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Losing Big: America's Reckless Bet on Sports Gambling

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Jonathan D. Cohen

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“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.”

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

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

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

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“The industry's version of 'responsible gaming' is designed to pull people from the river once they are drowning rather than requiring guardrails to make sports gambling products less dangerous,” Daynard, Gottlieb, and Levant wrote in 2022.”

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“The RG [Responsible Gaming] approach is rooted in personal responsibility. By suggesting that players should play responsibly, RG implies that doing so is entirely up to them. If someone develops a gambling problem, then they did not properly utilize the resources made available in the sportsbook app. People have agency and should face the consequences of their decisions, good or bad. But the RG model places the burden on gamblers to make good choices while obfuscating that sportsbooks’ products make it difficult to make better choices. The model also ignores that once someone is hooked on gambling they are no longer actively choosing to play. Instead, their addiction makes it impossible for them to stop.”

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Book:Losing Big: America's Reckless Bet on Sports Gambling
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“Tobacco companies have long insisted that smoking is a choice. They do so even as they have adjusted their cigarettes to ensure just the right balance between ammonia and nicotine to keep smokers chemically hooked.”

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“No matter how small they make the font, RG [Responsible Gaming] messages are exactly what the sportsbooks want. RG reinforces to bettors that playing safely is up to them and them only. As historian Sarah Milov explains, warning labels were nominally placed on cigarettes to warn customers about the risks to their health. However, they also served to protect the tobacco industry from tort litigation, as “Americans could no longer claim they had not been warned about the risks” of smoking. Though hardly as prominent or as morbid as cigarette warning labels, responsible gaming messages serve much the same purpose, inoculating the industry in the event bettors get carried away.”

SportsAddictionGamblingGamblerGambling AddictGambling AddictionSports BettingLegalized Sports BettingOnline Sports BettingSports Gambling
Book:Losing Big: America's Reckless Bet on Sports Gambling
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