I don't think there is nearly enough attention on the pipeline that has been created for children to grow into good little gamblers. All major sports games have absolute borderline gambling within their game in the form of those fantasy style Card games. Pair that with watching any live broadcast of a major sport and the gross ads for all these major sports better companies, with the ad reads during the game.

Haven't followed all that closely for some other games, but it very much seems like the model for NBA2k is to release a new game with some minor patches each year, charge 70$, then spend the majority of that year crafting patches for the card game to keep whales interested in constantly spending on new packs(which are promptly devalued on the next release, and straight up killing the prior year's game's online service, makes them entirely worthless the next year).

It’s really disturbing to me because sports are one category of entertainment that is supposed to be family friendly and accessible to kids. They look up to pro athletes as heroes and all the gambling ads are directly being shown to children. It shouldn’t be legal to advertise age restricted products and services to kids, even if they’re not the “intended” target. They’re still being groomed to accept gambling as cool and normal. Gambling, alcohol, all those ads should be subject to the same safe harbor restrictions as sexual content. Ban the ads from stadiums and jerseys too.

I don't watch sports much, but the last times I did they filled the screen with ads for gambling in the middle of the games while they were being played

beyond that, every sports podcast actively encourages gambling. hosts lightheartedly joke about their bad beats like its a pratfall. while entertaining as a non-gambling outsider, i think its a colloquial rationalization of life-ruining behavior