The New Yorker:

Betting should be legal, but pro leagues and major networks are undermining the value of sports in a bid to get in on the action.

By Jay Caspian Kang

For the past twenty or so years, my friend Chad and I have gone to Las Vegas for the first weekend of the N.C.A.A. basketball tournament. Memory often fails when it comes to gambling, but I believe the only year we’ve skipped was 2020, when covid-19 shut down the tournament a week or so before the scheduled tipoff. March Madness in Vegas isn’t a pretty scene—picture hundreds of red-faced, middle-aged men in quarter-zip sweatshirts hugging Coors Lights to their chests in a slightly self-conscious way—but the first round has thirty-two games to bet on, and tradition is tradition, I guess.

This year, the crowds felt light. Prior to the pandemic, you’d expect a thirty- to forty-five-minute line for the betting window at the Venetian sports book. Today, most of those windows, which used to house dour tellers who would print out your bets on little tickets, have been replaced by automated kiosks, which provide you with a wider variety of bets than their analog counterparts but make the whole experience feel frictionless and disposable. These machines are run by casino companies, many of which have their own apps, which means that, if you live in one of the thirty-eight states—plus the District of Columbia—where sports wagering is now legal, you could have replicated this particular Vegas experience from your couch.

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