By Christian Cullen, Staff Writer

Winter break is always a good moment to sit back and relax. A great part of the holiday season is the massive amount of sports content. The NFL is wrapping up its season, college football has bowl season and the College Football Playoffs. College basketball has marquee matchups and there’s even some exciting hockey games here and there. 

It is, for all intents and purposes, a great time to be a sports fan. However, in recent years, a worrying trend has been rising and reaching a boiling point. That is, the endless tide of gambling advertising in sports and the infiltration of gambling into all aspects of life as a sports fan. 

Think of the last time you watched a sporting event. Can you earnestly say that you did not see any sort of gambling content? Whether it’s the line, the over under, a FanDuel commercial showing you what life could be like when that parlay finally hits or a backdoor cover that goes viral on social media, sports in general have become less about the on field product and more about that product’s ability to make money for Vegas.  

The most blatant example of gambling working its way into sports has been in sports media. ESPN and Bleacher Report both post about gambling regularly, and ESPN has a sportsbook itself. You cannot escape the deluge of content. For example, Bleacher Report has the Instagram  profile @br_betting, solely dedicated to posting different gambling results. A quick scroll through the account shows an idealized life of the gambler. There are videos of people celebrating wins, unlikely parlays coming oh so close to hitting, respected media figures talking about gambling and hundreds of bets that people are encouraged to make. All of this is incredibly worrying, as Bleacher Report is a massive sports entertainment site, it is very very likely that children have been and will view this content. 

ESPN’s new sportsbook will hopefully boost their bottom line. It also seems to be overtaking the network. As I was driving around Louisville during break, I saw a billboard advertising ESPN’s sportsbook. There are endless commercials as well. You have Caesars’s Sportsbook, DraftKings, FanDuel and whatever new site is up next to capitalize on the new want to gamble your money. 

The most worrying is Fliff, an app that allows you to use an in-app currency to gamble. You can use an endless amount of Fliff Cash and coins to keep gambling. It is not a well-regulated app. While it claims to be 17 years old and above, it is still an app without the restrictions that most established brands such as FanDuel or DraftKings have to follow. As long as your Apple account’s age is past the minimum of 17, you can download the app. Age restrictions such as these work in theory but often struggle in practice. 

We have allowed gambling to become the focus of sporting events, and we have forgotten that not everyone watching or paying attention is even allowed to gamble. What I fear is a new generation of kids who will grow up seeing the glamour of gambling and inundating themselves in that life the moment they can. Any major sporting event draws the wonder of kids to the game. People fall in love with the sports they watch as kids. But as the focus shifts from the sport itself, we are substituting a love for the game for the love of gambling on the game. In effect, we are creating a generation of gambling addicts. Every ad mentions the 1-800 GAMBLING number at the end of their advertisement, and that is the extent of acknowledgement to the depths that an addiction to gambling can bring to you. 

Gambling is here, and quickly getting legalized in many states. I am not directly opposed to this. I think the focus must now shift away from its presentation to an audience where it is known that much of the audience is young and may not fully understand the risks of gambling. 

More education about gambling addiction, and addiction in general, is likely needed. American society needs to be sure that the focus of a college football game is the game itself, not how close the over was to hitting is or whether one team covered the spread. I may not have all the answers on how to modify gambling advertisements, but I can say for sure that they need to change. At least, I bet they need to.