The course descriptor poses these questions: Why have states legalized sports activities betting lately? What position does sports activities betting play inside broader social and financial techniques? How can we higher perceive the tradition of sports activities betting utilizing the sociological creativeness?
McElrath explains:
The What
Over the final six years, because the monumental Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA) was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court, 39 states, in addition to Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico have legalized sports activities betting in some type.
Most states permit cell betting by way of apps like FanDuel and DraftKings. Whether you’re a main sports activities fan or casually verify in, it’s possible you may have been inundated with advertisements from these firms encouraging you to log in and ‘play.’
The Who
I don’t have a solution on whether or not states ought to legalize sports activities betting or not; I’ve 12 extremely engaged college students who’re completely happy to have this dialog at size. The college students typically come to class with information they’ve seen, and generally we focus on present occasions in actual time.
The Work
I strategy this course as a kind of sociology of sports activities betting, utilizing ideas you would possibly be taught in an introduction to sociology course and making use of them to sports activities betting.
I began by asking college students to write an op-ed on whether or not sports activities betting ought to be authorized and to use scholarly proof to make their claims. More broadly, we have interaction with numerous financial and sociological articles on the subject that discover some dangerous outcomes on shopper monetary well being and growing charges of dependancy since legalization took maintain.
We discover subjects together with the sociological definitions of gender and masculinity and study how an understanding of masculinity may help us higher perceive why younger males take part in sports activities betting at disproportionately excessive charges and could also be extra at threat of growing problematic habits.
We study the phenomena of the on-line consideration economic system, the place firms use ways to maximize customers’ consideration, and the way sports activities betting firms slot in that dynamic. We additionally discuss coverage, discussing the variations between entry to betting in your cellphone versus going to a on line casino.
The Why
I consider this can be a serious social concern all through our college students’ lives and they’re going to have to reckon with the implications (each adverse and optimistic) of legalization.
It’s well timed: This is going on proper earlier than our eyes.
As the school works to construct the Institute for Public Good and inform the general public leaders of the longer term, engagement with related and modern coverage by way of the curriculum is essential.
Ultimately, the course asks college students to grapple with the central coverage dilemma (by way of their writing) of whether or not the state’s main obligation lies in shielding the general public from dangerous and addictive merchandise or in enabling people to train their very own freedoms, even when these freedoms carry threat.