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“Garnett and the sportsbooks justified the design of their bill by emphasizing the need to compete with the illegal sports betting market. By their telling, Colorado was a state overrun with bookies and offshore gambling websites, and the only defense against these nefarious forces was legal, regulated gambling. DraftKings’ Stanton Dodge estimated that sports betting was already taking place “on a massive scale,” and that 1.2 million Coloradans (one out of every five people) bet a total of $2.5 billion per year illegally, an enormous, un-fact-checkable figure of unknown origin. Proponents implied that so much gambling was happening anyway that HB1327 would not so much expand sports betting as siphon existing illegal players into a taxed marketplace. The black-market bogeyman both got legislators on board and rationalized the industry-friendly aspects of the bill.”

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“Garnett chose water as the beneficiary for sports betting as a matter of both good policy and good politics. Water turned gambling skeptics—and maybe even opponents—into believers. Western Colorado state senator Dylan Roberts (at the time a member of the state house) said the water tie-in made it a “no-brainer” for him to support the bill, “not because I love sports betting or anything.”

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“The ad campaign focused on the Water Plan, not sports betting. As Perry put it, “No one really understands the nuance of why water is important, but they know it’s important.” In one commercial, Terry Fankhauser, longtime executive vice president of the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association, proclaimed, “DD is a win for Colorado’s water.” While the campaign did not hide that DD benefited sports betting, neither did it place gambling front and center. The campaign turned the ballot measure into a simple equation: A vote for DD was a vote for water. A vote against was a vote against water, and by extension, against the future of Colorado. Of course while the ads never quite claimed sports betting would be a panacea for water, neither did they make clear just what percentage of the Water Plan would be funded by gambling.”

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“The election still proved extremely close. At one point on election night, “Yes” led by just eighty votes. Sports bettors across the country stayed up to watch the results. Garnett was awake with them, tweeting at 10:30 p.m. “Just hang tight and enjoy the #sweat,” the term used by gamblers to describe anxiously watching the outcome of a bet. Ultimately, DD would prevail with 51.4 percent. “Yes” votes outnumbered “no” in just seventeen of Colorado’s sixty-four counties, but the campaign was able to run up the score in Denver and its surrounding suburbs. Despite the bipartisan nature of the original bill, the vote fell largely along the state’s established rural/urban, Republican/Democratic divide. In all but nine cases, a county’s vote for DD predicted which way it would swing in the following year’s presidential election, with pro-DD counties going for Joe Biden and anti-DD counties for Donald Trump. According to Brian Jackson, polling conducted after the vote by the Environmental Defense Fund revealed that, without the water tie-in, the proposition very likely would have failed.”

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“Richard Schuetz, longtime industry insider and former regulator, … likens states handing control over sports betting to inexperienced regulators with a patient placing their life in the hands of an inexperienced surgeon and hoping for the best.”

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“Colorado had the misfortune of launching legal sports betting at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, when all major professional sports leagues were shut down. Some people, like Garnett, were willing to place bets that would not be decided for months (the Broncos finished 5–11). Others wanted action right away, wherever on the globe they could find it. Among the most popular sports in those early months were South Korean baseball, Costa Rican soccer, and Russian ping-pong. In May and June, Coloradans bet $15.7 million—roughly a quarter of the total bet on all sports—on table tennis, which was exciting, fast paced, and played at all hours of the day. Even if many bettors were simply picking players at random, they were not going to miss the chance for convenient, legal betting.”

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“As one of [Colorado]’s problem gambling therapists predicted in early 2019, “We just are not ready for this.” They weren’t, and still aren’t. As of 2024, the state still has no inpatient or intensive outpatient treatment centers dedicated to problem gambling, and the PGCC website lists thirteen certified treatment providers for the entire state.”

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“In interviews, many current and former lawmakers and industry representatives acknowledged the flaws in Colorado’s initial sports betting system, which they attributed to the fact that Colorado was an early adopter and had few models to learn from. (It was the sixteenth state to launch sports betting after Murphy, and the ninth to launch full online gambling.) But there was nothing forcing the state to adopt so early other than a gambler-esque hope for a quick windfall. Colorado could have sat back and assessed the results from New Jersey and Delaware and designed regulations that addressed the issues faced in other states. With money—or water—in their eyes, it chose not to.”

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“States were unprepared for the onslaught of lobbying that followed the Murphy decision and were caught flat-footed by an aggressive campaign to set up industry-friendly sports betting systems. Facing the promise of a new source of tax revenue, lawmakers largely went along with sportsbooks’ desires without considering the potential harm that could ensue from gambling arriving onto every cell phone in the state.”

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“The NFL was terrified of gambling because it would be devastating if fans came to believe that the outcome of that one-yard run was fixed, scripted, rigged. Notwithstanding the popularity of professional wrestling—which actually is scripted—a sports league cannot attract viewers if people believe the outcome to be in any way predetermined. The league’s concern with integrity, then, was as much about ensuring the fairness of its games as ensuring the perception of fairness. “The most precious possessions that we as a football league have are our reputations for integrity and the integrity of our games,” Commissioner Paul Tagliabue told Congress during hearings over PASPA. The league went to extremes to preserve that reputation and distance itself from all things gambling.”

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“For decades, the [NFL] had a strict ban on all televised gambling references. Some announcers, like Jimmy “The Greek” Snyder or Al Michaels, would cheekily skirt this rule. If the outcome of a game was in hand but the losing team scored a touchdown that affected the over/under or the game spread, Michaels might note that the touchdown was “significant to some.” Such insider comments notwithstanding, the NFL’s stance on gambling ensured its broadcasts were gambling-free zones. These days, Al Michaels does DraftKings ad reads for Amazon Prime’s broadcast of Thursday Night Football.”

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“The NFL justified its embrace of gambling with a new favor­ite Goodell phrase: “fan engagement.” “We’re going to find ways we can engage fans through legalized sports betting,” he declared in 2021. What Goodell meant was that betting offered a chance for people to raise the stakes for the games they already loved and to make being a football fan a more interactive experience. Gamblers had always taken a special interest in NFL games and now there were a lot more potential gamblers, casual and occasional viewers who could be converted into superfans if they thought they could win some money.”

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“67% of sports bettors said they watched more than usual when they had bet on an NFL game. While a quarter of all sports bettors said they watched more than usual when they had bet on an NFL game, watching a game that was a blowout, just 10 percent said they would do so if they had money on the line. This was music to the league’s ears. As a former DraftKings employee observes, gambling is “scratching the itch of people who are competitive . . . or somebody that just wants a reason to watch a Thursday night Titans/Texas game.”

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“With indications that Gen Z is less interested in watching football—and professional sports generally—as well as an overall decline in America’s broadcast TV habit, dark clouds appear on the horizon, revenue-wise. Gambling was both an infusion of money through partnerships, sponsorships, and data agreements and a way to bump ratings back up. Sure enough, average viewership for 2021–2023 was 17.2 million. As more Americans try their hand at sports betting—especially as more states legalize it—the NFL will rely on gamblers to keep its revenue arrow pointing upward. The league does not seem to mind if it becomes as normal to bet on football as it is to watch football.”

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“The normalization of sports betting represents the most consequential outcome of the NFL’s flip-flop on gambling. Had it only been states and the gambling industry that embraced gambling after Murphy, sports betting might have remained a somewhat niche interest. Betting would have a strong appeal but would have largely remained a subculture within American sports. It could have become something like fantasy sports: an activity that is hugely popular but also a pastime that can be avoided by anyone who does not want to participate. Today, sports gambling is definitively not a subculture or niche interest. This is in large part because the NFL and its fellow leagues helped transform the nation’s sports ecosystem into a sports gambling ecosystem. Is all of this gambling a threat to the integrity of football? Apparently not.”

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“From TV broadcasts to data deals, gambling is now an unavoidable part of the football experience, one that the league insists does not threaten the integrity of its product. As it has for decades, the NFL is trying to have it both ways: cracking down on some types of gambling while simultaneously making as much money from gambling as it possibly can.”

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“Every problem gambler’s story is unique. But in many ways, their stories are also all the same. Most sports bettors are drawn to gambling because they love sports and because gambling offers the chance to make the games more exciting. For some people, though, the pursuit of that excitement takes over their lives, leading to addiction—followed, for those fortunate enough, by recovery.”

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“Sports betting consumed him. If he was not watching a game to follow a bet, then he was thinking about past wagers, discussing gambling with friends he made through a Discord channel, or researching the upcoming slate of games. Working primarily from home, he would use a dual monitor setup and keep one screen devoted to gambling. In many ways, his life had two monitors, one for gambling and one for everything else—family, friends, work, hobbies, dating, self-care, and so on. “It was what I enjoyed in life at the time,” he said. Gambling offered an escape from any problem he was facing. The only issue was that his escape was more stress-inducing than whatever he was escaping. Gambling left him “just constantly on edge, never really had peace of mind,” which led him to alcohol to take the edge off. He had fallen into a rabbit hole where gambling took on a logic of its own, where the only rational thing was to keep playing.”

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“Using his unemployment checks, he placed at least 151 bets totaling $14,000 over the course of February, losing $2,300. He kept going, gambling multiple times a day almost every day for nearly six months, resulting in a net loss of $7,250. With his mental health deteriorating and a void in his bank account where all the money he gambled should have been, he decided that something needed to change. He moved back in with his parents, outside of Wichita, Kansas. His career, his finances, and his life had been thrown off track. Gambling, he said, “tore me apart.”

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“Between May 2018 and August 2024, Americans gambled $308 billion through legal sportsbooks, including $121 billion in 2023, more than they spent that year on video games, movie tickets, music streaming services, books, and concert tickets combined.”

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“Calls to gambling hotlines have increased dramatically since states legalized sports betting. For the first time, many of these callers are young people. The director of a problem gambling resource center on Long Island notes that teenagers and twenty-somethings have become the “number one demographic” for gambling hotlines.”

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“A study from Australia finds that each problem gambler financially or psychologically affects five others—for example through requests for money—so even a modest increase in the percentage of people with a gambling disorder will impact millions of people.”

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“Conversations with current and former gamblers offer a portrait of the standard trajectory of a bettor whose life becomes uprooted by gambling. The story begins with a young male sports fan enticed by a sign-up promotion in a sportsbook advertisement. He probably wins his first bet—as Kyle did—which provides a huge rush of dopamine and an overconfidence that will be almost impossible to shake. Eventually he loses and starts to chase his losses, which over 50 percent of all bettors and over 60 percent of young bettors admit they have done. While chasing, he loses more than he intended. Maybe he stops betting, or maybe he keeps chasing for a few hours or a few days. When the clouds clear, he might be a few hundred or thousand dollars poorer, but he has learned firsthand the dangers of careless betting. Others will have stories more like Kyle’s. They will fall farther down the rabbit hole for longer periods in ways that damage their financial security and mental health. Still others will develop full-blown addictions that will be with them permanently, their lives fully derailed by gambling. If they are lucky, their losses will only be financial.”

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“Modern sports betting is so dangerous specifically because it is available online. Sports betting today bears little resemblance to the smoke-filled sportsbooks tucked inside Las Vegas casinos. Players can bet on almost everything, from how the Jacksonville Jaguars will do next season (probably poorly) to the speed of the next pitch or which team will score the next basket. Online sports betting offers almost no friction, providing little to encourage players to slow down and take stock of their play. Instead, the apps present an endless stream of action at the touch of a button. “I don’t think I would’ve ever gotten into it if I couldn’t do it online,” Kyle noted, recalling how carefully he has bet each of the handful of times he has been to a casino. He compared these trips to his all-night betting sessions chasing losses with four-figure bets on minor-league British darts. The online accessibility was “everything.”

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“Sports betting today bears little resemblance to the smoke-filled sportsbooks tucked inside Las Vegas casinos. Players can bet on almost everything, from how the Jacksonville Jaguars will do next season (probably poorly) to the speed of the next pitch or which team will score the next basket. Online sports betting offers almost no friction, providing little to encourage players to slow down and take stock of their play. Instead, the apps present an endless stream of action at the touch of a button.”

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