As an informed person, you know that gambling is big business. You also know that we all seem hardwired to enjoy gambling to some degree. The news every day is filled with what seems to be contradictory stories.
On the one hand, are stories about the growth of gambling in all its forms. On the other hand, are stories about how one gambling sector is outpacing all others. On the one hand are stories about how one sector is falling and on the other hand, are stories about how much every sector in the gambling business is rising. Finally, we read stories about how the politicians are those who must decide for their constituents whether to legalize gambling and how to regulate it and, on the other hand, how perplexed these same politicians are.
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Slots Play Casinos is dedicated to the idea that you deserve to hear about and read about everything that’s happening in the world of gambling and from as many angles as possible. We also recognize that our primary area of focus is online gambling since so many others are focused on all the other types of gambling.
In fact, online gambling is such a broad subject that we could devote many new articles to online gambling alone. Online casino gambling focuses on the best graphics, the best game providers, the best casino bonuses, the best progressive jackpots, and much, much more.
In this article, we will focus on the rise and fall of sports betting in its various forms and then on advertising for gambling in general.
Sports Gambling Rising
This article is not about the psychology of sports gambling. It is about the incredible rise in sports gambling. However, the term sports includes dog and horse racing and they seem to be in decline. So, what’s happening?
Sports fans primarily like sports that involve people competing against people. Horse and dog racing exist mostly to facilitate gambling and nothing else. Every few years, a horse comes along that is so powerful and, yes, charismatic that the public falls in love with it. Yet, after the last race the horse goes out to stud and is forgotten.
How many champion dogs can you name? That’s what I thought…
The sports that people talk about pit people against people. These athletes are so young that we forget that they are not fully mature adults yet but we expect so much from them. This is the key: we expect so much from them that we are willing to put our money on the line that they will perform as athletically as we expect them to.
Legal Sports Gambling
Every state in the United States can now regulate legal sports gambling. Before the ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court in May 2018 that voided a law that had prohibited sports gambling in all but four of the fifty states, most sports gambling in the U.S. had been done illegally. As much as $80 billion was bet illegally in 2017.
The amount bet is not expected to fall. In those states that are quick to legalize sports gambling, the amount bet will rise. In other states, the illegal apparatus for sports gambling will stay in place.
As gambling on sports that are people against people increases, gambling on horse and dog racing will likely decrease. Already we are hearing that horse racing fans are older people who are committed to the sport and that young people are far more likely to embrace team sports betting over betting on horse or dog racing.
Many people who frequented horse race tracks were people who didn’t want to get involved with illegal sports betting on team sports. These are the people who are committed to horse racing but as team sports betting becomes easier, they will also gravitate in that direction. In short, horse racing and the like are likely to face the same end that bingo faced in the last couple of decades: most participants were older and the activity at land based bingo halls is slowly fading away.
Even if race tracks close, sports betting will continue to rise.
Advertising
A report out of Great Britain is that 80% of all adverts for gambling are made online. Only a relatively small fraction of all adverts are on television with some in print such as magazines and newspapers. But the overwhelming majority of adverts are online.
Most people, when they are asked, don’t recall seeing any gambling related adverts online. So, where are the adverts placed and why don’t most people remember seeing them?
Interruption versus In the Flow
A television or radio advert for any product or service is an interruption in the show the person had tuned in the see or hear. As an interruption, the advert stays in our minds for better or for worse.
Online adverts are easily missed or ignored because they don’t really interrupt what you are doing. An advert on an internet site might slow things down but it’s still not an interruption.
Many adverts are placed on social media. As we run through the social media sites that we go to every day or so, we can easily ignore adverts that don’t catch our eye or that don’t interest us.
Reality of Social Media
Even though so many people don’t remember being exposed to online gambling adverts, the amount spent on such adverts far outweighs the money spent on television adverts which stay in our minds. This points to the reality of social media.
Social media are so much a part of our everyday lives that we don’t have negative feelings about the companies that advertise there. Television is a far different kind of experience than social media even though we might call both entertainment. Social media is the equivalent of the people versus people milieu occupied by team sports as against horse and dog racing.
But social media don’t encourage competition. So when a gambling company advertises on social media, it recognizes that it is advertising in media that a lot of people go to, not necessarily media that the types of people who will respond to their adverts go to.
So, there is a fascinating dichotomy in the rise of sports betting, the rise of advertising on social media for gambling generally, and the type of person who spends large amounts of time on social media. There seems to be a strong connection between the person to person nature of social media and the people versus people nature of the sports people prefer betting on.
