Premier league bans gambling sponsors

The major sites had anticipated the decision not to allow sponsorship by "real money" gambling sites and had registered their .net equivalents. Pokerstars.net, fulltiltpoker.net, etc.

.net stickers were printed in dozens of different colours, backgrounds, fonts, and players were instructed to take a .net sticker that most closely matched their branded clothing.

Of course, not everyone had their ducks in a row for the decision, and some of the domain names were still available. An enterprising entrepreneur registered Paddypowerpoker.net, and perhaps others, and turned it into a porn site.

Americas have had no problem with blue laws historically [1], which are laws about what can be done on Sunday largely connected to religious observations, as well as laws on "vice" and entire vice police [2] organizations.

It is no contradiction of individualism, and arguably a strong expression of it, to ensure that anything that can diminish individualism or directly attacks it also needs to be regulated. Heavy drugs, gambling, loot boxes, there's a whole variety of things that humanity has learned the hard way have a tendency to enslave those who indulge in them, and legally banning or constraining those things is perfectly in line with a philosophy of legal empowerment of the individual.

We also have a loooot of ways that people having problems with addictions can reach out for help. There is some truth to the idea that we have moved in the direction of being less willing to force that help on people, and some criticisms to be made there, but then, there were historically reasons for that shift as well that need to be incorporated into any holistic opinion of the situation.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_law

[2]: https://thelegalguide.org/what-is-vice-police-what-is-their-...

The government of the state of New Jersey argued that the federal government should not be able to restrict states from allowing gambling, and the Supreme Court agreed, so now there are no limits since all the states compete with each other in a race to the bottom.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murphy_v._National_Collegiate_...

Even though this ruling would indicate that the federal government has no right to regulate things like cannabis consumption, 8 years later, the federal government still has the “right” to charge you with myriad felonies that should only be up to the states. So this is really all about money and power instead of principles.

The Bud Bowl was discontinued becsause alcohol advertising is regulated.

World Poker Tour was sponsored by (poker site).net instead of .com because advertising a real money poker site was unacceptable. I haven't watched in a long time, I dunno what their ads are like now.

Restricting advertising is very American.

Even Americans can't fully deny they live in a society.

People will never be 100% happy, all the time. And gambling (like many other companies) prey on people in the moments where they feel down.

But we would (IMO correctly) observe that while raffles and lotteries are both technically a form of gambling, a raffle is not really a lottery in the conventional sense; it tends to form a more specific social function because there's usually an array of cheap, fun, often slightly absurd prizes from local donors, the prize is not money or a truly high-value thing, they aren't rolling, weekly events, they tend to be all-ages etc.

It largely emerges out of British church fête culture. British churches are usually poor, not rich, so a raffle was a way for the vicar to gently shake down local businesses for a set of cheap prizes in return for some gentle advertising and showing off, and a way to get more local small donors and word-of-mouth because you're gently socially shamed into taking and distributing a book of raffle tickets. School communities do it — for much the same reason — just substitute head teacher for vicar.

Also the raffle is at the end of the event, so people stay to the end (when Britishness would otherwise see us leaving early)!

You have to understand that the naffness of a raffle is very distinct from the brassy, brash idea of a lottery. People groan at the naffness and then take part anyway because it's harmless. Raffles are crap, but they are community crap.

(Like the old-fashioned "Beetle drive" fundraiser which is essentially a form of bingo.)

You can't really draw a line from the typical social raffle to lottery participation or gambling. Lotteries, raffles, bingo halls, sports betting, online game gambling, all look superficially similar but they aren't (despite the gambling companies' efforts) really the same constituencies.

Apart from that, I don't think we're any different to the USA or European countries; we got our National Lottery tradition from the USA and some of our smaller prize lottery companies have been European.