In this article I want to talk about something that has grown to frightening proportions in recent years: sports betting, and how fast it has spread.
When the betting shop had opening hours
Sports betting used to happen only in physical places. There were betting shops. People walked in, filled in their slips, mostly football, and waited for the matches to finish to see whether they had won.
Before the internet came into our lives, sports betting had nothing in common with today. The shops kept fixed hours. They didn't open around the clock, and there were days they stayed closed, especially on holidays. And of course you couldn't bet while a match was being played. In some countries a few shops did offer live betting even before the internet, but you had to be standing in the shop. You couldn't do it from home. It was an industry still in nappies.
With the internet, everything changed completely. You could say the betting shops moved into people's homes. Computers, phones, laptops, tablets, and betting apps on all of them, made it incredibly easy to reach this form of gambling. The perfect stage had been set for an industry that boomed, and is still booming today. For anyone who is already hooked on gambling, I'd call it the biggest headache of all: the thing that won't let them get away.
And the match itself changed. A match used to be one bet: you chose, and you waited. Today, with betting during the game, every minute is a new decision. The next goal. The next corner. The next card. Ninety minutes, and ninety chances to bet again.
What makes it so strong
So what has made sports betting so successful? Is it marketing? Is it the slick apps? Are they designed to hook the player? Those questions troubled me too. Besides the slot machines, as a gambler I was deep into sports betting, mostly football. Only after I managed to cut gambling out of my life completely could I see clearly what holds a gambler so tightly to sports betting. Let's take it from the start.
1. A beautiful product
Betting apps are, first of all, very well designed. Polished sites, lovely images, everything neatly in its place. On most of them, the user sees a whole world opening up in front of him, with countless markets on his favourite sport. At first sight, it's a well-made product, and it makes a strong first impression on the average user.
2. One or two taps
The second big advantage is how easy the apps are to use. With one or two taps, the user can place a bet. From the computer, from the phone, everything is effortless now.
I won't forget my own case here. Even on nights out with friends, somewhere we'd gone to have fun, there were times we opened our phones to place bets. And not only that. In a place where we should have been relaxing and enjoying ourselves, our minds were nailed to the bet. Did that team score? How's the match going? What's going to happen? Are we winning? Are we losing? From that, any reader can understand what sports betting really does, and what all that ease of use really means.
3. From your sofa, any hour, any day
The third big advantage is that you can play from home. From the comfort of your living room, the bet is in your hands. Before the internet, you had to go to a shop. Now you don't have to get up at all. You play from home, at any hour, on any day of the year. And somewhere in the world, there's always a match: at three in the morning, there's a game kicking off on another continent.
And here we have to talk about something that has been growing in recent years. Teenagers and children under 18, using their parents' phones and computers, and logging in with their parents' accounts, are betting. I know it very well from people close to me. Many parents even bet together with their children. While they're watching a match, the father doesn't think twice about placing a bet with his son. Think about what that child learns: that football and betting go together. That a match isn't complete without a bet. We can all understand how far this has gone.
4. A world without borders
The fourth big advantage is access from anywhere in the world. It's very easy now for anyone to open an account, whatever country they live in. When I was betting, I didn't only have accounts in my own country. I had two or three more, on the other side of the world. So even when a country blocks certain companies or sites for its own reasons, the internet leaves the door open. A ban on paper doesn't close it.
5. Marketing that never sleeps
The last great weapon of these apps is marketing, and the way they promote their products. The whole stage is masterfully set to keep the player trapped in the same cycle, again and again. It isn't only the adverts, online, on TV, in the stadium, everywhere. Inside the apps themselves, the player is offered promotions: bonuses, gifts, free spins, free bets, challenges. The result is that players are kept, quite literally, on constant alert.
The real hook: two loves in one
With everything above, anyone can see how hard it is for a player to escape. But what is it that ties all of it together, and traps the player in sports betting? Without a doubt, it's people's love for a particular sport.
I loved football, and of course I still do. When the internet arrived and these apps came into our lives, an explosive cocktail was mixed: the love of a sport, like mine for football, together with the gambling bug I already had. The player starts to bridge two loves into one: gambling and his favourite sport. And unfortunately, that's a very strong bond, and it doesn't break easily.
I can tell you this with great certainty. I used to watch football matches I would never have watched otherwise. I watched them only because I had a bet on them. It's a terrible thing. There was no way I'd have watched small teams from other countries, or even from my own, if there hadn't been a bet. That is the link that connects everything the sports betting industry does to what goes on inside the player's head.
And slowly, the love itself changes. You stop cheering for your team. You cheer for a scoreline. A last-minute goal by the team you've supported all your life can feel like a loss, because it wrecked your slip. The sport you loved becomes just the screen your bet plays out on.
Not just football
I used football as my example. But is it only football? Of course not. In the United States there's American football, baseball, basketball, and a little soccer. In Europe, football rules, but there's basketball too. In Canada it may be ice hockey. In India and Pakistan, it's cricket. So sports betting doesn't depend on one sport. It depends on people's love for their sport. That's the whole secret.
The bet that comes with the company
As I said before, my friends and I found ourselves betting when we weren't at home, and we weren't alone. We'd gone out together to have a good time, and still we were betting. With the love we all had for football, a bit of talk and a little push from each other, it's very easy for someone to take out his phone and place a bet, wherever he is.
That's what makes sports betting different from a slot machine in a corner. Nobody brags to his friends about a slot machine. But a betting slip gets passed around the table, sent to the group chat, talked about at work on Monday. It doesn't feel like gambling. It feels like football. And something that doesn't feel like gambling is very hard to stop.
But here's the thing I want you to keep. The love for the game is yours. It was there long before the apps, and the bet was never part of it. You can separate the two again. It isn't easy. But the game you loved as a kid is still there, waiting for you to watch it just for the joy of it.
