For every buzzer-beater and upset at this year’s NCAA Basketball Tournaments, there will be legions of bettors praising and cursing the heroes of March Madness in almost equal measure.
Gamblers in the U.S. will wager more than $3 billion on the NCAA Tournaments, according to the American Gaming Association.
It turns out the real madness isn’t on the court. Sportsbooks and betting apps have grown at a frenzied pace in recent years as fans, the shortened version of the word “fanatics,” flock to the second-largest sports gambling event of the year after the Super Bowl.
March is, coincidentally, Problem Gambling Awareness Month.
Activists and researchers are raising alarm about the proliferation of sports betting and its impacts on Americans, especially young men.
A study published last month in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that an increasing number of people are seeking help for gambling addiction.
The researchers said the boom in sports betting — more than $100 billion in wagers across all sports were placed last year — is creating a broader public health issue.
“I think now is our wake-up call,” said John Ayers, a professor at the University of California, San Diego, and co-author of the report.
Mr. Ayers’ study focused on search engine requests for gambling addiction since the Supreme Court struck down a federal sports betting ban in Murphy v. NCAA in 2018.
The conclusions of the study were stark: Online searches related to gambling addictions are up 23% nationwide in the past five years.
The effect was especially pronounced each time sportsbooks, especially virtual ones, opened in a state. Mr. Ayers highlighted Pennsylvania, which introduced legal sports betting in 2018.
In the first year, when bets were limited to bricks-and-mortar locations, searches for gambling addiction grew by 33%. When online sportsbooks opened a year later, the number jumped another 66%.
“This is an issue where the technology is fueling it,” said Mr. Ayers, adding that 94% of sports bets are online.
Mr. Ayers said he understands the concerns regarding his search-focused methodology but added that his research found success in similar studies. A dive into searches for suicide prevention after the release of Netflix’s “13 Reasons Why” — a show that featured on-screen depictions of self-harm — raised concerns.
A few years later, national data supported the findings.
“But long after, you can’t do anything about the problem,” he said. “What we’re doing here is providing that early warning so that people can act before it’s too late. Millions have already been affected. How many millions more must be affected before we do anything?”
Tobacco ties
Richard Daynard, a lawyer and activist who argued against the tobacco industries in the 1980s, shares the researcher’s concerns.
He sees history repeating itself.
“They’re both selling an addictive product, and they’re not addictive by accident,” said Mr. Daynard, the president of the Public Health Advocacy Institute. “It’s designed to addict people. It’s a trap. In both cases, they designed a way of trapping their customers.”
Mr. Daynard doesn’t consider himself a gambler or even much of a sports fan. He placed a couple of bets on horses in the past, but the shift in gambling culture has shocked him as an outside observer.
Many longtime sports viewers would agree. Every major sports broadcast is inundated with ads for sportsbooks offering “risk-free bets” and sign-up bonuses. The commercials are ubiquitous, even in states that haven’t legalized sports gambling.
The American Gaming Association said betting ads have decreased by 20% since 2021, but more broadcasts are working live odds and props into their offerings. Almost every major sports podcast — an increasingly common way for fans to get news and analysis — features promotional codes and sponsorships from DraftKings, FanDuel or BetMGM.
Sportsbook offerings have also changed. Most bets used to focus on game outcomes.
Technology has changed that, just like it changed slot machines, Mr. Daynard said.
“It has almost nothing to do with who you think is going to win. It has everything to do with keeping you pushing the buttons,” he said, singling out the surge in in-game prop bets on minutia such as pitch speed. “Nobody had ever bet on that before in human history. The idea is to keep time on that machine.”
About 5 million Americans struggle with compulsive gambling, the National Council on Problem Gambling said in January. Only 8% of them will seek help.
Youths, unserved
Mr. Daynard and Mr. Ayers shared concerns about the impact of online sports betting on young adults, especially men ages 18 to 30. Last year, a study from Fairleigh Dickinson University found that 45% of young men exhibited at least one “problem behavior” related to gambling.
Men younger than 30 were twice as likely to borrow money to gamble or experience financial or emotional difficulties from the activity, the report said.
Mr. Daynard and Mr. Ayers are analytically inclined as academics, but they said their anecdotal experiences backed the research.
The Boston law professor said his personal trainer, a senior at Northeastern University, attended a Super Bowl party where he was the only one among a dozen people watching football.
“Everybody else is glued to their phone, betting away. This is not what a Super Bowl party had been,” Mr. Daynard said. “They may be sitting in the same room, but they’re not interacting with each other; they’re interacting with their app.”
Mr. Ayers is based in California, where state legislators have not approved any sports betting laws. That didn’t stop one young man from asking for money at a golf course. The cart boy had some bad beats.
“It’s supposedly not allowed here yet, but every time this kid turns on traditional media, he gets told what?” Mr. Ayers said. “The advertisements and commentators are talking about ESPN Bet, and he’s constantly being encouraged to gamble more and more frequently. That’s why we need federal legislation, because of those spillover effects.”
A report last week from St. Bonaventure University and the Siena College Research Institute further confirmed the trend.
“Bettors, overwhelmingly young men, say online betting is fun, interesting and exciting, and 54% of them place bets at least once or twice a week,” Don Levy, the research institute’s director, said in a statement. “Most think they can make money gambling; only 30% say in hindsight they’ve won more than lost.”
A study from The Associated Press/NORC Center for Public Affairs Research confirmed that most Americans support legalized professional sports gambling in their states. However, only 40% of survey respondents supported wagers on college athletics.
Those who supported professional bets but not college-level gambling said they were concerned about increased pressure on younger student-athletes.
“I think once they get out of school — not that it couldn’t happen — they have more maturity to deal with all the pressures that go along with that,” Colleen Plowman, who said she does not bet, told The Associated Press. “I assume there would be a lot of pressure on kids at that age. I think there would be more pressure on college kids than it would be on pros.”
Seeking solutions
Mr. Daynard said the solution to these problems would rely on the federal government. In the 1990s, Congress cracked down on the tobacco industry, making it harder to advertise to children or on television and requiring manufacturers to compensate states.
Since then, cigarette sales have dropped more than 50%.
Mr. Daynard supports the SAFE Bet Act, which would significantly change the way online sportsbooks operate in the U.S.
The proposal, introduced in September by Rep. Paul Tonko, New York Democrat, would reduce sportsbook advertising, limit the amount of bets operators can accept and prohibit the use of artificial intelligence to track a bettor’s activity. It would also require national reports from the surgeon general and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration on the impacts of gambling.
“Every single moment of every sporting event across the globe has become a betting opportunity,” Mr. Tonko said in a statement last fall. “That’s resulted in a frightening rise in gambling disorders, which has in turn exacted a horrific toll on individuals, many of whom have lost their home, job, marriage and their lives.”
Industry rejects need for regulation
Sportsbook operators have no reason to change their model. Joe Maloney, the senior vice president of strategic communication for the American Gaming Association, said the Ayers’ study proves that industry standards are working.
The association strongly recommends its constituents include “conspicuous” information about responsible gambling and addiction assistance in all advertising. The rise in searches, in his eyes, proves that government regulation isn’t needed.
“Sports-wagering legalization in the U.S. … has protected consumers from predatory illegal operators left unchecked for decades and delivered over $7 billion in taxes for states — including $134 million annually that goes toward problem gambling services,” Mr. Maloney said.
Mr. Maloney pointed out that less than 2% of the population, according to most studies, develops a gambling problem. He said the vast majority view the hobby as “acceptable entertainment.”
The comparisons to the tobacco industry didn’t hold up to scrutiny in Mr. Maloney’s eyes.
“There’s no such thing as safe tobacco use,” he said. “But there can be safe, responsible gambling.”
Mr. Ayers and Mr. Daynard remain unconvinced.
“People losing a lot of money, getting addicted, losing their jobs,” Mr. Ayers said of the human cost associated with a gambling addiction. “The lack of access to resources has these cascading effects on their health, like increased heart attacks. Is it worth it?”
Mr. Ayers said he wants more funds directed to public health initiatives, more strictly regulated advertising, stricter safeguards and more awareness. Federal regulation would help, he said.
Mr. Daynard isn’t sure that sportsbooks need to operate online at all.
“Is this a good thing? No,” he said. “Once you look at it for what it is, it’s simply an addictive product.”
