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Jonathan D. Cohen Biography

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“Companies will insist that their data should be treated as a trade secret. But scholars and lawmakers cannot make informed decisions about gambling policy without better data, and modern sportsbooks have more data on their players than any gambling operation in human history.”

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“In too many states, sports betting regulatory bodies have ceded control to gambling companies. These regulators are charged with managing sports betting and ensuring companies abide by the rules that the regulators put in place. In practice, they seem to see their mandate as getting out of companies’ way while ensuring sportsbooks meet the bare minimum requirements.”

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“Most of the information Americans receive about sports betting comes from sportsbooks themselves. Thanks to commercials featuring celebrity spokespeople and the arrival of sportsbooks inside arenas, what was once an illicit vice on the margins of society is now at the heart of sports culture. The through line in all of this normalizing messaging is that betting on sports is exciting, and that it is harmless. The nation needs counterprogramming to sportsbooks’ narrative so that young people, in particular, are able to appropriately scrutinize these messages. They do not need to be chastised into thinking that gambling is not exciting or is evil, but they need to be made aware that it is addictive and that it can be easy for someone to get carried away. One approach is that taken by Virginia, where, in 2022, gambling addiction was added to school curricula on drug and alcohol abuse. Arthur Paikowsky of the International Center for Responsible Gaming suggested adding gambling content to first-year orientation at colleges and universities. Parents and anyone who teaches financial literacy should also make a point of talking about gambling. Of course, high school and college students are not exactly known for paying rapt attention during these types of lessons. But someone needs to present an alternative view about sports betting than what young people are likely to see on social media or in sportsbook advertising.”

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“People who have lost their savings or have developed an addiction need to know that they are not solely at fault and that support is available. Given the high suicide rate among problem gamblers, American families and educational institutions need to do everything they can so that if someone runs into trouble with gambling, they know to come forward before their life is in danger.”

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“Seven states have legalized iGaming — online casino games like slot machines and blackjack. From personal experience, these games are terrifying in how addictive they are. They offer much better margins than sports betting, so major gambling companies will leverage their sportsbooks to dominate this market, just as they leveraged DFS to dominate sports betting. While sports betting can be tweaked to be made safer, iGaming needs to be stopped in its tracks until it can be proven that the games are designed with player safety in mind. And even these games are just the beginning, as young people are caught up in a range of online gambling-adjacent activities, from stock trading and cryptocurrency to video-game skin gambling and loot boxes.”

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“Records from his BetMGM accounts show that, over the sixty-two days from May 16 to July 16, he placed at least one bet all but eight days. Thanks to an early hot streak, he ended his betting binge down just $1,500, a somewhat meaningful sum given his lack of steady income, but like the year prior, the toll was not just financial. On some days he spent nearly all his waking hours gambling, multiple times equating his mindset to being high on psychedelic mushrooms where gambling becomes “your reality,” a reality totally detached from all other parts of life. The stress of that reality led him to take up smoking and to drink a lot more alcohol than he otherwise would have. For the first round of the tournament, he stayed awake for nearly forty consecutive hours researching potential picks, discussing upcoming matches, and then watching them unfold. His preferred way to bet was to identify a match he liked and watch the first game or two to see how the players were performing. BetMGM would have let him bet on every single serve if he had wanted to.”

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“As the tobacco industry knew with its lectures to high schoolers informing them that smoking is only for adults, the best way to ensure young people are interested in doing something is to tell them they are not allowed to do it.”

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“If a business sells alcohol to someone who is clearly intoxicated, and that person commits personal or property damage, the business that sold them the booze can be held partly liable. These laws place the onus on suppliers to ensure their customers behave safely and to remove any incentive to overserve someone in pursuit of profit. Levant asks why sportsbooks should not be partly liable if they allow someone with an obvious gambling problem to continue betting and that person commits a financial crime to keep up their habit.”

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“Who determines exactly what a high-risk bettor looks like? What will happen when their account is flagged? How restrictive will the limits on young bettors be? The efficacy of the programs will depend on the answers to these questions and the degree to which companies are willing to make decisions that hurt their bottom line.”

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“If any aspect of the sports gambling boom has inspired a backlash, it is not rising rates of problem gambling, industry lobbying, or the athletes banned for gambling. It is the advertising. Everyone hates ads, after all. But the sudden rise of sports betting ads seems to have inspired a special kind of rancor and regulatory pushback. Frustration with sports betting ads relates in no small part to their sheer quantity, with around 1.5 million television advertisements in 2023. In polls, 47 percent of Americans—and nearly 60 percent of sports fans—agreed that there were too many ads. Just 10 percent disagreed. As late-night television host Conan O’Brien tweeted, “I haven’t seen an online sports betting ad in almost 7 minutes. Am I dead?”

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“The industry’s goal has been to cultivate a second-screen experience. Companies want gamblers to get into the habit of keeping their sportsbook app open while they watch a game, with betting an expected part of the sports viewing experience. Many ads, then, show betting app interfaces on phones or feature someone holding their cell phone while watching a game, modeling the behavior sportsbooks want to inculcate.”

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“Sportsbook logos are emblazoned everywhere, from billboards to trash cans to sports arenas. At Fenway Park, a half mile from PHAI’s office, the historic Green Monster left field wall is adorned with a BetMGM logo, and DraftKings and Fanatics logos are visible from home plate. These ads ensure that branding for all three companies is visible throughout the game, not just during the commercial breaks. Sports media companies, too, are invariably sponsored by sportsbooks, if they do not have a sportsbook of their own, with gambling content integrated into news and analysis. Ads are just as easy to find online, with 2.1 million digital advertising units in 2023, according to the AGA. Many of these are on social media, where for some people gambling is inescapable. Numerous bettors described feeds inundated with gambling influencers, both paid advertisements and so-called gambling influencers touting their expert picks and big parlay wins. The algorithm is relentless, picking up on the fact that someone is interested in betting content and serving them a steady diet of it. This situation is especially challenging if someone wants to take a break from gambling, as it can prove difficult to reprogram the algorithm entirely.”

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“On TV and online, companies have turned to celebrity spokespeople to help normalize sports gambling. On the surface, the selection of spokesmen and they are almost all men may seem unconventional: comedian and actor Kevin Hart for DraftKings, actor and singer Jamie Foxx for BetMGM, and actor and comedian J. B. Smoove for Caesars. After all, none have any post-secondary athletic credentials. The former DraftKings employee believes these spokesmen were chosen to make sports betting feel accessible to casual fans, rather than someone already obsessed with sports or gambling.”

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“While sportsbooks contract with their fair share of athletes from active players like LeBron James to recent retirees like Rob Gronkowski to old-timers like Charles Barkley they select actors and comedians in an attempt to strike a broader appeal. It likely comes as no coincidence that Hart, Smoove, and Foxx and many of the former athletes are Black. African Americans are more likely to have a sports betting account, more likely to check their account at least daily, and twice as likely to say they typically bet more than $100.”

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“Tonko introduced the Betting on Our Future Act, which proposes a ban on sports betting ads on television, radio, and the internet. The bill is intentionally modeled on the 1969 legislation that prohibited most cigarette advertising. It comes in response to what Tonko called “a public health crisis” created by “predatory promotions.” By offering generous bonuses and so-called “risk free” or “no sweat” bets, Tonko alleged, the industry is seeking to “hook and retain a new generation.” “Instead of Joe Camel, now we’ve replaced that with celebrity spokespeople.”

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“In April 2021, forty-year-old Luke Ashton died by suicide after sinking £18,000 into debt, primarily through gambling with Betfair, a part of Flutter. Ashton had utilized numerous RG [Responsible Gaming] tools, including self-exclusion and deposit limits. But in the ten weeks prior to his death, he ramped up his gambling. In March 2021, he made 1,229 bets and deposited £2,500 into his account. Ashton received eight generic RG emails from Betfair, whose algorithm labeled him “low risk” for problem gambling. In a landmark move, the coroner listed gambling disorder as a cause of death, noted that RG tools are “inadequate” for protecting gamblers, and castigated the company for not adopting practices that would meaningfully prevent harm.”

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“The SAFE Bet Act would reenact a ban on sports betting but create a process whereby states can apply to the Department of Justice to set up sports betting operations, offering federal oversight to ensure states have sufficient consumer protection regulations in place. The “minimum federal standards” called for in the bill fall across three categories. First, advertising, banning certain ad content such as bonus offers and placing limits on when gambling ads can run, including during live sporting events. Second, affordability, banning credit card deposits, requiring affordability checks for anyone making a large wager, and banning sportsbooks from accepting more than five deposits from a customer over a twenty-four-hour period. Third, artificial intelligence, banning the use of AI to track players’ gambling or create individualized promotions.”

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“In 2022, a New York Times investigation uncovered at least eight campuses that had reached partnerships with gambling companies, including the University of Colorado Boulder, where every download of the PointsBet app using the university’s promotional code netted the school $30 after the customer placed their first bet.”

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“Gambling companies had promised sports betting as a tax revenue bonanza and by converting players from the illegal market, a product that would do little to reshape the total amount spent on gambling. “We’re starting to see policymakers start to really push back on all of the false promises that they were once sold,” Brianne Doura-Schawohl explained.”

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“The first lawsuits against tobacco companies by smokers were filed in the 1950s, but the industry maintained an undefeated record in these cases for four decades. The opioid crisis began in the 1990s but took until the mid-2010s to gain national media and political attention, and a similar (albeit shorter) lag plagued lawmakers’ response to fentanyl. The Senate’s passage of the Kids Online Safety Act sponsored by Richard Blumenthal in 2024 came only after a leak of incriminating Facebook files and years of warnings about the deleterious effect of social media on young people’s mental health. Federal action on sports gambling regulation will likely face a similarly protracted timeline.”

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“By recognizing that unsafe gambling is not simply a matter of personal irresponsibility, sportsbooks could transform themselves into sustainable businesses that protect public health. Every day they choose not to do so brings them a day closer to reckoning.”

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“Too many young people and some not-so-young people are getting caught up in gambling without understanding how easy it is to get carried away or to become addicted. Some of these people likely would have run into trouble gambling anyway—a curious fact about American problem gambling is that rates have generally remained consistent for decades, even as states have expanded the menu of legal betting options. But many people like Kyle, only started betting because it was legal and, more importantly, because it was available on their cell phone.”

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“The question is not how to totally denormalize sports betting such that putting $5 on the Cubs becomes socially or legally unacceptable. The question is how to normalize safe betting practices and, more importantly, to put a system in place that prevents unsafe practices from developing in the first place.”

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“The classification of gambling as an addictive activity means that at some point, problem gamblers are not choosing to gamble. The road to addiction is smoothed for them by sportsbooks. The design of the app interfaces, the nonstop stream of betting options, the relentless advertising, and the auspiciously timed bonus offers all serve to keep people like Kyle engaged, maximizing their “customer lifetime value,” the industry’s holy grail metric dating back to the days of DFS. If sportsbooks have smoothed bettors’ paths to heavy losses and gambling disorder, then states have smoothed sportsbooks’ paths to products that let them do so.”

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“Executives and spokespeople constantly argue that offshore, illegal sportsbooks do not have to comply with any regulations or pay any taxes. But legal sportsbooks should be held to a higher standard than illegal operators.”

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“Sportsbooks are doing much more than siphoning money that would have already been spent on betting. They are inculcating sports betting among people who never would have bet otherwise, creating new generations of gamblers.”

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“Sportsbooks’ current business model relies on a small percentage of bettors losing a lot of money, and their bottom line would be in grave danger if these RG [Responsible Gaming] tools were in wider use. Not surprisingly, most of these tools are entirely optional, and available data indicates extremely low uptake rates. In its home state of Massachusetts, DraftKings reported 0.1 percent of players set a time limit for app use, 0.13 percent set a spending limit, 1.4 percent had used a “cool-off” period, and a whopping 2.3 percent had set a deposit limit. As former problem gambler and longtime marketing professional Jamie Salsburg explained, the messaging around RG is “broken” and is not designed in such a way to effectively reach the people who most need to use RG tools. The messaging is not the only thing that is broken. Optional tools rely on a moment of clarity from someone who might already be chasing their losses. These tools are, fundamentally, the wrong way to protect players.”

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“At the 2024 MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, Kristie Savage, head of data science at Fanatics Betting and Gaming, gave a presentation entitled “Predicting Problem Gambling Among Sports Bettors.” Savage explained how Fanatics creates player risk profiles using two measures, one of risky behavior and another based on the trend of that behavior if it is becoming more or less risky. Within a week of someone gambling on their app, Savage boasted, Fanatics can identify about half of all high-risk players. The presentation confirms what the Public Health Advocacy Institute and others have long suspected: Sportsbooks have massive amounts of data on players. If they wanted to, companies could use that data to stop unsafe practices before they develop. They are actively choosing not to deploy these predictive models, which would catch people like Kyle before they get into trouble.”

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“Some sportsbooks are notorious for delaying customer withdrawals. An uncharitable interpretation is that companies intentionally keep as much money in players’ accounts as long as they can in the hopes that players will get the urge to gamble. Withdrawals should be as frictionless as possible, with severe penalties for unnecessarily prolonged withdrawals. Deposits, meanwhile, should entail much more friction. Some advocates have called for a ban on credit card deposits (already in place in seven states), though evidence from the United Kingdom suggests that this measure does not help problem or at-risk gamblers. More promising would be a limit on the number of deposits a bettor can make within each twenty-four-hour period. Rather than rely on players to set a time or deposit limit, sportsbooks should use their data on players to identify when they are chasing their losses and should block them from accessing or funding their account for a certain amount of time.”

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“No one is watching Malaysian women’s doubles badminton at four in the morning hoping to make every moment more by placing a little money on the match, though it is perfectly legal to do so in some states. If someone is gambling on such an obscure sport, they are seeking action wherever they can find it. They would bet on a coin flip if they could and Kyle describes his late-night betting on minor league British darts as effectively doing this. States make rules as to which sports to include in their betting catalogs and what types of outcomes are acceptable to bet on. These lists should be shortened. Obscure sports account for fractions of sportsbooks’ revenue but cause massive amounts of harm for the small subset of people using them to feed their addictions. If anything, certain bets could effectively become trapdoors to snag problem bettors: Place a bet on an obscure sport in the middle of the night on a Tuesday after a day of heavy losses? Congratulations, you’ve won an automatic limit on app access, bet size, and deposits.”

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“Gradually his wagers got bigger, as he needed to gamble more money to have the same thrill that he had once gotten from just $5. And because he was betting digitally, the “money never felt real.” Scholars have documented that casino chips help dissociate gamblers from the size of their bets, encouraging them to act more liberally than they ever would with cash. Smartphones take this dissociation to a whole new level.”

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“His partner knew he liked sports but had no idea the extent of his gambling. They would have explosive fights sometimes, which multiple family members said was very unlike him. His gambling set him constantly on edge, exacerbating the tensions in their relationship. Andrew was, by his own admission, living two lives, and he could not prevent one life from affecting the other.”

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“When someone engages in a pleasurable activity like gambling, their brain releases dopamine, a neurotransmitter that processes rewards. Dopamine is what makes these activities feel pleasurable. Psychiatrist Anna Lembke explains that pleasure and pain act on an equilibrium, encouraging limits on the activity in question, no matter how enjoyable. Over time, repeated exposure to pleasure means the brain requires more of that activity—gambling with more money, for example—to receive the same amount of dopamine. Once someone has built up a tolerance, they are susceptible to addiction and, with their equilibrium imbalanced in favor of pain, they will need ever-increasing amounts to experience even a modicum of pleasure—or simply a break from pain.”

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“Gambling addiction is not an addiction to winning money. Problem gamblers’ brains do not release any more dopamine when they win a bet than non-problem gamblers’ brains. The largest difference—when problem gamblers release markedly more dopamine than non-problem gamblers—comes at moments of high uncertainty. These instances provide the rush and the fleeting pleasure/pain equilibrium to which problem gamblers are addicted.”

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“He was addicted to the dopamine high that came with the feeling of a bet hanging on the outcome of a game, having a stake in something he could not control. “Since I started gambling, I could turn every day—no matter how much work/school/ stress I had into the most exciting day of the year,” he later wrote in his journal. He would bet in the shower. He would bet while driving. Betting became his reason to wake up in the morning. He would place a wager before he fell asleep and wake up eagerly to check the result. Regardless of the outcome, he would place another bet, his action the only thing that could motivate him to get out of bed and start the day.”

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“Winning money felt different, providing a hit of dopamine no biweekly direct deposit ever could. Unlike a salary, winning said something about the gambler as a person. It marked them as a winner. The lottery lets bettors feel they are lucky or blessed. Sports betting lets gamblers feel smart. Of course, luck plays an important role in sports, and by extension in sports betting. However, because gamblers make their own picks, they can imagine sports betting as an exercise in intelligence.”

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“Many sports fans—especially young men—feel they have a unique understanding of the games they watch. Sports betting capitalizes on this unearned confidence, daring fans to prove that they know sports better than their friends, their coworkers, and the hosts of their local sports talk radio station. When their intuition is wrong, these same fans have a remarkable ability to maintain their confidence, convinced that their wins are the result of their knowledge of the game and their losses are due to unlucky bounces.”

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“Rather than feel humbled by a big loss, gamblers instead have an urge to bet more to win it all back. Anna Lembke theorizes that problem gamblers are addicted to chasing their money: “The more they lose, the stronger the urge to continue gambling, and the stronger the rush when they win.” Andrew chased, and he lost. But he did not panic. After all, he was the sports genius who had been up $43,000. So he kept betting, buoyed by the belief that, “If I got up all this… I can get it back so quick, because I got it so quick, right?”

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“Here was the downside of gambling as a signifier of intelligence: If winning says a bettor is smart, what does losing say? Gamblers chase as much to recover money as to recover their self-esteem. And if they keep betting, they can avoid admitting they have lost. So, if he was down $40,000, what was another $5,000 or $10,000 compared to the possibility of wiping the slate clean?”

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