We Are All Gamblers Now, From Sports to Crypto

tech.hindustantimes.com:

Congratulations to whoever won a bet on the World Cup via Paddy Power or FanDuel last year: You weren't alone. Parent group Flutter Entertainment Plc took a £40 million ($47.7 million) hit from so-called “customer-friendly” sports results in December. Chief Executive Officer Peter Jackson said he watched the spectacular six-goal final through his hands — “it was a very expensive event for us.”

There were other customer-friendly developments in Flutter's 2022 financial results, which triggered an investor-unfriendly fall in its shares. The company estimates it spent £150 million worth of annualized sales on safer gambling measures in the UK and Ireland, where the company imposed a £500 deposit limit for players under 25. The unwinding of the Covid-19 boom also hurt performance in Australia.

So: The house doesn't always win. But the sobering truth is that it's not losing the bigger battle of global domination.

Gambling has become an estimated $350 billion industry powered by the ability to bet online 24/7, a huge increase in the broadcasting of sports events, and governments looking for new tax revenues to fill a pandemic hole. Regulators need more resources if they're going to keep up with the attendant risks of addiction, money laundering and corruption.

Betting is becoming more mass-market, more normalized and more recreational. If the World Cup was last year's “big one,” with 20.5 million Americans expected to have bet $1.8 billion, the Super Bowl was this year's white whale, with more than 50 million Americans expected to have bet around $16 billion. These tentpole events might lead to expensive results for firms like Flutter, but they're very lucrative for market share in the long run. Americans bet about $450