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Losing Big: America's Reckless Bet on Sports Gambling

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Jonathan D. Cohen

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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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Book:Losing Big: America's Reckless Bet on Sports Gambling
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