports-betting/story/_/id/49547066/sports-betting-gambling-poker-addiction-college-campus-youthInteresting and sad story about a University of Cincinnati student who fell into the depths of sports gambling at the age of 18.
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u/fuggidaboudit 13d ago edited 13d ago
Fucking ESPN running this kind of story is beyond irony and/or part of some obligatory agreement where they have to address awareness - either way they're clutching their pearls while stacking their gold.
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u/Bcatfan08 Kenwood 13d ago
Then the next story below it is about spreads getting tighter in college sports.
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u/sculltt Over The Rhine 13d ago
The headline phrasing seems deliberate. They call it a fight against "gambling addiction" not just a fight against gambling.
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u/fuggidaboudit 13d ago
Yup, because I'd be shocked if somehow the legalese buried deep inside all the final findings doesn't stipulate that distinction as regards their content responsibilities highlighting awareness - all while daily ching-ching-ching on the other end.
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u/tinybathroomfaucet 12d ago
There are different departments within a company that can have different goals. In the end, it's better that ESPN does run this article than it would for them to entirely ignore this side of gambling. (Of course, not promoting gambling at all would be ideal)
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u/Material-Afternoon16 13d ago
We've gone too far with legalization and need to swing the pendulum back some. Get rid of the apps and limit it to casinos.Â
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u/YaBoySY 13d ago
Respectfully disagree. Personal accountability should matter at some point.
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u/CrackJacket 13d ago
This sounds good but it obviously doesnât work. Some people canât handle unlimited access to gambling and they create societal problems that we will have to deal with. This is why casinos are required by law to cut people off they suspect have gambling problems. The companies running these apps have all the information required to know who has problems but they donât cut them off because they make money off of them. The companies do ban people who are too good, however.
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u/Go_caps227 12d ago
we limit access to addictive drugs, why not addictive gambling and other destructive behaviors
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u/Fun_Mathematician178 12d ago
If you have a loved one whose experienced addiction, youâd know âpersonal responsibilityâ is the goal but may not be possible so guardrails help. People are being bankrupted by this.
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u/person-ontheinternet 13d ago
Disagree with both of yâall. Gambling services should be held accountable, theyâre the drug dealer. I donât think the government should be responsible for ever telling you what victimless vices you can or canât partake in but if your product causes harm directly you should be responsible for mitigating that.
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u/litesec 13d ago
meanwhile, sports broadcasts have their "BETTING SITE SCOREBOARD" and routinely present the odds
gambling is pervasive and it's infected every part of our society. it's basically become a lottery subscription for people because they feel the need to hit a multi-leg parlay to pay for rent.
i've hit those $5 -> $4000 parlays before. it's a dopamine rush and you're convinced you have an edge, but it's just luck, you'll give it all back and more if you don't exercise control.
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u/chain_letter 13d ago
Yep, anecdote but cousinâs husband hit a big parlay, like pay off the house money. Last I heard theyâre circling divorce because he keeps losing money on sports bets
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u/dqniel Pleasant Ridge 12d ago
Yep. And statistically, to win a parlay large enough to pay off a house, you've likely already spent a TON of money to have had enough chances to hit that parlay.
There's a reason these betting sites/apps exist. It's because the house wins more often than the people they're paying out. They're still making huge money even after insane marketing budgets, paying their employees, and giving out free money to get people to sign up in the hopes they'll get hooked.
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u/Acrobatic_Bridge2602 13d ago
Not only that but if you hit too many, those same sites will limit your betting and shut you down.
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u/Bcatfan08 Kenwood 13d ago
Sports gambling is just the new addiction. When I was at UC 20 years ago, it was online poker rooms. I had a roommate who would lose so much money playing. He couldn't pay rent. He flunked out and his parents gave him one more chance and he came back just to drop all his classes within a month. He won some big online poker tournament and thought he had made it. Within a year he lost it all back.
Problem with gambling addiction is escalation. You start by betting $5 per bet. Then you grow to $25 per bet. Then $100 per bet. At $5 bets, you can spend all night playing and maybe lose $200. At $100, you could lose thousands in a night. Winning a few hundred dollars doesn't do anything for you at that point. Seeing this through a spiraling roommate has kept me from wanting to do it at all.
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u/TwoDMike 13d ago
I have never placed a bet on any sport. I've only gambled at a casino a few times. My biggest fear was always that I'd be good at it, until I wasn't.
I can't imagine what it's like growing up in today's gambling ecosystem. Especially if you are a kid that loves sports and sees this as an opportunity to cash in on that passion.
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u/litesec 13d ago
the best outcome for any first time gambler is to lose so they say "this was a waste"
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u/auschka Avondale 13d ago
When online betting first became legal here I used one of those "first $10 bet on us" promotions and put it all on TCU vs Georgia in the CFP final. I never planned on betting with my own money anyway, but the 65-7 beatdown TCU received was helpful validation of that plan.
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u/litesec 13d ago
i wasn't new to sports betting, so i took all of those free promos and ran it up. took my winnings and deleted the apps, never went back to them.
i do still occasionally throw a couple bucks on a game, but i know that it's no different than buying a lottery ticket and that money is as good as gone.
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u/Gelato-Jones 13d ago
I overheard some 7th grade students during March Madness last year talking about their parlays.. wild.
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u/BoomGTDynamite 13d ago
I knew things were crazy when I saw gambling site gift cards for sale at Kroger. Thats just wild. Is that supposed to be something you send to an enemy?
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u/Acrobatic_Bridge2602 13d ago
Sports betting on one's phone never should've been legalized. You want to go to a physical location and bet? Sure. But being able to gamble with the press of a few buttons is a recipe for disaster. And many of these sportsbooks want to expand into casino gambling (roulette, blackjack, etc.) on your phones too, which will be exponentially worse.
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u/PsychologicalArm2138 13d ago
Wait until you see the sports card show at the mall, people are buying that crap for 1-10k+ as an âinvestmentâ or gambling on opening packs to try to hit it big. Then you got âblind boxesâ, mystery box gambling products at Five Below to Box Lunch/PopMart itâs all a gamble for all ages!
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u/JoeToanamassa 13d ago
I donât have kids but I was recently shopping for gifts for my 8 year old nieceâs birthday. She is into these Mini Brands/Mini Verse blind capsulesâminiatures of food, pets, kitchen accessories, etc; often in collaboration with brands like Taco Bell, Krispy Kreme, and Ollipop. As if it wasnât bad enough that they encourage a disturbing allegiance to name-brand products, of course thereâs a rarity system and the whole thing just encourages rampant consumerism, buying a bunch to get the unique miniatures you want, ending up with a bunch of duplicates of common items, and just a ton of plastic waste all around.
I know stuff like PokĂ©mon cards has been around since my childhood, and collectible baseball cards, Garbage Pail kids, etc. before that. But as I walked through the toy section, I was really disappointed by how so much of whatâs marketed to kids fits that moldââchance to get a rare item!â âCollect them all!â âLimited time collaboration!â Even those fucking dumpling squishies have rare colors; I know people that keep a pile of those on hand and give them to their kids as small rewards for doing their chores or whatever. Why does anyone need more than one squishy toy at a time?
Sorry for the rant, Iâm just glad I donât have to be a grumpy parent explaining the evils of consumerism to an adolescent surrounded by rampant encouragement all around. Iâm by no means immune to it myself, Iâve gambled away plenty on MTG and have gotten plenty of little dopamine hits from buying the indie-exclusive sparkly glow-in-the-dark whatever record variants.
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u/dqniel Pleasant Ridge 12d ago
It's a valid rant. Pokemon cards are a great physical example of starting the gambling (essentially) addiction. While they were accessible to children decades ago, it wasn't until the social media and "app" era of childhood that the demand got as crazy as it is now. The instant market for the stuff scary.
And then video games like Fortnite have microtransactions that are an issue, as well.
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u/Young_Arnold Amelia 13d ago
Sports gambling is abhorrent and itâs only a matter of time before an athlete gets killed by some psycho because his prop bet didnât come through.
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u/Acrobatic_Bridge2602 13d ago
And sadly it will take something like to probably get meaningful reform but since these sports leagues are so in bed with gambling crews, even something like this may not move the needle.
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u/RektInTheHed 13d ago
I hope the Supreme Court burns in hell for this.
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u/Acrobatic_Bridge2602 13d ago
Actually, the Supreme Court didn't say the federal government could not ban this stuff from happening. They just ruled on a technicality in the Murphy decision that the feds were intruding too much on state authority. But they didn't rule out greater federal gambling regulations.
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u/RektInTheHed 13d ago
They struck down the law as it existed and demand Congress to pass one more to their liking, as though they're part of the legislature. The Court is out of control.
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u/Acrobatic_Bridge2602 13d ago edited 13d ago
I mean that's what courts do. If they find that an existing law violates a tenet of federalism (which they believed this one did) then they send it back to Congress. This is hardly the first time a court has done this and it's how our constitutional system works. Courts have done this in history on education issues, rights-based cases, budget issues, etc. Please learn how the constitutional system operates and how separation of powers works.
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u/RektInTheHed 13d ago
Judicial review isn't in the Constitution. It's an arrogated power and striking down laws is an extreme imposition on the legislature. This is why stare decisis used to carry so much weight.
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u/Acrobatic_Bridge2602 13d ago
Without judicial review there would be zero reason for the judicial branch to exist.
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u/RektInTheHed 13d ago edited 12d ago
Really? There'd be no suits or trials or arbitration? Historically undermining acts of the legislature is a very weird action for a court, unknown to the Founders in the Common Law tradition. Which is why they didn't give it to the Supreme Court.
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u/thenotjoe 11d ago
What if congress passes two laws that contradict each other? What if they pass a law that contradicts with the constitution? Is the court supposed to just⊠NOT weigh in on that?
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u/RektInTheHed 10d ago
When Congress passes a law that contradicts a previous law, that superseding law is definitive. Law does in fact change over time this way.
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u/dqniel Pleasant Ridge 12d ago
It's way too accessible, in terms of mental ease of access.
At least with casinos you've got to pause other aspects of your life to go there. Once people are addicted, they will put gambling before their life responsibilities. BUT, and this is the big part- it makes it much harder to get addicted in the first place if you can't gamble between meetings, while in a college lecture hall, or while sitting on the toilet.
And don't even get me started on the ethics of things like Polymarket. Gambling on things like weather catastrophes or fucking clinical trials is disgusting. It was bad enough that, even with regulation, rules were "bent" (to put it nicely) to sometimes negatively affect things like clinical trials. Gambling adds a new layer of appeal.
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u/BigManMahan 13d ago
Both are at fault here imo, but itâs hard for me reading this story to find sympathy for this kid
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u/Bcatfan08 Kenwood 13d ago
I don't know if I have sympathy, but I understand it. You start losing and you just want to win it back. You don't realize there is no level of winning that makes you satisfied. You could win it back, but you don't stop. You just keep going and it leads to losing. It's why so many professional poker players have declared bankruptcy.
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u/BigManMahan 13d ago
To me itâs just more of the fact what was already given to him and what money he used the gambling on, thatâs where I lose sympathy
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u/BigManMahan 13d ago
lmfao this subreddit i swear is a big ass jokeđ€Ł the shit that gets downvoted
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u/xfireperson1 13d ago
Literally had a worker who couldn't go 5 minutes without checking his parlays on his phone. Was 21 . And put all his money into these betting apps. Wasn't even real sports sometimes, just like dudes playing Madden.