Thread

ER visits for gambling disorders doubled after expanded online gambling market

164 points · 157 comments · geox

geooff_ · 1789582155 · focus · HN ↗
> In 2024, Ontarians wagered $82.7 billion CAD on these sites through 2.6 million player accounts.
Truly astounding numbers. Without a doubt, online gambling is the most preventable public health crisis of our generation. None of this had any business getting legalized.
1. jLaForest · 1789582328 · focus · HN ↗
  An average of $31807 per person...
  1. petcat · 1789582771 · focus · HN ↗
    It's a long tail. The vast majority make $20 parlay wagers here and there and they're the real cash cow. And then there are the degens that make $2,000, or $5,000 wagers on everything because otherwise "what's the point?".
    Short of outright banning (which I would favor), we can at least make mobile wagers capped at say $100 and the same account can't wager more that $500 within a 24 hour period.
    That would allow people to have their fun but seriously limit the blast radius when they inevitably lose big repeatedly.
    fn-mote · 1789584450 · focus · HN ↗
    > The vast majority make $20 parlay wagers here and there and they're the real cash cow.
    You got the meaning of "whale" wrong. The majority of the winnings / losings come from the "long tail" addicts.
    > And then there are the degens that make $2,000, or $5,000 wagers on everything because [they are addicted]
    I think my edit more accurately reflects what is going on.
    You need to put more time into the proposal if you want to make it serious. How long would it take for people to learn they need "alt accounts" to gamble?
    Suggestions:
    1. Ban advertising of gambling.
    2. Ban "remote" gambling including phone apps.
    What would it take to make progress on this in the current regulatory environment? Post a link to someone who has thought about it.
    DANmode · 1789594992 · focus · HN ↗
    > Ban "remote" gambling including phone apps.
    So gambling will be limited to anyone with AnyDesk?
    > What would it take to make progress on this in the current regulatory environment?
    Banning cryptocurrency as a concept,
    banning fantasy sports betting (shown as credits, settled in dollars in person or out-of-band),
    banning Tor,
    I could go on.
    But the real lever would be to make it illegal! Which, it was, in many jurisdictions. Now it’s splashed all over every NFL broadcast, as you alluded to with your advertising portion.
  2. Zigurd · 1789583255 · focus · HN ↗
    The gross amount doesn't tell you how much money is being lost to gambling. I'm not going to soften that wording, it really is lost, but such a shocking gross amount means the average loss is in the thousands per year. Gambling is also the archetypal whale hunt. Your best customers are harmed most by your product.
    There's nothing else that delivers that level of harm directly to a device in your pocket.
  3. dan353hehe · 1789583635 · focus · HN ↗
    It also could be inflated due to winnings being put back into another bet. A single dollar could be accounted for multiple times if used in multiple bets.
    Not that I am saying that this number is ok, gambling is a net negative on any society.
  4. binlog · 1789584195 · focus · HN ↗
    Average is meaningless for anything that isn’t a normal distribution. The median spend per account is probably like $100.
    2OEH8eoCRo0 · 1789587242 · focus · HN ↗
    "The average is meaningless so here is a number I pulled from my ass."
    john_strinlai · 1789589322 · focus · HN ↗
    while the specific illustrative example they gave may be ass-pulled, the point the parent comment is making is valid.
    [deleted] · 1789590493 · focus · HN ↗
    [deleted]
    tonyarkles · 1789593253 · focus · HN ↗
    <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49733104">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49733104
    Comes out to about $100/month
    throwaway27727 · 1789598529 · focus · HN ↗
    Also, spend is different than wager if every wager might return money to be re-wagered.
  5. [deleted] · 1789584220 · focus · HN ↗
    [deleted]
  6. quickthrowman · 1789590801 · focus · HN ↗
    I’ve traded over a million dollars of equity volume this year but my brokerage account has less than $50,000 in it. You can wager the same dollar more than once.
    DANmode · 1789594805 · focus · HN ↗
    Some can.
2. RankingMember · 1789582872 · focus · HN ↗
  Basically printing money just like tobacco companies used to be (and now are again with smokeless products). I'm not generally in favor of morality police laws, but this is so egregious it's beyond morality to me- it's vulnerable peoples' firmware getting exploited to give predatory actors their money.
  1. [deleted] · 1789584193 · focus · HN ↗
    [deleted]
3. dpkirchner · 1789583477 · focus · HN ↗
  That figure seemed way off to me (gut response) so I did a tiny bit of digging: Ontario claims income (primary household income) for 2024 was $791B. ~10% isn't as shocking as I expected.
  1. 542458 · 1789584100 · focus · HN ↗
    Really? That's an incredible number to me. 10% of all household spending goes to gambling?! 31,000 dollars per player *per year*? The mind boggles.
    pennomi · 1789584327 · focus · HN ↗
    By transaction volume yes. Presumably it’s not all spending though, if you regularly win back some of that money. The same dollar is probably wagered multiple times before it is lost.
    542458 · 1789584632 · focus · HN ↗
    Ontario lotteries pay out about 58 cents per dollar in, so that's still $13,000 annually out-of-pocket for a total spend of $31,000. That's crazy money.
    dmurray · 1789588215 · focus · HN ↗
    Sportsbooks typically pay back more like 90%, brick and mortar casinos 90%-99% depending on the game. I don't know what Ontario mandates for regulated online casinos, but I'd guess they're at the high end of that and focus on volume, return custom and dark patterns rather than extreme house edge.
    If it's 98%, the average household loses 0.2% of their income gambling.
    tonyarkles · 1789593214 · focus · HN ↗
    <a href="https://igamingontario.ca/en/news/igaming-ontario-posts-steady-growth-market-matures-year-3" rel="nofollow">https://igamingontario.ca/en/news/igaming-ontario-posts-stea...
    $3.2B revenue, 2.6M player accounts, ~$1230/yr ~= $100/month
    [deleted] · 1789584993 · focus · HN ↗
    [deleted]
  2. fn-mote · 1789584115 · focus · HN ↗
    Wagering 10% of your household income is not shocking?? What would it take to shock you? That is an astounding amount.
    Most people are living paycheck to paycheck. I've watched gambling destroy more than one family member's lives.
    To put this number in context: estimate 1/3 of income for rent, so this is 1/3 of their rent?! Translating that to my own rent is an amount that would immediately lead me to quit forever.
    dpkirchner · 1789584281 · focus · HN ↗
    The key word is *as*. It's a lot, it's shocking, it's not *as* shocking as my I thought on first read.
    AlexandrB · 1789585276 · focus · HN ↗
    It's both better and worse than it seems. I'm guessing something like 50% of folks gamble $0. Then another 45% gamble some amount of their income, averaging 10%. Finally 5% will gamble everything they have and send their family careening into poverty.
  3. [deleted] · 1789590427 · focus · HN ↗
    [deleted]
4. wombat-man · 1789583490 · focus · HN ↗
  Wow, good thing I'm a curmudgeon who only wants to bet at an IRL sportsbook. A place I only get around to visiting every few years.
  No good can come of me having a gambling app, I already fool around too much with stocks.
  1. imglorp · 1789591644 · focus · HN ↗
    I was just coming to say the prediction markets are probably way, way worse for society; sports or otherwise. For one thing, they'll be around a trillion dollar market in a few years[1]. How is that in any way a good thing? For another, every bettor on a prediction market is incentivized to use insider information at best, or even to influence the outcome at worst. This is a low point of civilization.
    1. <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2026/04/14/prediction-markets-will-grow-to-1-trillion-by-2030-bernstein-says.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.cnbc.com/2026/04/14/prediction-markets-will-grow...
5. liquidise · 1789585262 · focus · HN ↗
  Important context that many of these dollars are counted multiple times.
  Ex: you bet 100 and win, bringing your holdings to 200. You bet another 100 and lose, back to 100. You’ve gambled $200 but have arrived at the same number you started with.
  I have friends who gamble in excess of 100k/yr total. In general their net is ± 3k. A lot to spend on a hobby, but the total is often misleading.
  1. geooff_ · 1789589393 · focus · HN ↗
    Good call out. I hadn't considered this. Would be interesting to see net.

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