[pimterry]

> Let's not pretend that Spain of all places is caring about horribly destructive psuedo-gambling.

Is this intended to imply that Spain has particularly high levels of sports betting, or issues with gambling? All the stats I can see suggest the opposite, and there's already plenty of tight restrictions on local gambling businesses (sports sponsorship ban, welcome bonus ban, almost no public advertising, etc). At a quick google, it looks like the 'Spanish gambling racket' for sports is tiny, gambling problem stats far lower than UK/France/Italy, and most gambling that does happen is the lotteries etc instead, which has its sins, but is a very different beast.

Is there something specific you're getting at?

[anthk]

>Is this intended to imply that Spain has particularly high levels of sports betting

La Quiniela, a lottery based on soccer matches' results. Every middle aged man filled some weekly forms (win for locals/draw/win for foreigners) as if it was a religion. If you matched 14 from 15 results (much better with 15), you could get a big prize. Also, Jai Alai matches on the North of Spain had huge bets on results too.

Younger millenials and Gen-Zers will just play on RETA which is kinda the same as La Quiniela but online.

[mr_00ff00]

Maybe a bit out of scope for this article, but seems like in every country “Younger millenials and Gen-Zers” are turning to gambling online while traditional gambling (like Vegas) dies.

I feel like this might be a net negative from the pure speed and access in which you can lose money online vs real life, but idk.

[Al-Khwarizmi]

In practice La Quiniela works more like a lottery than betting, though. No immediacy, no lights and sounds, no adrenalin rush. I don't think there's much risk of people falling into severe addiction by playing that.

[alfonsodev]

For some people it becomes more like a ritual, some groups of friends do it together as something social to talk about football, I think it leads in some degree to people paying attention and talking about lower rank matches :D

I've played a couple of times solo and in group but never sticked to me.

No related to the point, but what it did stick to me for one season was La Liga Fantástica from Marca ( a fantasy league on paper) when I was a child, because it had the data component, you had a budget to pick players etc, This was before we had internet broadly, if I remember correctly the paper would publish huge lists with the teams ranking or the players stats. But what I do remember was some of my best players like Zalazar :D

[jmorenoamor]

Ludopaths often try to put on the same level national lotteries with sports betting and other means of information based betting.

Not a fan of lottery myself, but at least it's just some random numbers drawn from a drum. There is hardly any dark pattern or illegal incentive there. It is just you against Thomas Bayes.