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The week's question
In March 2025, in the thread "Re: OT, out", Umm asked the members: "Do you think it is because America is made up of magical soil that makes businesses based in America magically profitable?" This week it is put to everyone again. The button below opens the small thread re-asking it - read what others have said so far, then give your own answer as an ordinary reply.
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Personal Finance / Macroeconomic Trends & Risks
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Author: Goofyhoofy ✸✹🐝🐝 HONORARY
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Number: of 4582 
Subject: Dave & Buster’s excellent adventure
Date: 06/01/24 8:54 AM
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Dave & Buster’s, long the hangout for teens & tweens with a cacophony of animated and real world games for kids is replacing them with … gambling for adults.

In the article, which I hope you can see (Bloomberg is finicky about this sort of thing; this is an attempt to end run via an Apple News link) they are replacing those games with new games, on which you can gamble. The idea is that “games of chance” are outlawed in most places, but “games of skill” are not. So betting on the outcome of an NBA game is “chance” (even though many would argue it takes skill), but, say “playing pool” demonstrates a skill, so you can bet on it.

Gambling invades everything these days, I guess.

apple.news: Why Dave & Buster’s Is Transforming Its Arcades Into Casinos

 Somewhere out there, a Skee-Ball shark lies in wait to lighten your wallet. 
A Dance Dance Revolution hustler plots your downfall. A bumper-pool savant, a
budding Tom Cruise in his own version of The Color of Money, prepares to
barnstorm through pool halls, raking in cash from hapless opponents. These
fantasies and more will soon be alive at your local Dave & Buster’s, the
$2 billion eatertainment chain that recently announced plans to let patrons
place real-money bets on the company’s main attraction: its arcade games.

The suburban gaming den’s new betting operation is part of a partnership with
Lucra Sports, a technology company that describes its product as
“gamification services.” In practical terms, Lucra licenses its software
to other businesses, allowing them to integrate certain kinds of betting
into their existing apps and websites. Lucra deals in the kinds of bookie-free
“peer to peer” bets—say, on the results of a night of bowling or a game of
pickup basketball—that might have previously been sealed with a handshake.

At Dave & Buster’s, the betting will happen within its app-based loyalty
program, where, in addition to offers for all-you-can-eat wings and
half-price mozzarella sticks, it will join a relatively new and
extraordinarily convoluted “rewards sportsbook,” which currently allows
patrons to place bets on pro sports by converting tickets they win in
the arcade into a series of tokens that can eventually be cashed out for more tickets.
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