The Toronto Maple Leafs (or the refs from Game Six) are no longer the most disappointing thing to me about the NHL playoffs. That title now belongs to the former “Great One,” Mr. Wayne Gretzky himself.
As anyone who has tried to watch hockey over the past year most likely has noticed, the broadcasts have been taken over by gambling companies using celebrities to hawk their questionably moral products.
It’s not just one or two commercials in a game – its almost every , single , one.
The NHL, the broadcasters, and the players have completely lost the plot due to excessive greed. It is actually disgusting, hypocritical, amoral…..I could go on.
The NHL’s Gambling Problem
The NHL could probably make a lot of money from advertising guns and tobacco, but it isn’t allowed to.
Gambling used to be illegal, and it’s not any more. To my mind, there is no point in criminalizing something people will do anyways. I am glad that gambling is legalized and happy for the people who can handle it.
But not everyone can, which means it needs regulation and can’t be sold like a car or a taco.
And it isn’t like it wasn’t illegal for years and years for no reason.
So for the NHL, whose main audience is the children that idolize the players, and romanticize the game, this is a completely disgusting, unnecessary, and inappropriate source of income, considering most of their audience is made up of children.
Yes, adults like hockey, but if you don’t think that the NHL is for kids, you don’t spend a lot of time with kids.
Kids who love hockey are the NHLs biggest fans.
Unfortunately, hockey broadcasts are now basically for adults only, unless you think it’s a good idea for an eight year old to see 40 minutes worth of gambling propaganda in one night.
The same people who’d go nuts if someone on the broadcast accidently said a word that wouldn’t have caused anyone to blink 20 years ago, or if a nipple went uncensored, or (god forbid) there was a bench clearing brawl, apparently have no problem with gambling?
Where are the morality police when you actually need them? (Probably busy bullying someone over a typo, but I digress).
Most people suck at gambling. Unless you are a highly trained person with a very specific phycological makeup, you will be a loser, long-term, when you gamble. This is indisputable.
Ironically, if you have any chance at winning at gambling, the gambling company commercials are not targeted at you. Imagine beer commercials, but specifically designed to get the business of alcoholics only.
If the NHL can’t be sponsored by Colt, Du Maurier or Coors, it sure as hell shouldn’t be sponsored by FurtureDegernerates.com
Wayne Gretzky Should be Ashamed
I was pretty embarrassed for Auston Matthews when I saw him advertising for a gambling company. The average age of his biggest fan is probably nine years old, and even if he’s too young and uneducated to have made the correct decision on his own, he should have an agent who can advise him on ways to get rich without selling his soul.
But while Matthews is barely an adult, Wayne Gretzky should know better.
What a disgrace to the legacy of the NHL’s Greatest Player to sit there with his billion dollars and work to hook unsuspecting dupes into a lifetime of horror.
Like hearing Bobby Orr come out for the disgusting. seditious TV Con Man, my childhood was basically ruined this week when I saw my former hero debasing himself and ruining lives for money he doesn’t need.
The NHL and their broadcast affiliates need to get a handle on this before it gets any further out of control. I’m not going to sit here and say I’ll boycott the games, because I won’t. But I do expect the league to operate with at least a little class, dignity and social responsibility.
I certainly expected more of the supposed great one. Gretzky should be using his influence to help the kids who still look up to him get on the path to success. I know he’s just a hockey player, but I never expected him to be so greedy and to care so little about what he endorses or the effects that will have.
The NHL needs to ban gambling adds immediately.