Not sure about other countries but in Australia at least, betting was only allowed at race courses on race days. That has obviously changed though.

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)

Ah yeah, there are discussions here about banning advertising. TV networks but a lot of money from gambling ads though.