Max Read, at NYT: "Traditional gambling — casinos, lotteries and sports betting — is a $643 billion global industry, according to the market research firm Statista; last year, about a third of that revenue came from the United States, where online gambling in particular has soared in the years since the pandemic. Depending on how you count, this makes gambling almost twice as large as the global music, video game and film industries combined."
[...]
"Gambling, in other words, is not simply paying for the culture. It is the culture.
No one knows this better than sports fans. Every major sports league and sports broadcast has a sportsbook partner or sponsor, and nearly every broadcast now prominently features betting lines and parlay suggestions. Leagues [...] now promote stars with exclusive branded sportsbook deals; dozens of major-league stadiums feature internal betting windows. Every major sports league is now a subsector of the gambling industry, rather than the other way around."