The NHL embracing sports gambling was a major mistake

[Golden_Jet]

Just don't pay attention to it. Check your phone, talk to your significant other or something else... it's just not a big deal.

Yes it’s a big deal. It’s ruined broadcasts of the game. Talk about the damn game.

I was responding to a poster who's point was not being against gambling but not liking the odds updates...

If you are morally opposed to it, your are free to boycott, skip the parts you don't like or put up with it. Otherwise, stop telling people what to do.

Lmao, Your the one telling people what to do,

 

[The Gr8 Dane]

The comments in here make it seem like no one has the free will and the will power to deny these "terrible adds". I don't gamble and I also don't really give a shit what adds play during the time I watch TV. I take personal responsibility for my actions ( when I smoked, it was my fault not the fault of a cartoon or an add department)

Wait so you didn't blame big tobacco for smoking cigarettes?!?! Apparently it was their fault you smoked!

 

[JPT]

Wait so you didn't blame big tobacco for smoking cigarettes?!?! Apparently it was their fault you smoked!

Really not a good look considering "Big Tobacco" was proven to have known about serious health risks of their products but lied about it to the public to which it wanted to continue selling cigarettes for huge profits, including to minors.

 

[emptyNedder]

The gambling (by association tobacco use/drug use/etc.) debate has blame enough for everyone. If it all comes down to a matter of personal choice and personal responsibility, then every advertising agency should be sued for fraud. If we are all fully susceptible to manipulation by others, then life little more than a multi-dimensional board game.

Reality is paradoxical in that we have free will in a deterministic world.

 

[Lshap]

I am also an old guy that doesn’t gamble. I agree with most of what you are saying but what is your suggestion for NHL fans that find it annoying? You say you find it annoying so how have you dealt with it?

Honestly, I haven't done much beyond complain on the internet... lol. I'll mute the ads, I'll speak out wherever I can against the creeping invasion of gambling into hockey, I'll make a point to NOT buy what they're selling, I'll sign a petition if one presents itself, but really... I have no illusions my actions have much of an impact.

I have no moral objection to gambling or its right to advertise; I object to gambling going beyond being an advertiser and weaving itself into the game experience. Like brands of alcohol telling you to take a shot to match each shot on net, and two shots each time your team scores.

 

[JPT]

Honestly, I haven't done much beyond complain on the internet... lol. I'll mute the ads, I'll speak out wherever I can against the creeping invasion of gambling into hockey, I'll make a point to NOT buy what they're selling, I'll sign a petition if one presents itself, but really... I have no illusions my actions have much of an impact.

I have no moral objection to gambling or its right to advertise; I object to gambling going beyond being an advertiser and weaving itself into the game experience. Like brands of alcohol telling you to take a shot to match each shot on net, and two shots each time your team scores.

Imagining a liquor brand telling people to take a shot for each shot on net, and then following that up with the required "drink responsibly."

 

[tarheelhockey]

Wait so you didn't blame big tobacco for smoking cigarettes?!?! Apparently it was their fault you smoked!

Ah yes, Big Tobacco and its famously honest business model which definitely didn’t market a deadly and highly addictive product as safe.

 

[JianYang]

Ah yes, Big Tobacco and its famously honest business model which definitely didn’t market a deadly and highly addictive product as safe.

There's also an old ad on YouTube where a cigarette brand brags to be the doctor's favoured brand.

 

[Silky Johnson]

Yes it’s a big deal. It’s ruined broadcasts of the game. Talk about the damn game.


Lmao, Your the one telling people what to do,

Fair enough if you feel that way. I don't mind them and in fact enjoy sports betting. If on balance people don't like them, ratings will go down and the NHL will change.

My argument is primarily with people making this a moral issue. The NHL can a should be able to advertise gambling and the people should be free to make the choice to engage or not.

What I should have said in my previous post is "stop telling people what they can or cannot do".

As to me telling otherw what to do...it was a friendly suggestion. You are of course free to watch the NHL's product or not.

What

Ah yes, Big Tobacco and its famously honest business model which definitely didn’t market a deadly and highly addictive product as safe.

If the gambling add break reasonable advertising standards laws then they should be pulled. However that is not the case.

 

[Silky Johnson]

Passively looking away and pretending something isn't there has always been a great way to address social issues.

Ok. So in a previous post you told me I am trying to spin this as a moral issue and said this is mostly about people not wanting to have gambling dominate coverage - something I can be sympathetic to.

But you are are calling it a social issue here. Kind of makes your other post seem disingenuous.

As a moral issue I think I have made my opinion clear.

As to people not liking the prevalence of gambling in the coverage, there is only one choice. Stop watching and lower rating until the it is clear that it us the financial interest of the league to change their product.

I'd say stop bitching about it but this is the appropriate place to do so, I suppose.

 

[tarheelhockey]

If the gambling add break reasonable advertising standards laws then they should be pulled. However that is not the case.

I don’t think anyone’s suggesting they should be pulled for legal reasons. The cigarette ad was legal to publish in its day — even though it was blatantly deceptive and unethical.

Legal and unethical can co-exist, as is often the case with commercial promotion of addictive and harmful products.

 

[JPT]

Fair enough if you feel that way. I don't mind them and in fact enjoy sports betting. If on balance people don't like them, ratings will go down and the NHL will change.

My argument is primarily with people making this a moral issue. The NHL can a should be able to advertise gambling and the people should be free to make the choice to engage or not.

What I should have said in my previous post is "stop telling people what they can or cannot do".

As to me telling otherw what to do...it was a friendly suggestion. You are of course free to watch the NHL's product or not.

What

Participating in a discussion about something isn't even a mere implication of desire to control the actions of others. You started this "don't tell me what to do" thing in response to no one. Some of us simply don't like the idea of sports gambling advertisement during sporting events, and we should be able to make our moral/ethical case if we want to without being made to seem unreasonable by claims or implications that we are trying to control someone else's life. Others are just annoyed by it, and they aren't telling you what to do either. The defiance in the face of no adversity is weird.

 

[Ianturnedbull]

This thread feels a little like a bunch of parental organizations in the 80s blaming heavy metal music for influencing bad teenage behavior.

People make choices. You need to make the right ones for you. Go to AHL games instead.

I don't choose to buy scratch tickets every week. I don't go to Vegas when I plan vacations. I choose not to believe in luck.

I'm also not naive. Pro Sports has never shown virtue or integrity. Why is today any different?

There's a whole culture of gambling that most of us don't even know about. Nothing seems to stop that either (despite it's negative effects on families/communities).

Choose people.

Choose now.

 

[MadLuke]

Most ads include a "Call To Action", which is marketing-speak for telling viewers what to do. Gambling ads might include something like, "Download the App!", "Get In The Game!", "Play For Your Hometown!", etc. The payoff of the ad focuses on the viewer taking action by downloading/betting/signing up.

A well-written ad will make you want something, then tell you what to do in order to get it.

I am not sure in day to day parlance if that what people means, by tell me what to do (they do not have in mind small company with not the first beginning of any power of them selling products with marketing, but people that either use group shaming or even state power, could be wrong) and NHL gambling ads will usually be really careful in that regard I would imagine.

Something like this:


will never say: to bet, to download... they put bet in the name of the product because it is maybe even restricted to tell it as a verb in a sentence, show someone that press a button and never say download the app, it will be indirect, like showing and talking odds, it is an ads with no direct call to action. A bit like cigarette ads for a long time had no call to action in them, they were a desert or cowboy on a billboard without any mention or notion that it was a cigarettes company that bought it.

 

[MadLuke]

This thread feels a little like a bunch of parental organizations in the 80s blaming heavy metal music for influencing bad teenage behavior.

And we are not sure if they were wrong.

There is a lot of truth in the Tiktok is not completely different than tv and 24/24 365 days a years easily available in your pockets, ads for them everywhere, with live real time changing line that involve 0 friction and social interaction gambling is not completely different than the possibility to travel to some location that allow inside a casino sport gambling, illegal gambling or the pre smarthphone buy ticket at the corner store one.

But it also has differences in power of attraction and humans brains we can believe are physical entity that respond to physical-universal law without magic will power.

 

[JPT]

This thread feels a little like a bunch of parental organizations in the 80s blaming heavy metal music for influencing bad teenage behavior.

People make choices. You need to make the right ones for you. Go to AHL games instead.

I don't choose to buy scratch tickets every week. I don't go to Vegas when I plan vacations. I choose not to believe in luck.

I'm also not naive. Pro Sports has never shown virtue or integrity. Why is today any different?

There's a whole culture of gambling that most of us don't even know about. Nothing seems to stop that either (despite it's negative effects on families/communities).

Choose people.

Choose now.

Except those parents had absolutely no evidence to support their idea, while evidence abounds of the detrimental effects of gambling addiction. I listen to a lot of extreme metal, but I've never for a moment been addicted to it. Bad comparison.

And we are not sure if they were wrong.

There is a lot of truth in the Tiktok is not completely different than tv and 24/24 365 days a years easily available in your pockets, ads for them everywhere, with live real time changing line that involve 0 friction and social interaction gambling is not completely different than the possibility to travel to some location that allow inside a casino sport gambling, illegal gambling or the pre smarthphone buy ticket at the corner store one.

But it also has differences in power of attraction and humans brains we can believe are physical entity that respond to physical-universal law without magic will power.

No, they were most certainly wrong.

 

[KeithIsActuallyBad]

You could've probably shortened the thread title to "The NHL was a major mistake"

 

[Derailed75]

Wait so you didn't blame big tobacco for smoking cigarettes?!?! Apparently it was their fault you smoked!

No I dont blame them it was my own fault that I smoked. In the 80's the health risks were already widely known. I knew the risks and chose to anyway.

 

[Ianturnedbull]

Except those parents had absolutely no evidence to support their idea, while evidence abounds of the detrimental effects of gambling addiction. I listen to a lot of extreme metal, but I've never for a moment been addicted to it. Bad comparison.


No, they were most certainly wrong.

No. It's a good comparison. You just don't agree.

 

[cannucky]

The bigger issue is it makes it so much harder to catch the refs that are gambling on the games .The old days the bookies were all connected and tracked the accounts of people that won too often to be true , just because the NHL concealed their refs involvement when the other leagues got caught up in major bookmaking arrests doesn't mean they were any cleaner , at least one of those cases named the NHL directly and there have waves of "retirements", now anybody can get a burner phone and a prepaid cash card to use online .

 

[Lshap]

Ok. So in a previous post you told me I am trying to spin this as a moral issue and said this is mostly about people not wanting to have gambling dominate coverage - something I can be sympathetic to.

But you are are calling it a social issue here. Kind of makes your other post seem disingenuous.

As a moral issue I think I have made my opinion clear.

As to people not liking the prevalence of gambling in the coverage, there is only one choice. Stop watching and lower rating until the it is clear that it us the financial interest of the league to change their product.

I'd say stop bitching about it but this is the appropriate place to do so, I suppose.

I see moral and social issues as two different things. I have no moral objection to you enjoying an occasional bet. I hope you have no moral objection to me enjoying an occasional Bourbon. I don't consider gambling and alcohol to be immoral, however both can become social issues if unchecked or abused. That's how I parse the two definitions - does that make sense?

I see the infiltration of gambling into hockey the same way. The product isn't immoral, however the way gambling is becoming interwoven with the game is forcing us to watch hockey differently. There used to be a clear boundary between hockey and ads. The whistle blew, the game stopped, then you saw ads for cars, booze, cigarettes, etc.. Now, unlike those other products, gambling is blurring the boundaries and making itself part of the game in real-time.

It's like that example I gave earlier – imagine alcohol companies turning hockey into a drinking game, telling you to drink a shot of their brand to match each shot on net, and two shots each time your team scores. That's a rough idea of what gambling ads seem like to me.

 

[Ianturnedbull]

And we are not sure if they were wrong.

There is a lot of truth in the Tiktok is not completely different than tv and 24/24 365 days a years easily available in your pockets, ads for them everywhere, with live real time changing line that involve 0 friction and social interaction gambling is not completely different than the possibility to travel to some location that allow inside a casino sport gambling, illegal gambling or the pre smarthphone buy ticket at the corner store one.

But it also has differences in power of attraction and humans brains we can believe are physical entity that respond to physical-universal law without magic will power.

I think run-on sentences are the real problem in society.

Kidding.

I don't know. Cell phones contributing to bad human behavior has been a 2 decade long problem. I agree. It's a real force of nature.

 

[tarheelhockey]

This thread feels a little like a bunch of parental organizations in the 80s blaming heavy metal music for influencing bad teenage behavior.

Except in the case of gambling, there are concrete and measurable negative outcomes. This isn’t a matter of opinion, you can draw a direct line between cause and effect.

 

[Lshap]

I am not sure in day to day parlance if that what people means, by tell me what to do (they do not have in mind small company with not the first beginning of any power of them selling products with marketing, but people that either use group shaming or even state power, could be wrong) and NHL gambling ads will usually be really careful in that regard I would imagine.

Something like this:


will never say: to bet, to download... they put bet in the name of the product because it is maybe even restricted to tell it as a verb in a sentence, show someone that press a button no say download the app, it will be indirect, like showing and talking odds, it is an ads with no direct call to action. A bit like cigarette ads for a long time had no call to action in them, they were a desert or cowboy on a billboard without any mention or notion that it was a cigarettes company that bought it.

That's a good point. I've never worked on a product that needed delicate language to disguise its negative associations. Food for thought...

 

[JPT]

No. It's a good comparison. You just don't agree.

I actually explained why it's a bad comparison. One of those things involves evidence while the other not only did not involve evidence, but has since shown to have been a baseless moral panic. I don't agree because it's a bad comparison, not the other way around.