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Quote by Jonathan D. Cohen

“Isaac Rose-Berman explains, many professional bettors purposefully engage in betting behaviors that make them look irresponsible, such as logging in at odd hours or withdrawing money and then canceling the withdrawal to keep money in their account (to give the appearance that they can’t resist betting). These sharp players know that sportsbooks don’t want to cut off bettors like Andrew. They reason that the longer they can make the sportsbooks think they have an addiction, the longer they will be allowed to bet without limits on their account.”

Quote by Jonathan D. Cohen

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Losing Big: America's Reckless Bet on Sports Gambling

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Jonathan D. Cohen

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“Fundamentally, sportsbooks want to limit their own liability, not people’s gambling. They also reason that any restrictions will not actually stop the problem but will simply send bettors into the waiting, willing arms of a rival. If someone is going to gamble more than they can afford, it might as well be on their app.”

“Claiming bogus medical reimbursements, he transferred the entirety of his HSA into his bank account to fund his gambling. His mother gave him $8,000 in May to purchase an engagement ring, and over the course of the next three days he transferred almost half of her check into FanDuel.”

“Andrew missed two mortgage payments and the bank called his father, whose name remained on the title. His parents confronted him and, seven years after he placed his first bet, he confessed that he had a gambling problem. It came as a complete surprise. His mother said it felt “like we were hit by a truck.” For his father, the confession immediately explained so much of Andrew’s behavior the previous few years: his shabby clothes and beat-up car that seemed out of place for a young attorney, his isolation, his use of the family credit card for innocuous purchases, his moodiness, his encyclopedic knowl- edge of seemingly every sport, his addiction to his phone, and so on.”

“In the years immediately following the Murphy decision, sportsbooks got almost everything they realistically could have wanted in the American marketplace. Sports gambling became legal in thirty-eight states; online gambling in thirty. Industry lobbying generally kept tax rates low. Partnerships with leagues and celebrity spokespeople embedded gambling into the sports ecosystem. Advertising made it inescapable. And the bets came pouring in.”

“Little needs to be done to persuade people that stealing to support a gambling habit is wrong. But what about a sportsbook identifying a bettor who is trying to quit and targeting them with promotional credits? What about an app interface with limitless betting options designed to satiate bettors’ constant need for action, where one can lose multiple mortgage payments in a matter of seconds? What about an industry whose entire business model relies on a small percentage of players losing large amounts of money?”

“Every other addictive product that you can think of, government seeks to regulate its distribution and consumption,” Levant observes. Given gambling’s official classification as addictive, and especially the evidence about the habit-forming potential of online gambling, a public-health framework suggests the need for measures to protect consumers before they have the chance to harm themselves or someone else.”

“By the time someone recognizes the need for a deposit limit, their dopamine pathways may already be rewired in a way that makes it difficult to slow their gambling -- and therefore makes them unwilling to opt into a program to do so.”