I don't think you two have made a clear case that the negative impact of gambling among those poor decision-makers (AKA addicts) outweighs the combined entertainment value and tax benefits to the rest of the citizenry within a city, state or country.
This is overly simplisitic and doesn't actually engage with the argument. Your line of reasoning also proves too much.
"Life is hard. Let people have vices. Some people enjoy driving fast, so why do we have paternalistic speed limits? Others enjoy opioids; why do we have paternalistic laws that make fentanyl illegal? People enjoy drinking and smoking cigarettes; what's up with these paternalistic laws banning under-21s from partaking?"
False. By your measure, there is no domain where the state should act. Very typical sloppy libertarian argument. By my measure, the state should consider the benefits and harms of particular behaviors and industries when deciding whether or not to act, and in what ways. Oh, and I went to public school.
I worked on casino gambling a few decades ago. It turned me against the gambling industry for good. The big finding was that profitability depends on the minority of heavy gamblers who mostly end up ruining their lives and their families.
This, in conjunction with someone else's earlier thread (sorry to whoever wrote it that I can't recall!) about casinos and apps banning or curtailing the betting abilities of high, regular winners, really does paint a picture that:
a) it's predatory, and
b) barring casinos and apps from barring high winners would likely equalize some portion of these predatory practices.
No, it really isn't. Observational studies with huge error bars is barely better than just going with your gut. My gut generally agrees that sports betting in its current form has some significant downsides, but don't pretend that low-quality evidence is strong evidence just because it tells the story you want.
No. The assumption is that governments cannot fix situations arising out of dysfunction in the society - bad parents, addicts. Yet to see one social problem getting fixed by the government in a liberal democracy.
Yes, that would be one way to go. Regardless of whether it’s legal or not, parents do have to teach their kids about the risks involved in drugs, smoking, vaping, etc. Making something illegal doesn’t seem to affect the availability if there’s huge demand for it. Teaching kids to make smart choices seems to matter more than whether a drug is legal or not. Gambling is no different.
"Teaching kids to make smart choices seems to matter more than whether a drug is legal or not" Sure, it matters *more*, but one thing mattering more than another doesn't mean the second thing has no effect and is thus a wholly unhelpful and useless intervention. Drugs that are immediately highly addictive to most people are not something we want sold in every convenience store in America, especially when not all children have the kind of parents who would teach them about that kind of thing - a freshly-minted 18-year-old doesn't deserve a heroin addiction because their parents messed up. And that's assuming the kid listens to their parents, which is not something kids and especially teens are known for.
The issues that you pointed out are social/cultural problems. Yet to see any evidence that any government has been effective at solving them without resorting to authoritarianism. Singapore has solved the drug problem because they have a death penalty. Half measures don’t work.
I legitimately think the prior system - betting is legal in a few places if you really want to do it, and illegal but seen as OK and suffers no legal penalties if basically limited to relatively small amounts (aka, Super Bowl or March Madness pools) was a much better system.
Sports aside, there are elements of financial markets that are tantamount to legalized gambling. For instance, even if you can't bet on a favorite sports team winning tonight, you can still bet on a favorite stock (or cryptocurrency) going up or down within the next 10 minutes.
Like it or not, online gambling, in one form of another, is always going to be there, and is essentially impossible to stamp out.
There's ultimately a big difference. The main financial markets - bonds and stocks - are not zero-sum games like sports betting. Sure, you can make it zero sum with various derivatives, but those are markets for the addicts, whoops, I meant pros.
I think the bigger commonality is the way brokerages and sportsbooks market themselves. They both sell you on the idea of "winning" and money falling from the sky from bets or trades.
In the case of sports that's just very unlikely. In the case of brokerages you're better of just buying an index fund and not selling until you need to money. Trading, as its promoted on TV, is almost as much of a suckers bet as betting, and imho much less fun.
The expectations generated by broker ads also led to that whole GameStop saga.
If this is a big problem then it might be worth of it for some of us to ask if they are supporting or funding this "big problem" even as non-addicted gamblers for whom the money lost isn't really a problem.
If you were wondering this or turning it over in your own mind or silently judging us (I qualify as a non-addicted "it's fun and I break even type"), here's how I see it:
Sportsbooks and Daily Fantasy Sports (DFS) are actually very different in this respect.
In the Sportsbooks, you bet against the house, so if you are losing, you are "funding the big problem" in exchange for entertainment. If you are winning, you are, I suppose, actually "fighting the big problem" and making money and being entertained. Or you will be, until they limit your bets.
DFS is entirely different. In that case you bet against other players and they are take 20% of the entire pot. So whether you win or lose, you're contributing to the funds.
But they differ in another respect, also, which is that DFS isn't nearly as addicting for the casual player. Any random sucker will win a 50/50 bet half the time in a sportsbook and experience that dopamine rush. But in DFS a random sucker will almost never win because winning is many times more complicated. It would be like showing up at the world series of poker and winning after playing a few house games with your friends. So my guess is far fewer people get addicted to DFS.
I don’t really have a dog in this fight, generally, but one thing that came to mind while reading the (great!) article is that the stats on percentage of income spent by poorer and wealthier gamblers feels reminiscent of talk about traffic fines. The absolute numbers aren’t necessarily very different, but the percentage of income (and thus how hard it hits) varies by income level.
I guess I’d like to see more raw numbers cited to help me understand how much money we’re talking about for the poorer gamblers who get carried away.
I recall when my state passed legalized online sports betting. A friend of mine that was in the legislature was constantly posting in favor of it online. He's an openly gay man (with very openly gay man tastes) and has absolutely no interest in sports whatsoever. The next time I saw him I asked him why he was so in favor of sports betting and he told me that he was receiving an incredible amount of constituent communications about it, all in favor. People really, really wanted this.
What are the current thoughts around the constitutionality of advertising bans? Previously, the consensus here was that cigarette advertising was only banned as part of a settlement. However, looking at the history more closely, that doesn't seem to actually be true (that it was the only way).
Full disclosure: I worked (and before then consulted) for a Daily Fantasy Sports-Online Betting media/analytics company.
Daily Fantasy was a great compromise. It required some work, and while you had big fish and little fish, you were playing against other people with the “house” just a management fee. When Draftkings and FanDuel started raising their takes, you had a lot of startups with creative game play.
The “marketplace” was/is relatively healthy and competitive, some of them actively managed the big fish by limiting the number of lines you can bet and kept the ecosystem somewhat fair.
With Sports Betting, your ability to get the edge applying some sports knowledge or mathematical skill is basically nil. Game play is too easy and feeds into the dopamine rush.
Since you’re now playing against the house—on the internet—the algorithmic tricks are truly predatory. If you go on a winning streak, they ban you or limit your bets, which you might argue is what the casinos do if they think you’re counting cards, but what’s really egregious, is that after a big losing streak (backed by those income, personality, and psychological profiles gathered on you by the web ad KGB) they might suddenly cut you off, preventing you from winning back / building back your bankroll.
They’ve literally determined that they’ve shaken you down for what you’re worth.
I’m pretty downbeat when it comes to legislative remedies or regulations. We didn’t have to legalize online sports betting, we don’t lift a finger when it comes to online privacy or algorithmic manipulation or the dopamine- fueled platforms.
The best playbook is the anti-tobacco campaign. But no or restricted advertising is tough since you have so many non-traditional media, influencers, YouTube, social media. There needs to be an independent body that takes a no-holds barred approach to not only abstracting educating or informing about the risks but making it socially lame, stupid and uncool.
Great comment, and it also seems like the difference is not "between games of chance like slots and games of skill like poker", but between games where you're trying to win other player's money or games where you're trying to win the house's money.
“With Sports Betting, your ability to get the edge applying some sports knowledge or mathematical skill is basically nil.”
Why is this? Is it that you’re against professionals with teams of scouts and statisticians? Or is it something more fundamental to how the betting structure is designed?
"I would rather shoot myself rather than listen to you talk about your fantasy football team" is a mindset with substantial market penetration, and I'm not just talking about dreary losers who unironically use the word "sportsball".
As someone who enjoys mild bets from time to time this article deeply annoys me. Like yes, okay, 5% of gamblers are stupid and have a serious problem, but you can make the argument about people who drink alcohol. *Almost* everyone who drinks does so responsibly and has a good time, but there are a few people who are chronically alcoholic. Yet nobody goes around saying "legal alcohol consumption hurts consumers". If you did this seriously and persistently, most people would find you deeply annoying.
I guess I'm unique because I don't really drink and I somewhat enjoy betting, but it's bothersome that this arrangement of preferences incurs a legislative ban while the inverse set of preferences encounters basically no regulatory resistance. This sort of thing really strongly turns me off of the whole concept of consumer protection.
I don’t think the alcohol consumption argument is necessarily good comparison. The problem with online sports betting is that, even in terms gambling it’s really shitty and everyone gets a raw deal because of the algorithmic manipulation of their user base. It’s also really easy to target the “losers” and is remarkably predatory that way. Its always sad to see liquor stores in depressed neighborhoods, but it’s legitimately harder to discriminate between someone who wants a nice bottle of wine for dinner vs someone who is going to drink themselves into a stupor.
1. Precisely because alcohol has negative effects there are restrictions on it—you can't drive under the influence, you can't drink under 21, there are self-imposed restrictions on advertising by the industry.
1. Alcohol has negative effects and so there are restrictions on it but they aren't "make the industry illegal". You're allowed to take your alcohol home with you and get as drunk as you want, and you can't gamble under 21 as-is anyways. I'm not sure what to analogize to "no drinking and driving"... "no gambling and driving" doesn't occur to me as a thing anyone would do. If this post were discussing measures on the level of alcohol countermeasures I'd be fine with that. It doesn't.
2. Yes, as a country we decided to go for a laxer standard, because we all noticed that despite the reduced negative effects actually living that way kind of sucked. I don't really see why gambling should be treated differently from alcohol here. (or for an even more mild example, sugary beverages.) The entire point I'm trying to make is that it's normal to be able to do things which might harm you if they also have upsides.
If you read carefully you will note than none of the proposals we advance include “make the gambling industry illegal.” If you have issues or disagreements with the specific proposals we lay out, feel free to share.
Insurance loses you money, on average. Poor consumers have cognitive biases which lead them to see losses as more impactful than gains. Insurance should therefore be banned for those who don’t know any better.
You know insurance offerings are heavily regulated, right? The equivalent would be a state gambling commissioner maintaining a list of which bets are legal, requiring gambling companies to offer bets even when they don't project to make money, capping gambling company's annual profits or requiring that profits above a certain amount be paid back to gamblers, etc etc. That's probably a better outcome for everyone involved, except for the gambling companies of course.
i think a paternalistic person could defend heavy restrictions on the "extended warranties" sold on e.g. electronics by retailers, and the argument might look like this.
meanwhile, property insurance, health insurance, auto insurance, we actually have to legally mandate.
On average, yes, you lose money, but when it comes to a house or a car, where you're *really* screwed if you lose it suddenly with no way to replace it, it's worth the cost of insurance to avoid all the follow-on effects of that kind of disaster, like not having a way to get to your job, having to pay high rates for a hotel or something, etc. Insurance in the form of an extended warranty *is* often a bad idea for something like a game console, many appliances, or cheaper things, where unexpected loss of access doesn't destroy your life.
It’s not always about individual utility. Problematic gambling affects others and society at large. Bankruptcy is very problematic for lower income men and their families. I’m sure we have tons of studies showing this. The upside of legitimate entrepreneurship (and the typical kind of guardrails like the ability to put together a decent business plan to get a bank loan) means that the risk-reward is a net positive.
From the perspective of maximizing an individual’s utility, it’s also hard to argue that a rational agent wouldn’t prefer a gambling marketplace that was not heavily rigged in the favor of the house. Unless losing money is some kind of weird fetish, utility would go up if the agent could win more. I think we can all agree on that.
It's not a good enough analogy to be useful. For starters, I don't think "ban sports betting" is being argued. Instead they are suggesting limiting certain practices, which does port over to highly regulated industries like many form of insurance.
That said, many people still use insurance in suboptimal ways where their expected value is more negative than it needs to be in exchange for the protection that insurance provides.
I don't think you two have made a clear case that the negative impact of gambling among those poor decision-makers (AKA addicts) outweighs the combined entertainment value and tax benefits to the rest of the citizenry within a city, state or country.
the paternalistic nature of the old North East never fails to strike. Life is hard. Let people have vices
This is overly simplisitic and doesn't actually engage with the argument. Your line of reasoning also proves too much.
"Life is hard. Let people have vices. Some people enjoy driving fast, so why do we have paternalistic speed limits? Others enjoy opioids; why do we have paternalistic laws that make fentanyl illegal? People enjoy drinking and smoking cigarettes; what's up with these paternalistic laws banning under-21s from partaking?"
Speeding hurts others. We are talking competent adults engaging in consensual actvity
When somone goes bankrupt that affects others in their lives, such as their children.
By your measure there is no aspect the state should not control. As I said very typical NE private school attitude
False. By your measure, there is no domain where the state should act. Very typical sloppy libertarian argument. By my measure, the state should consider the benefits and harms of particular behaviors and industries when deciding whether or not to act, and in what ways. Oh, and I went to public school.
You went to Harvard
Thanks for this informative piece. Good analysis on an important issue that flies below most people's radar.
I worked on casino gambling a few decades ago. It turned me against the gambling industry for good. The big finding was that profitability depends on the minority of heavy gamblers who mostly end up ruining their lives and their families.
This, in conjunction with someone else's earlier thread (sorry to whoever wrote it that I can't recall!) about casinos and apps banning or curtailing the betting abilities of high, regular winners, really does paint a picture that:
a) it's predatory, and
b) barring casinos and apps from barring high winners would likely equalize some portion of these predatory practices.
"The story here is clear."
No, it really isn't. Observational studies with huge error bars is barely better than just going with your gut. My gut generally agrees that sports betting in its current form has some significant downsides, but don't pretend that low-quality evidence is strong evidence just because it tells the story you want.
I prefer parents teaching their kids about the harmful effects of some activity rather than nanny state solutions.
The problem is this assumes functional parents. Kinda falls apart if the parents themselves are addicts.
No. The assumption is that governments cannot fix situations arising out of dysfunction in the society - bad parents, addicts. Yet to see one social problem getting fixed by the government in a liberal democracy.
So true, this is why we should legalize fentanyl and have parents teach their kids the risks.
Yes, that would be one way to go. Regardless of whether it’s legal or not, parents do have to teach their kids about the risks involved in drugs, smoking, vaping, etc. Making something illegal doesn’t seem to affect the availability if there’s huge demand for it. Teaching kids to make smart choices seems to matter more than whether a drug is legal or not. Gambling is no different.
"Teaching kids to make smart choices seems to matter more than whether a drug is legal or not" Sure, it matters *more*, but one thing mattering more than another doesn't mean the second thing has no effect and is thus a wholly unhelpful and useless intervention. Drugs that are immediately highly addictive to most people are not something we want sold in every convenience store in America, especially when not all children have the kind of parents who would teach them about that kind of thing - a freshly-minted 18-year-old doesn't deserve a heroin addiction because their parents messed up. And that's assuming the kid listens to their parents, which is not something kids and especially teens are known for.
The issues that you pointed out are social/cultural problems. Yet to see any evidence that any government has been effective at solving them without resorting to authoritarianism. Singapore has solved the drug problem because they have a death penalty. Half measures don’t work.
I legitimately think the prior system - betting is legal in a few places if you really want to do it, and illegal but seen as OK and suffers no legal penalties if basically limited to relatively small amounts (aka, Super Bowl or March Madness pools) was a much better system.
Sports aside, there are elements of financial markets that are tantamount to legalized gambling. For instance, even if you can't bet on a favorite sports team winning tonight, you can still bet on a favorite stock (or cryptocurrency) going up or down within the next 10 minutes.
Like it or not, online gambling, in one form of another, is always going to be there, and is essentially impossible to stamp out.
There's ultimately a big difference. The main financial markets - bonds and stocks - are not zero-sum games like sports betting. Sure, you can make it zero sum with various derivatives, but those are markets for the addicts, whoops, I meant pros.
I think the bigger commonality is the way brokerages and sportsbooks market themselves. They both sell you on the idea of "winning" and money falling from the sky from bets or trades.
In the case of sports that's just very unlikely. In the case of brokerages you're better of just buying an index fund and not selling until you need to money. Trading, as its promoted on TV, is almost as much of a suckers bet as betting, and imho much less fun.
The expectations generated by broker ads also led to that whole GameStop saga.
If this is a big problem then it might be worth of it for some of us to ask if they are supporting or funding this "big problem" even as non-addicted gamblers for whom the money lost isn't really a problem.
If you were wondering this or turning it over in your own mind or silently judging us (I qualify as a non-addicted "it's fun and I break even type"), here's how I see it:
Sportsbooks and Daily Fantasy Sports (DFS) are actually very different in this respect.
In the Sportsbooks, you bet against the house, so if you are losing, you are "funding the big problem" in exchange for entertainment. If you are winning, you are, I suppose, actually "fighting the big problem" and making money and being entertained. Or you will be, until they limit your bets.
DFS is entirely different. In that case you bet against other players and they are take 20% of the entire pot. So whether you win or lose, you're contributing to the funds.
But they differ in another respect, also, which is that DFS isn't nearly as addicting for the casual player. Any random sucker will win a 50/50 bet half the time in a sportsbook and experience that dopamine rush. But in DFS a random sucker will almost never win because winning is many times more complicated. It would be like showing up at the world series of poker and winning after playing a few house games with your friends. So my guess is far fewer people get addicted to DFS.
I don’t really have a dog in this fight, generally, but one thing that came to mind while reading the (great!) article is that the stats on percentage of income spent by poorer and wealthier gamblers feels reminiscent of talk about traffic fines. The absolute numbers aren’t necessarily very different, but the percentage of income (and thus how hard it hits) varies by income level.
I guess I’d like to see more raw numbers cited to help me understand how much money we’re talking about for the poorer gamblers who get carried away.
I recall when my state passed legalized online sports betting. A friend of mine that was in the legislature was constantly posting in favor of it online. He's an openly gay man (with very openly gay man tastes) and has absolutely no interest in sports whatsoever. The next time I saw him I asked him why he was so in favor of sports betting and he told me that he was receiving an incredible amount of constituent communications about it, all in favor. People really, really wanted this.
Do you recall *why* people wanted it so much? Or was it just “We want easier access to sports gambling”?
What are the current thoughts around the constitutionality of advertising bans? Previously, the consensus here was that cigarette advertising was only banned as part of a settlement. However, looking at the history more closely, that doesn't seem to actually be true (that it was the only way).
https://truthinitiative.org/research-resources/tobacco-industry-marketing/what-do-tobacco-advertising-restrictions-look-today
Full disclosure: I worked (and before then consulted) for a Daily Fantasy Sports-Online Betting media/analytics company.
Daily Fantasy was a great compromise. It required some work, and while you had big fish and little fish, you were playing against other people with the “house” just a management fee. When Draftkings and FanDuel started raising their takes, you had a lot of startups with creative game play.
The “marketplace” was/is relatively healthy and competitive, some of them actively managed the big fish by limiting the number of lines you can bet and kept the ecosystem somewhat fair.
With Sports Betting, your ability to get the edge applying some sports knowledge or mathematical skill is basically nil. Game play is too easy and feeds into the dopamine rush.
Since you’re now playing against the house—on the internet—the algorithmic tricks are truly predatory. If you go on a winning streak, they ban you or limit your bets, which you might argue is what the casinos do if they think you’re counting cards, but what’s really egregious, is that after a big losing streak (backed by those income, personality, and psychological profiles gathered on you by the web ad KGB) they might suddenly cut you off, preventing you from winning back / building back your bankroll.
They’ve literally determined that they’ve shaken you down for what you’re worth.
I’m pretty downbeat when it comes to legislative remedies or regulations. We didn’t have to legalize online sports betting, we don’t lift a finger when it comes to online privacy or algorithmic manipulation or the dopamine- fueled platforms.
The best playbook is the anti-tobacco campaign. But no or restricted advertising is tough since you have so many non-traditional media, influencers, YouTube, social media. There needs to be an independent body that takes a no-holds barred approach to not only abstracting educating or informing about the risks but making it socially lame, stupid and uncool.
Great comment, and it also seems like the difference is not "between games of chance like slots and games of skill like poker", but between games where you're trying to win other player's money or games where you're trying to win the house's money.
“With Sports Betting, your ability to get the edge applying some sports knowledge or mathematical skill is basically nil.”
Why is this? Is it that you’re against professionals with teams of scouts and statisticians? Or is it something more fundamental to how the betting structure is designed?
> making it socially lame, stupid and uncool
"I would rather shoot myself rather than listen to you talk about your fantasy football team" is a mindset with substantial market penetration, and I'm not just talking about dreary losers who unironically use the word "sportsball".
But what’s really egregious...they might suddenly cut you off
Why is that egregious, isn't that what we would want them to do if probably gambling is a problem?
Wowza. Thanks for sharing your experience.
As someone who enjoys mild bets from time to time this article deeply annoys me. Like yes, okay, 5% of gamblers are stupid and have a serious problem, but you can make the argument about people who drink alcohol. *Almost* everyone who drinks does so responsibly and has a good time, but there are a few people who are chronically alcoholic. Yet nobody goes around saying "legal alcohol consumption hurts consumers". If you did this seriously and persistently, most people would find you deeply annoying.
I guess I'm unique because I don't really drink and I somewhat enjoy betting, but it's bothersome that this arrangement of preferences incurs a legislative ban while the inverse set of preferences encounters basically no regulatory resistance. This sort of thing really strongly turns me off of the whole concept of consumer protection.
I don’t think the alcohol consumption argument is necessarily good comparison. The problem with online sports betting is that, even in terms gambling it’s really shitty and everyone gets a raw deal because of the algorithmic manipulation of their user base. It’s also really easy to target the “losers” and is remarkably predatory that way. Its always sad to see liquor stores in depressed neighborhoods, but it’s legitimately harder to discriminate between someone who wants a nice bottle of wine for dinner vs someone who is going to drink themselves into a stupor.
1. Precisely because alcohol has negative effects there are restrictions on it—you can't drive under the influence, you can't drink under 21, there are self-imposed restrictions on advertising by the industry.
2. As I am sure you know, there was a time where alcohol regulation was stricter than it is today. As a country we decided to go for the laxer standard, but there is evidence that Prohibition reduced the negative effects of alcohol: https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/6/5/18518005/prohibition-alcohol-public-health-crime-benefits
1. Alcohol has negative effects and so there are restrictions on it but they aren't "make the industry illegal". You're allowed to take your alcohol home with you and get as drunk as you want, and you can't gamble under 21 as-is anyways. I'm not sure what to analogize to "no drinking and driving"... "no gambling and driving" doesn't occur to me as a thing anyone would do. If this post were discussing measures on the level of alcohol countermeasures I'd be fine with that. It doesn't.
2. Yes, as a country we decided to go for a laxer standard, because we all noticed that despite the reduced negative effects actually living that way kind of sucked. I don't really see why gambling should be treated differently from alcohol here. (or for an even more mild example, sugary beverages.) The entire point I'm trying to make is that it's normal to be able to do things which might harm you if they also have upsides.
If you read carefully you will note than none of the proposals we advance include “make the gambling industry illegal.” If you have issues or disagreements with the specific proposals we lay out, feel free to share.
Yglesias frenemy Will Stancil update: he's winning the crucial "Here Comes A Regular" vote: https://x.com/_AudreyKennedy/status/1821915962917916963
For you Gen Zers, here's the reference: https://youtube.com/watch?v=l7-mJTclB6Q
Insurance loses you money, on average. Poor consumers have cognitive biases which lead them to see losses as more impactful than gains. Insurance should therefore be banned for those who don’t know any better.
You know insurance offerings are heavily regulated, right? The equivalent would be a state gambling commissioner maintaining a list of which bets are legal, requiring gambling companies to offer bets even when they don't project to make money, capping gambling company's annual profits or requiring that profits above a certain amount be paid back to gamblers, etc etc. That's probably a better outcome for everyone involved, except for the gambling companies of course.
i think a paternalistic person could defend heavy restrictions on the "extended warranties" sold on e.g. electronics by retailers, and the argument might look like this.
meanwhile, property insurance, health insurance, auto insurance, we actually have to legally mandate.
On average, yes, you lose money, but when it comes to a house or a car, where you're *really* screwed if you lose it suddenly with no way to replace it, it's worth the cost of insurance to avoid all the follow-on effects of that kind of disaster, like not having a way to get to your job, having to pay high rates for a hotel or something, etc. Insurance in the form of an extended warranty *is* often a bad idea for something like a game console, many appliances, or cheaper things, where unexpected loss of access doesn't destroy your life.
The authors of this post (and everyone else) are aware for the arguments in favor of legalizing heroin!
It’s not always about individual utility. Problematic gambling affects others and society at large. Bankruptcy is very problematic for lower income men and their families. I’m sure we have tons of studies showing this. The upside of legitimate entrepreneurship (and the typical kind of guardrails like the ability to put together a decent business plan to get a bank loan) means that the risk-reward is a net positive.
From the perspective of maximizing an individual’s utility, it’s also hard to argue that a rational agent wouldn’t prefer a gambling marketplace that was not heavily rigged in the favor of the house. Unless losing money is some kind of weird fetish, utility would go up if the agent could win more. I think we can all agree on that.
It's not a good enough analogy to be useful. For starters, I don't think "ban sports betting" is being argued. Instead they are suggesting limiting certain practices, which does port over to highly regulated industries like many form of insurance.
That said, many people still use insurance in suboptimal ways where their expected value is more negative than it needs to be in exchange for the protection that insurance provides.
Of course they serve different purposes, gambling is for the risk preferring.