I find it really interesting that online sports betting, which has been a thing in my country for 15+ years and largely a non-issue, is suddenly a total shitshow once it gets legalised in the US. I feel like the US always takes things too far. I watch quite a few US sports and former athletes giving betting suggestions during broadcasts is absolutely insane. How can you go from being so restrictive to having absolutely no limits overnight? To make matters worse I get the feeling the TV companies here are taking pointers from their US colleagues and starting to force us down the same path.

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lotsofpulp 3 hours ago | parent [-]

>How can you go from being so restrictive to having absolutely no limits overnight?

In 2018, the US Supreme Court said the federal law preventing it was illegal.

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

It was banned by the federal government in 1992 by an act of Congress (with bipartisan consensus and signed into law by a Republican president). The supreme court vote overturning it was also 7-2, with 2 of those 7 appointed by a Democrat president.

	▲	orangecat 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		It was banned by the federal government Not exactly. The law was weird, and that's why it was overturned. It didn't make sports betting illegal federally, instead it prevented states from "authorizing" it, which the petitioners argued was an unconstitutional intrusion into the lawmaking ability of states in that it prevented them from repealing laws against sports betting that they had previously passed. The full ruling is at https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/16-476_dbfi.pdf, and the last paragraph sums it up: "Congress can regulate sports gambling directly, but if it elects not to do so, each State is free to act on its own". The SCOTUS ruling didn't legalize sports betting; states chose to do that themselves once they were no longer prevented from doing so. Congress could ban it nationwide today, and probably they should.