Quote from: Gozie51 on Today at 04:06:27 PM

Quote from: happybitcoinph on Today at 03:32:09 PM

I don't see how it contributed to the growth of the sports industry as a whole, unless it's about money.

I think sports betting has increased the awareness of the game in my own opinion. Talking about football being people's culture but how many countries have football as culture? Before now, many Asian and Arab countries were not following the game or investing in it but with the awareness of the game through betting, many of such countries get glued to watch football to know what their bet is too. This story on this THREAD
about government banning gambling in philippine will give us an insight on how they now cherish football unlike before this global age and football awareness. There are people who die because they went to gamble.

So apart from that, gambling has created many job opening in the world from casinos, to ads from different platforms and social media handles, to marketing. I wonder how many youth currently that doesn't know what gambling is because they watch football, male and female.

During USA 1994 world cup, you hardly know of betting as we know of it today. So gambling and football are just creating fun and excitement.

I doubt sports betting plays a big role in the popularity of a specific sport as a whole.

Let's take football as your example, there is no doubt that football becomes popular in a country where it's not a primary sport because of huge advertising and global recognition. Big names, brands, and any "big" influential in the sports industry are taking popular stars as brand ambassadors, and that star will lead to much awareness of that sport. And there are lots of other advertisements to mention.

Again, even without sports betting or gambling, the sports industry can always be a huge industry. If the sports industry hadn't turned into a huge industry in the first place, sports betting wouldn't be much patronized.