At Odds with a Commercial Success: Sports Betting in Canada

For those of you watching televised sporting events, you have, no doubt, especially recently, been inundated with advertisements and commercials for gambling, in general, and sports betting and sportsbooks, in particular. No matter the sport (by and large), when the game you are watching cuts to commercial, the commercial is for a sportsbook. However, the lines for what actually is a sportsbook commercial are starting to get blurred. Pre-game shows, intermissions and half-times, and post-game shows, which seemingly are all now sponsored by sportsbooks, have Studio Hosts and Studio Analysts still providing their insight and analysis, but doing so with gambling rhetoric. Discussions of who will win the game, what the score might be, and who might play well are now discussed in terms of the odds associated with betting on the money line, the spread, the over/under, and various player and team propositions. Taking things a step further, sportsbooks are even sponsoring entire evenings or days of televised games in a particular sport, for example, Hockey Night in Canada, which, of course, airs several National Hockey League games on Saturday nights here in Canada. In doing so, they have, I contend, introduced a new type of commercial. As for me, I am at odds with the commercial success that is the proliferation of the promotion of sports betting and sportsbooks in Canada. These days, when I watch a televised sporting event, it feels like I am watching an evening long or day long gambling infomercial. To be honest, I am not too worried about myself, and I am familiar with the risk; however, I am also familiar with the age in which Canadian students encounter the teaching and learning of risk, probability, statistics, and financial education/literacy/numeracy in our Canadian schools, and, in my opinion, we might be in a bit of a pickle.