The fantasy games are just how they get kids hooked. It’s very obvious to me as someone who has always kind of felt like fantasy takes some purity out of the fandom, that this has been a long term plan to normalize this kind of “skill” game so they can create exactly that pipeline.
But I mean, its probably just a crazy conspiracy theory that the NFL already had branded endorsement deals ready to go with a dozen different gambling houses immediately when the Supreme Court cleared the way for all this shit.
It’s honestly insane. I have been watching sports with the same group of people for almost 30 years now, and the past few years it’s gotten fucking insufferable. These people genuinely believe that they’ve got a system going, doing bet arbitrage against their six different apps and seventeen different accounts. They don’t even watch the fucking game. They are just watching phones and laptops. I hate it.
So what ends up is that I’m watching our team win, and happy about it, but half the room is punching holes in the wall because thirteen different stats across six different games didn’t magically align to give them a 100:1 payout. Two of the original group have literally taken on major debt to fund their addiction and still think it’s perfectly fine to keep betting.
Fantasy football is literally a 20 year plan to create a childhood gambling pipeline, which they finally pulled off with the recent rounds of regulatory capture.
Gambling is addictive (lemmy.ml)