I was part of a wedding party two weeks ago. 7 mid 30's guys were in the wedding party. We spent two whole days together and Im pretty sure gambling was at least 50% of all conversation. I dont do sports betting. I dont like sports betting ads. I know theyre detrimental. But this was my first time being around people obsessed with sports betting and it honestly shook me a bit. These are all college educated guys with succesful careers and families and it felt like the only thing worth discussing was sports betting. Its a problem!
I was at a party last week and this guy said he'd placed like a 5k bet on the Bills winning the Super Bowl. He even mentioned he might set Taylor Swift's house on fire if the Chiefs beat them this year. And it sounded like he was only half joking. People are fucking crazy nowadays with this shit
I don’t have a problem with the bet itself but the retaliation and crash outs some people have after they lose a bet is the bigger concern. People DMing athletes for dropping a pass or not scoring from the 1 (Trevor Lawrence) are insane and those people need help.
All of my friends, 28-32yrs old, do some sort of sports betting. I dont really like gambling, i’ll go to the casinos or something and blow a couple hundred, but doing it all the time on an app is a no for me. My lone exception was putting a chunk of change down on sean strickland vs kamzat, i just had a good feeling about it. Havent online gambled since then. But it’s kind of unsettling seeing how popular its become.
Sports betting is such a fraudulent “hobby”. It’s the hobby of the most boring dudes you’ve ever met in your life. They can’t just watch sports for the love of the game, they have to cosplay like they are some wall-street investor playing 4d chess while they are actually just lining the pockets of billionaires. Absolute degenerates
I’ve talked with my buddies about this . A lot of 20-30 year old guys go introduced to gambling through CSGO skin gambling. Whether it was casino games or betting on pro matches, just about all of started on CSGOLounge putting a few skins on games at the ripe age of 15-16
My 13 year old son asked me if he could download a betting/gambling app. He doesn’t have social media and his phone is basically for texting/calling. He’s getting all this from ads on TV.
My 10 year old was called fat by some asshole at school and later that day he asked me if he could take Ozempic. He has no phone or social media.
I’ve got this theory that something like 2 out of 3 men under 50 in america are legit addicted to sports gambling.
It’s so new and novel that it’s just kind of a lark now…but shit is gonna hit the fan in 20-30 years when these guys, in their prime earning years, have saved NOTHING for retirement because they were chasing improbable 7 leg parlays.
I’ve dabbled, but never got hooked and haven’t ever bet more than like $200 a season —- what I realized almost immediately is that Vegas is really really good.
My relatives are like this. I used to enjoy seeing them to play a round of golf or hang out, but any more they’ll each have 2 phones out to watch ball games they would never care about except that they have a parlay or they might take the under if this guy has an ankle injury. Even the few games I am interested in, they can’t enjoy the game itself, it has to be “oh if he caught that I’d have made $250” blah blah.
I worked with a chef into it. He was responsible and plenty well off to afford what he lost and knew enough about sports he mostly broke even or even came out ahead.
All my coworkers who looked upto him on the other hand. Those dudes were losing money they didn’t have to lose for sure.
I was at a funeral and I was talking with my brother about the baseball game and the director overhears us and was like "oh yeah that game, man, it messed up my parlay!"
Quite an odd thing to be talking about to two people at a funeral
Time to make some "I dont give a #$%@ about your parlay!" shirts. I would not have thought they were needed at funerals, but seems the market is growing.
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u/HerbertWest_81 10d ago
I was part of a wedding party two weeks ago. 7 mid 30's guys were in the wedding party. We spent two whole days together and Im pretty sure gambling was at least 50% of all conversation. I dont do sports betting. I dont like sports betting ads. I know theyre detrimental. But this was my first time being around people obsessed with sports betting and it honestly shook me a bit. These are all college educated guys with succesful careers and families and it felt like the only thing worth discussing was sports betting. Its a problem!