When / Why / How did gambling become legal and everywhere?

Question

In the past 6-12 months it seems that online gambling has exploded. It's disgusting to see it advertised non-stop, in our faces pretty much everywhere, but particularly bad in sports.I was watching the hockey game last night, and they had a segment on the betting, the odds and how fanduel was just their favorite betting app... seriously disgusting... why is this even legal? Why are they talking about it on the air as part of their coverage? Why is every commercial someone really famous pushing this crap? In hockey, you've got Connor McDavid and Wayne Gretzky shilling for them; every sport has a ton of well establish pros pushing this crap. Just bizarre to see. To really get a sense of how odd this is, just change gambling to weed and imagine how that would look.I'm sure the answer is 'the gambling community took a shit-ton of their money and dumped all over lobbyist to achieve their shity goals...'. But really, what can be done to reverse this? Like who wanted this other than the gambling industry?Is there any way to put this genie back in the bottle? Any groups working to reverse this bs?

PaulHoule · Accepted Answer

One factor was that online sports betting became widespread in the UK with the perception that nothing terrible happened. It’s already happened in the US
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_NBA_betting_scandal
But people act is if it never happened. Personally my view is that pro basketballis basically illegitimate because so much depends on the judgement of the ref. Even in the pickup game getting away with fouls is a core skill and it just gets more important as you go up.

dudul · Answer

Same reason as weed: if you legalize it you can tax it.Also, I really don't see the problem with gambling. It's a game. People can do what they want with their time and money.

ofalkaed · Answer

It is very difficult to tax illegal gambling and its illegality never stopped it, just kept them from advertising.