Guilty Pleasures

Football (& Betting) Returns

Football season is here and that means the start of the betting season, too.  I turned on the NFL RedZone channel yesterday at noon and see it is now presented by Draft Kings – one of the big online betting sites.  Fan Duel is their key competitor – they have an exclusive deal with ESPN and the ESPN app that I often check for scores and news.

People spent an amazing $27 billion on NFL wagering last year.  Enormous … and that’s not including college football betting, or all of the other sports. Betting across all sports in the USA is estimated at $240 billion. That’s a whopping 8x bigger than all of the movies & streaming services combined!

When I was a kid, sports betting was strictly illegal.  I think Las Vegas & Atlantic City were the only places you could place a legal bet on an NFL game.  The pro sports leagues were adamant about keeping gambling away from their sports.  Now all of the major leagues are falling over themselves to get teams based out of Las Vegas.  When the Athletics MLB team opens at their new ballpark, Las Vegas will have invested over $4 billion in stadiums & arenas for their NHL, NFL, and MLB teams.

There’s something about my personality that prevents me from being a big gambler. Perhaps it’s the same instincts that made me a good saver and practical investor during our early retirement journey.  The only real gambling that I do is playing Fantasy Football, which doesn’t feel much like gambling since it’s a season-long activity with friends & family.

I’ve placed a few sports bets at casinos over the last few years, but not more than $20 on a single wager for my Green Bay Packers.  This October, some buddies and I are heading to Las Vegas for a long weekend and will watch football in one of the big sports books.  For fun, I think I’ll try to spread out some NFL bets on Sunday with a limit of maybe $200 for the weekend.  

Hopefully, it won’t become a habit!

Any sports betting in your life (past, present, or future)? Have you tried an online betting site?

Image: Grok AI

19 thoughts on “Football (& Betting) Returns”

  1. This is according to my two youngest sons, in order to bet legally in the People’s Republic of California, you are not allowed to bet on a team winning. Instead of you have to bet on individual player statistics and whether they will go over or under during a particular game. My son’s group several of these wagers together for a parlay. Now it gets crazier, they prefer to bet on the WNBA because the empty seats makes it an inefficient market.

    They seem to be making money and they had me try it couple times and I actually made money. It appears that this betting is so new that the programmers are having difficulty setting up a parimutuel market for the California market on there sites.

    I am with you in that gambling is not my thing. I feel absolutely nothing when doing it, have done it very little, probably less than $100 throughout my life and have a hard time understanding how people get addicted to it. No thank you, I will stick to dividends.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. I am surprised that California doesn’t have sports betting. It seems like the Blue states are more interested in it. We just got back from a weekend in Chicago and there is a Bally’s casino right off the Magnificent Mile (with an even bigger casino under construction on the Chicago River).

      It looks like California had two propositions in 2022 that both were voted down with a super majority of voters . I’m sure nearby Las Vegas was happy to see that!

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

      1. The Indian Casino operators ran a barrage of advertising against both Propositions and were able to defeat them.

        Liked by 1 person

  2. Agree, betting isn’t my thing. The only sports bets that I have participated in have been “buying” squares in some Super Bowl pool and in 1986 I attended the Kentucky Derby and bet $10 for a horse to place at least third, I think that is show. They came in second which I think is placed and I received my bet back plus $10.

    I have done some minor gambling and was at a blackjack table in Las Vegas in 1994 and I was up $150 when I became distracted by the television which was displaying the chase of a Bronco on the 405 freeway. When I stepped away from the table, I was only up $75. I blame OJ Simpson on my loss of $75.

    Between the antitrust exemption and the favorable tax treatment plus public subsidy of stadiums, the gambling issue takes the NFL financial drain to the average American to a new level.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

    1. I agree with your disagreement with public financing of sports venues. Downtown LA makes a great case study on bad public policy. In the early 1980’s their were huge skyscrapers filled with tenants including ARCO and several banks that had good paying jobs. The geniuses managing LA decided to start charging a gross receipts tax. This tax applied even to businesses that were unprofitable. The tax caused many companies to relocate away from downtown LA.

      Next, the politicians had to do something to stimulate downtown LA, so they subsidize sports venues such Crypto Center (formerly Staples Center). Unless you are a professional sports player, workers in downtown LA are making less as vendors, cleaners, ticket takers or parking attendants for part time jobs then they would have been making working for ARCO or a big bank.

      Another thought on gambling is that it is a tax on the poor. My late father was part of a group that was opposed to Sioux City, Iowa bringing in Riverboat Gambling as a tax on the under class. They cited people on welfare buying lottery tickets on the days they got paid. His group lost and now the city has a large gambling casino operated by Hard Rock.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

      1. Don’t get me started about the City of Los Angeles.

        The latest with the Convention Center per LA Time last week is that in the past six months the cost of the renovation has increased $486M to $2.7B. I’m not sure how that occurred.

        I worked for Anaheim for 26 years and am intimately aware of the convention business. The expansion of the 2019 project there was $140M but that included about one mile of street and underground utility relocations. We did another project in I think 2016 for $25M.

        The bonds in Anaheim are paid by the bed tax and if I am understanding correctly, will paid off in 2027.

        Los Angeles turned management of the convention center to AEG. I negotiated a few potential AEG contracts for booking small 3,000 seat musical acts but we never could agree to terms.

        I can’t imagine bed tax in Los Angeles ever coming close to paying off billions of bond financing.

        Also in Los Angeles all electrical hook ups in exhibit booths are done by DWP on overtime whereas in Anaheim they are still done by IBEW employees but they work for a contractor so the exhibitor pays straight time not time and a half

        Liked by 2 people

      2. Wow – that’s quite an overspend. >5x the original cost!??

        When I worked at MegaCorp, we did a project looking at government infrastructure projects. People in the industry said they lowball the bids to get them and then make their money by dragging them out and putting in change orders. If that doesn’t make them profitable, they sue the government afterward to make their profits. We passed.

        Liked by 1 person

      3. I’m looking forward to coming out to LA for the 2028 Summer Olympics. I know there are a good number of construction projects happening for that, even though the city was pretty well equipped to start with. World Cup coming too, right?

        I don’t view gambling as a “tax on the poor”. It’s tax on the “stupid”. That’s mostly why they are poor, too.

        Liked by 1 person

      4. It appears that there is some sanity with the 2028 Olympics. The diving is likely moving to the Rose Bowl Aquatic Center as Exposition Park would need $18M in upgrades to bring it up to Olympic Standards. Also, Santa Monica is balking from hosting events due to cost. Santa Monica which historically has been a well-funded city is in rough financial shape due to public safety contracts along with Third Street Promenade being decimated due to a combination of the pandemic, homeless and mass theft episodes.

        Liked by 2 people

      5. That used to be a pretty shopping area & dining in Santa Monica. I filmed a TV commercial in that area once.

        My parents went to the 1984 Olympics in LA, so I’m hoping to revisit some of the Olympic venues / sports that they saw then.

        Liked by 1 person

      6. If you want to watch women’s softball, book flights to Oklahoma. I forget where in Oklahoma but one of the major universities have a large complex of softball fields

        Liked by 1 person

      7. Yeah – I saw that. Cool that they are spreading the Olympic flame to Oklahoma, rather than construct a giant softball complex in Los Angeles.

        Like

    2. The fact that you can recall the few bets you’ve made shows that you are a big gambler. A lot of other people lost much much more to OJ, so don’t feel too bad. 🙃

      Completely agree with your frustration on subsidies for stadiums, even though I’m a big sports fan. In MN, our new(ish) Vikings stadium was funded by the team & digital bar gaming. I’m fine with that to keep it to a minimum. Our new MLS soccer stadium was completely financed by the team. That’s even better.

      Like

      Reply

  3. The Third Street Promenade used to be a great date night venue in the early 1990s. They ran it into the ground by over policing the public during Covid-19 and under policing the riots and flash mob theft rings.

    The hits just keep on coming for the People’s Republic of Santa Monica. https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2025/09/08/wealthy-santa-monica-to-declare-fiscal-emergency-over-sexual-abuse-payouts/

    I would like very much for the City of Malibu to divorce themselves from The People’s Republic of Santa Monica. They still treat Malibu as a colony to harvest taxes from.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

Leave a comment