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Losing Big: America's Reckless Bet on Sports Gambling

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Jonathan D. Cohen

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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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”