Written by Trey Nosrak
Thousand-word article by McKay Coppins published in the March issue atlantic ocean It’s a pain to read. The title is “Soccer: My Year as a Decadent Gambler.” This work is an experiment/story that delves into the past, present, and future of gambling. of cliff memo To summarize this story, the world of intentionally addictive online gambling is already a big problem on many levels and is growing rapidly.
Reading this story reminded me of a time some 15 years ago when horse racing was the only legal game in town. I attended three Gamblers Anonymous (GA) meetings to conduct research for a magazine article. I will never forget that heartbreaking meeting. In this day and age of algorithm-driven gambling and prediction markets, one can only imagine that attendance at GA conferences is on the rise.
There is no mention of horse racing in this article, and I never heard horse racing mentioned at any of the GA meetings I attended. In particular, I remember talking to a guy in the pre-meeting tobacco group in the parking lot and asking him about horse racing. His reply was a dismissive sneer: “I tried it once and it was really slow. I just wasn’t motivated to race.” The gambling passions of the addicts I heard were poker games, the lottery, the stock market, and surprisingly, bingo.
Even though the sport we love is disrespected in both countries. atlantic ocean If you squint at this article and my GA meeting, you can interpret this as a positive. The problem of gambling on horse racing does occur, but it almost seems strange when compared to everything on today’s gambling menu.
A number of recent studies on gambling behavior suggest that the activity that causes the most problems is not slow wagers placed every few minutes, such as on horse races. A large part of the problem stems from fast-acting gambling that floods you with dopamine and doesn’t give your addicted brain time to cool down.
Online sportsbooks, casino apps, and in-game prop bet markets are carefully designed for speed. You can bet on the next pitch, the next possession, the next hand, the next spin, the next everything. Results are known within seconds, and before the first bet has even settled in your head, the next one is waiting. Psychologists call this the “short reward cycle,” and it turns out that short reward cycles are what make modern gambling so difficult to control.
Horse racing, for all its faults, has never worked that way. Our gamblers are called handicappers. The races they play take time, sometimes lasting forever. Players handicap, wait, and watch tote boards, then watch the horses warm up, parade, line up, and race. Then wait again. There is space between the beds. Even if you have a menu of potential racetracks and races on your iPad, speed limits are built in and most people need time to consider the capabilities of the horse, driver, and post position.
Horse racing is a bit of an outlier in the modern discussion of gambling problems. People studying addiction are looking at mobile apps, live betting, and algorithm-driven betting platforms, not people with a program and a pencil trying to figure out whether a railroad horse is fast enough to hold its position in the first turn.
And this changing world of gambling leads to what we’ve been discussing in this column: the idea that the future of harness racing may not depend on making horse gambling faster, louder and more aggressive. It may depend on doing just the opposite: creating a place where horse racing exists, competition exists, and horse ownership exists. But if the stakes exist, they are on the sidelines rather than in the center.
When this redesigned sport is built around privately funded wallets through memberships, sponsorships, and wager payments, there’s no need for anyone to design a betting product that keeps clicking every 10 seconds. No one needs to invent new ways to attract attention. No one needs to turn horse racing into a slot machine. When the survival of a sport no longer depends on the next bet, the pressure to create an addictive product goes away.
Ironically, the very fact that some people say that horse racing is not fun may actually be what makes horse racing healthier because of its relaxed pace and sense of anticipation. It may sound like a strangely niche field for a business, but it’s going to be difficult to compete with the faster, louder, more isolated and relentlessly growing world of gambling. Perhaps the best future for our sport is to take our beautiful animals with us, defy common sense, and escape the addictive mess. We need to embrace intentionality.
The real gamble in harness racing is standing up at a yearling sale, looking at young horses who have never been in a harness, and deciding whether or not to raise your hand. Your bet won’t make money in 3 seconds, and even if you do, it will take at least 9 months. Our gambles on young horses require patience, thought and nerve. Owning a racehorse is more like a long-term investment than a gamble. When a sport leans toward ownership, stakes programs, and membership, the excitement comes from watching horses develop over time.
We live in a modern gambling world with a young demographic built on speed, repetition, and constant action. It’s a gamble to buy a yearling, pay for it, and see how the horse develops, but it’s a slow gamble, and it’s the kind of gamble that requires you to think before you act.
It’s hard to imagine anyone ruining their life by buying and training a yearling, especially if they’re sharing the cost with a friend. But when they’re betting whether the next pitch will be a strike or a ball, a tap of a finger can ruin their lives.
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