There is a trap that you can fall into when you are rooting for a certain outcome in a sports game. You start thinking about what has to happen for your team to get back in the game, and then you expect it to happen. I wanted Tom Brady to lose the Super Bowl, for example, and as it became increasingly clear that Tom Brady would not lose the Super Bowl, I would start to concoct fanciful ways that Patrick Mahomes could come back, and then get disappointed when they inevitably didn’t happen.
“All right, score, stop, score, stop, score, get the conversion, and this thing’s tied” I thought when Kansas City had the ball in the third quarter. “All right, gotta score fast here, get a stop, score fast again, then we’ll see” I thought when they had it early in the fourth quarter. “All right, score suuuuuuper fast here…” I thought with not very much time left in the game, knowing full well that it wasn’t going to happen.
It was fun, even though I didn’t get what I wanted. It made a bad football game somewhat more interesting. It kept me paying attention long past the point that I otherwise would have.
So I understand why people are kinda into sports gambling. It’s different! It keeps you invested! It’s something to do! Look at all these rave reviews that I just made up so I can say I don’t care about them in the next paragraph.
But I don’t care about any of those things. Sports gambling is a novelty that somehow gets treated like a way of life. A massive part of the Internet sports media establishment is dedicated to giving bettors inside tips to help them make money. And boy, who wouldn’t want to make money? After all, having money is how you get rich, and getting rich is the test of whether you have lived a worthwhile American life.
But if we’re being honest, you don’t make money reading the same tips on Yahoo Sports that everyone else does. You don’t get an edge with the inside access that only a publicly available column on CBS Sports dot com can provide you. You do it by applying knowledge and expertise to areas that other people don’t. You do it by coming up with your own insights and putting your money behind them.
In other words, you win at sports gambling by working. And if the whole point is to make money without the work (for those looking to make money, it is), well, clearly that’s out.
And so, as you watch the games, you fall into the trap. You convince yourself that little ol’ you has a fightin’ chance against the odds. You believe that because you want something to happen, it has a chance to happen. And you keep watching, hoping that your viewership will keep you from losing money, or at the very least inform you in real time of the odds that you will be losing money.
At this point, we can admit that gambling on baseball isn’t going away. A few years ago, the Supreme Court struck down the federal ban on sports betting, and since then states have been racing to legalize it and get a piece of the money, and teams have been racing to partner with gambling organizations and get their piece too. The Cubs have a deal with DraftKings, for example, and the Nationals will have a gambling affiliate that has a sports book right next to their ballpark.
MLB even sees gambling revenues as a way to make up for lost fan revenues; in 2020, they approved an awful lot of in-game gambling ads that brought a little more money into their coffers. They are, unequivocally, promoting sports gambling now that it’s legal and they see a path to making their money from it.
The nature of gambling is that it takes money from people. It wouldn’t be profitable otherwise. The vast majority of people betting on sports will end with less money than they started with. Maybe it’s worth it to them; they’d probably say it is. I don’t even think it should be illegal, but baseball’s endorsement of gambling comes off as cynical. “Waste your money on these people so we can get a part of it,” they’re saying.
Of course, it doesn’t feel like a waste when you bet. That’s the trap. You put money on a game and the world comes alive with possibilities. You do get entertainment value from that bet, then. Is it enough to offset your losses? Are you getting your money’s worth? Or are you just the latest sucker in a long line of suckers, throwing cash at DraftKings, and then coming back and doing it tomorrow?