By Sidney Secular
March 18, 2024
(Adapted from The Phyllis Schlafly Report)
Is it a newfound fatuous infatuation or desperation born of a desperate financial situation as the nation’s 99% gets further in debt? Either way, gambling that gambling will get out of hand is not much of a gamble today. There is a newfound romance with and acceptance of games of chance. Sports gambling had a field day on Super Bowl Sunday when football’s two top teams took to the field. Apps available for “mobile devices” made betting on this contest and other chancy games of chance more accessible, more convenient and more acceptable than ever. They are making “gaming” a game changer (all the while making people poorer) for increasing numbers of the addicted. The tech tyrants are finessing and filching funds in this field of endeavor as they do with respect to any field that could prove lucrative. Bets, no matter how small, are fed into an internet surveillance system that exploits this activity in order to target the bettor with a barrage of ads enticing him to gamble further. Online gambling companies are also mining this information for the marketing gold it represents. These companies aired expensive commercials during the new national extravaganza. Gambling addiction hotlines have popped up and the traffic thereon has spiked in the 38 states where gambling has been legalized.
When Ohio authorized sports gambling last year, calls to the state’s “gamblers’ hotline” tripled during in the very first month. The Supreme Court regrettably struck down a federal ban on sports gambling in the case, Murphy v. NCAA (2018). All but 12 states have since legalized sports betting, causing gambling addiction to rise to an all-time high. In January, a federal district court in New Jersey dismissed a lawsuit by a victim of gambling, declaring that casinos have no legal duty to stop taking bets by a compulsive gambler (something that would put them out of business, and we can’t have that, right?). Gamblers as consumers are not protected from exploitation as other consumers sometimes are. Of course, in this instance we see an “about face” from the belief that government should “protect all of us from harm” by removing all of our liberties! So while you will be forced to unnecessarily wear a mask though it doesn’t protect you, for addicted gamblers the State will help his or her addiction along until the “customer” is destroyed! Go figure!
“Higher” education, as well as “secondary” school students gamble now. One out of 5 college students admits to spending some of his student loan money or financial aid on sport betting according to www.Intelligent.com. College athletic departments are getting into the act, and many partner with “Best Sportsbook” sites to promote gambling to students who, in better days, might have been expelled had they been found betting on any athletic contest. The largest category of victims are young men and their families. These men are the most affected by unemployment and the poor employment prospects in the Bidenomics economy, and are thus more prone to “roll the dice” in hopes of obtaining by chance what they cannot obtain by work. Of course, this often results in them getting themselves into dicey situations.
A new category of bets called “prop bets” has also popped up. These represent bets on ancillary matters not a direct part of the games themselves; that is, betting on props, so to speak. Taylor Swift has swiftly become a national idol, sort of the Marilyn Monroe of popular music. Hundreds of bets were placed on different aspects of the clothes she would wear and what shade of lipstick she would employ during her Super Bowl performance – anything on which to place a bet and the more categories, the better. The “Swifties” as her fans are called, placed 89 different types of bets on the aforesaid outward characteristics of the character she was trying to portray, a true measure of the new gambling mania. She’s a fan of many across the age spectrum, but a special spectacle to young women. Indeed, young women are really getting into the gambling act. Twenty percent of women aged 18 to 49 are involved in online sports gambling. Their “sporting participation” is getting more popular than showing off their gams.
Until recently, the NFL has strictly kept gambling out of football for obvious reasons. Now, however, the NFL has partnered with online gambling companies to tap into the gambling profits and boost TV ratings. The action on the field cannot help but be tainted by this involvement and already three dozen players and league officials have been found in violation of the rules. Parenthetically, we may expect it will be the rules that will suffer rather than the gambling. Most oddsmakers, for some reason, felt that Las Vegas would never host the Super Bowl, which, though sort of odd may simply represent an older, more innocent (and decent) era.
Studies show that 16% of gambling addicts attempt suicide, which is over 20 times the rate in the general population, and the highest of any addiction. Having the necessary apps on their phones makes it easy for those hooked on hi-tech to place bets at any time at any place. Now with the Artificial intelligence tools in place, the odds against the fan are much higher while it becomes ever easier for him or her to engage in this vice.
With super bowl Sunday being such a national fetish and spectacle, gambling promoters are pushing for the following Monday to become a national holiday. Don’t bet against it.
© 2024 Sidney Secular – All Rights Reserved
E-Mail Sidney Secular: Success_Express@yahoo.com
