Reasons Why Gambling Should Stay Legal

  1. Reasons Why Gambling Should Stay Legal
  2. Reasons Why Gambling Should Be Legal
  3. Why Gambling Should Be Legalised

Some will argue that the US government making sports betting legal would cause several large, unwieldy problems. However, issues concerning the integrity of games, “problem” gambling, and consumer protections can all be resolved when considering certain aspects of why sports betting should be legalized.

We have lots of reasons for gambling online. For choosing an online casino over a brick and mortar casino. For choosing the internet over Las Vegas.

But when we listed all those reasons out, we found we could narrow them down to 4 core reasons. Four reasons which, we think, are compelling enough to convince most people to cancel their trips to Las Vegas, Reno or New Jersey, to stay at home to gamble instead.

Those core reasons are:

  • Costs
  • Convenience
  • Variety
  • Promotions

Let’s go over each one in detail.

Gambling online is FAR cheaper than gambling offline. Especially if you have to travel. Let me give you a rough idea what the difference is using our last trip to Vegas.

Here’s what we spent (roughly) on our last trip:

  • $400 (two round trip tickets from Portland, Or)
  • $70 for 1 week airport parking
  • $200 for 1 week car rental
  • $700 food for a few nice meals, snacks and groceries
  • $300 for gambling (we don’t play much)
  • $500 for 4 tickets to 2 shows
  • $150 for our cat sitter for 1 week

…and there’s probably some things I’m missing. But that comes out to around $2,300 for one week in Las Vegas. Usually we figure between $1,000 and $3,000 for each trip, depending on how long we’re planning to stay.

What’s important to note here is we don’t have to pay for a hotel because we have access to a timeshare. Otherwise, you’d have to figure $100+ per night for a room. Add that to a week-long trip and we’d be at $3,000.

You’d also have to spend more in tickets if you’re coming from the east coast. You’d also have more expenses if you have kids, need babysitting or if you don’t have access to a kitchen like we usually do.

Your situation will be different. It will cost a different amount. But the actual cost isn’t important.

What’s important here is that traveling to gamble offline will ALWAYS BE MORE EXPENSIVE than gambling online. Always.
  • Internet or data plan – which is divided amongst all your other online activities
  • Computer – which you already have, and again, is divided amongst your other activities
  • Gambling – the money you play with
Gambling

Your real hard costs is your gambling bankroll. Which will go further online because many bets that are $3, $5 or $10 minimum offline, are only $1 online – sometimes even less.

And chances are you already have internet access and/or a data plan. You probably already have a computer too.

So, if we stuck to our budget above – where we only gambled $300 – we’d save around $2,000. That’s money you could save, use for gambling or whatever else you wanted.

(You (and your spouse) wouldn’t miss a week of work, either, which is even more money lost.)

It’s expensive to travel. And one way to get around that is to gamble online.

We looked at money. Now let’s look at convenience.

Traveling is anything but convenient. You’re not in your own home. You don’t have your own car. You don’t have your kids’ toys. And to top it all off you’re in a city you don’t live in, possibly a city you’ve never been to before.

Now you have to make due with whatever you were able to fit in your luggage. You need to figure out how to eat well and cost effectively without a kitchen (and to deal with specific diets and picky eaters). And you need to figure out where the heck you’re going, because you’re trying to find a grocery store in a town you’ve never been to.

Does that sound ‘convenient’ to you?

There’s a lot more sarcasm where that came from. Tell me if any of this sounds convenient to you:

  • Packing for your trip.
  • Getting up stupid early to catch your flight.
  • Riding a shuttle with a bunch of strangers to catch a flight with even more strangers – of which, will take a few hours at minimum before you reach your destination.
  • Before you catch your flight, you’ll be poked and prodded by the TSA.
  • Once you make it through security, you’ll pay 1.5-2x for everything (because you can’t go back out unless you want to go through security again).

All this, and you haven’t even waddled your way onto the plane yet. You haven’t even taken off.

Okay, I’ll stop there. I’m sure you get my point. Which is that gambling online is far more convenient than gambling offline.

All you have to do is:

  • Open your computer
  • Open the casino software
  • Log in

That’s it.

You can literally roll out of bed and make this happen while you’re brewing your coffee. You don’t even have to be dressed.

But you DO have to be dressed to get poked and prodded at the airport. It’s probably a good idea anyway …and I’m sure the security staff will thank you for it.

The bottom line is this – nothing will ever be any easier than being able to open your laptop or turn on your phone, log into your casino account and then start playing.

Nothing.

Speaking of mobile phones – if you do leave the house, you can always launch a game from your phone. You can be in line somewhere, waiting for an appointment, anything – it doesn’t matter.

It’s almost like taking a gambling vacation, minus the $2,000+ in costs, hours of traveling and the mandatory TSA poke and prod fest.

3 – Variety

Now let’s talk about variety.

You have LOTS of variety in a brick and mortar casino. No doubt about that, with the hundreds of different games within walking distance.

But a brick and mortar casino will only ever have so many games in it. There’s a ceiling to how many games they can offer because …well, they have a ceiling, and it’s not easily moved.

In other words, they only have so much space between their walls to fit their staff, restaurants, bathrooms, hotel rooms and everything else a brick and mortar casino has.

This means offline casinos will only have so many games. Which, of course, will only consist of the newest and most popular games their customers want to play.

This sounds great EXCEPT that:

  • Not every casino will have the exact slot, video poker or table game or variation you want.
  • Even if they DO have it, they only have so many available seats. It’s possible you won’t get to play even if they do have it.
  • Even if you’re in Vegas, if you have to go to another casino for the specific games you want to play, that can take several minutes – if not longer – depending on where you’re starting, where you’re going and how you plan to get there

(That last point is huge, not only in terms of time, but convenience and cost, too.)

Then – even after all that – you still might not have access to the specific games or variations you want to play.

For one thing, they have much more bandwidth. They can have a larger casino (in terms of games) because they’re not limited to arbitrary numbers, such as square footage.

But not only can an online casino house more games – hundreds, if not thousands of games – but they will have variety as well.

For example, online, it’s not uncommon to find:

  • 5+ blackjack variations
  • 7+ video poker variations
  • 100+ slot variations
  • 10+ bingo, keno, arcade game variations
  • 10+ table game variations

And that’s at your common offshore US-facing casino. Go to an international casino and you can double, maybe even triple some of those numbers. And they won’t all be duplicates either – many of those will be unique games.

And here’s where things get really cool

Even if one casino you have an account with doesn’t have the specific progressive slot, blackjack variation or baccarat game you want to play, chances are there’s another online casino that does.

(You can read our reviews to be sure, which will only take you a few minutes to do.)

Any online casino you can join is mere minutes away. You can have an account at a new casino in minutes. Add a couple of minutes for your deposit (depending on the option you use), and you could be up and running in 10-20 minutes.

Good luck making it from one Las Vegas Strip casino to the next that fast.

Offline casinos run promotions. The most common is a ‘players card’ where you’ll earn points whenever you play a game. You can later exchange your points for a comped or heavily discounted meal, room or tickets to a show.

This type of promotion is neat, but it pales in comparison to what an online casino offers.

For example, here are some offers you can get online:

  • Deposit Bonus – These are match offers where the casino will match your deposit up to so many dollars. For example, a 100% match bonus up to $1,000 means that for every dollar you deposit, you’ll get an extra dollar from the casino. Deposit the whole $1,000 and you’ll get an extra $1,000 – for a grand total of $2,000. These are reserved for new accounts.
  • Reload Bonus – The same as deposit bonuses, but for existing customers.
  • Free Cash – These are smaller offers, but usually have minimal requirements. Often times you just need to create an account capable of real money deposits, and they’ll give you a free $10 or $20 to play with.
  • Cash Back – Play real money games, earn points and later exchange those points for real money.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Online casinos often offer WAY more deals than this, and we haven’t even covered sportsbooks, poker rooms or bingo halls.

(And some of these offers – like casino bonuses – are given to you BEFORE you earn it. When’s the last time a B&M casino gave you a comped meal, and said you could play to pay them back later?)

To be totally transparent – you DO have terms you need to fulfill when you accept one of these offers. But the point is, online casinos offer them whereas offline casinos do not.

The bottom line is this – online gambling is better than offline gambling because:

  • It’s cheaper to play online.
  • It’s easier and more convenient to play online.
  • You have more choices online.
  • There are more perks, free money and other promotions online.

For that reason it makes sense to …play online.

Now, granted, we’ll never stop traveling to Las Vegas. We only spend a small portion of our time gambling. The majority of our time is spent at shows, checking out attractions, trying new restaurants and relaxing.

That’s a bit harder to do from home – especially if you’re not on vacation.

But if you’re not looking to take a break, and you’d prefer not to spend thousands of dollars, make things harder for yourself and you’d like to have more options between games and promotions, then we encourage you to give online gambling a shot.

Why Gambling Should Be Legalised

That’s why we gamble online. What about you?