Gambling has been a widespread form of entertainment for centuries. I Googled how many people gamble and on the first site they write that about 1.6 billion people around the world gamble. And this is almost 20% of the world's population.
What do you think? Why is there such a different attitude to gambling products and will it ever change?
It feels like gambling has become much more normalized in recent years and accessibility has improved greatly as well. However the numbers quoted seem a bit high, it's possible that around 20% of the world's population might gamble each year if you include fairly benign activities like the lottery, but 4+ billion seems highly inaccurate.
The improvement of mobile phone and the internet are the one that enable the gambling industry to amass a huge audience of gamblers. Since the accessibility to gambling platform become easier and almost instant through online gambling. Aside from that players can now discreetly engage in gambling activities through these gadgets.
If you look at America, which often has the largest amount of money sloshing around in entertainment activities, they have been increasingly legalizing gambling state by state - as they see the money the Las Vegas and online gambling can bring in taxes.
The US government is wise enough to legalize gambling since it was proven that the gambling industry is one of the possible biggest source of income for the government. Since the income is given, the government just need to amend laws and adjust regulation in order to protect the player and make the contribution of the gambling industry standardized.