Comment by riffraff

This was the case in Italy too until a few decades ago, except for some specific locations with a casino license, and a national kind of sport lottery.

Since sport betting became legal the issues with gambling addiction have skyrocketed but the state is addicted to the trickle of provents from it and can't cut it back.

There was an attempt to limit sport bets advertising, and that was widely sidestepped (you advertise for bet.news instead of bet.com, with the former linking to the latter)