A profitable company is not necessarily seen as a successful company anymore, because a companyās value in the eyes of investors is no longer based on profit. It is based on the perception that the company will be more profitable in the future, which drives speculative valuation, which in turn creates more value for an investor than the piddly five-year projection type value that normal investors have to settle for. The modern media corporation is effectively a hedge fundāa collection of speculative assets that are expected to grow and grow, year after year. And to feed the dream of fully scalable infinite expansion, in every direction, forever, even a good business like ESPN needs to find new revenue streams.
A popular family streaming service, for example, might not be profitable, but it can sell itself to investors as a future utilityāsomething all parents will someday need to have, and so also a money printer that will never run out of ink. The entire sports industry is captive to this pursuit, and to the investor-class fantasy of endless, boundless growth. The model they have landed on is selling you cigarettes through your phone. The ESPN Bet app launched in 17 states in November of 2023.
( Defector is the news website with the Posting Nature. For example:
The one exception to this is gambling, which the DSM-V does recognize. About 1 percent of Americans have a gambling disorder; the consequences of problem gambling are terrible, doubly so in a country with a dogshit social safety net.
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"The entire sports landscape has been transformed into an advertisement for gambling, and advertisements for gambling inevitably turn a vulnerable portion of the population into problem gamblers."
This one hits so hard and hurts so much. I stupidly came back into sports a few years ago after taking the entirety of my twenties off from caring about any of them. And for a moment it felt like it used to, and then it was like a switch flipped and transformed three in five ads into gambling apps. I found out today that Fanatics has their own betting app. Fanatics makes all the uniforms for the MLB now, and they're just allowed to run a betting app? How is that not a conflict of interests? Everything about this entire bubble fills me with a sense of doom and dread. As if things in the rest of the world weren't bad enough, they began poisoning the bread at the circuses.
As if things in the rest of the world weren't bad enough, they began poisoning the bread at the circuses.
