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Sports betting in the US: A research roundup and explainer

We look at the landscape of legal sports betting in America, explain what the research says about how legalization affects tax revenues, and provide a brief history of the activity.

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by Clark Merrefield, The Journalist's Resource October 25, 2022

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On Nov. 8, Californians will vote on two ballot measures that would allow for different forms of sports betting in the state.

Proposition 26 would allow sports betting at licensed casinos and horse tracks on tribal lands and run by federally recognized Native American tribes.

Prop. 27 would allow tribes licensed to offer gambling and major gaming companies to offer online sports betting. These companies include FanDuel and DraftKings, which together make up roughly two-thirds of the U.S. online sports betting market.

“If both pass, they might both go into effect or the result could be decided in court, depending on which one gets more yes votes,” writes CalMatters economics reporter Grace Gedye in an article from June.

Although California is the only state with sports betting on the midterm ballot , it’s not the only state where sports betting is a topic of political discussion — and relevant for journalists across beats to understand. For example, Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams recently expressed support for legalized sports betting in her state. Abrams’ opponent, Gov. Brian Kemp, is opposed.

In Missouri, state lawmakers from both parties support legalizing sports betting , but Gov. Mike Parson is hesitant. Vermont lawmakers are considering taking up a sports betting bill during the next legislative session. Gubernatorial candidates in South Carolina and Texas support legal sports betting. In Florida, there is an ongoing lawsuit over whether the state should be allowed to give the Seminole Tribe the exclusive right to run online sports betting there.

Legal sports wagering in the U.S. has grown vertically in recent years — from less than $5 billion worth of bets placed in 2018 to $57 billion in 2021 — despite sports betting remaining illegal in nearly half of states. Sportsbooks, the entities that take sports bets, bring in about $4 billion yearly after wagers are settled.

The reason for this growth: a May 2018 Supreme Court ruling. Justice Samuel Alito, in delivering the 6-3 decision , reasoned that 1992 federal legislation banning states from allowing sports betting was unconstitutional.

Under the 1992 law, the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act, the federal government did not “make sports gambling itself federal crime,” Alito writes in the 2018 decision. “Instead, it allows the [U.S.] Attorney General, as well as professional and amateur sports organizations, to bring civil actions to enjoin violations.” Other than legislative powers the Constitution grants Congress, the federal government cannot “issue direct orders to state legislatures,” Alito writes. The majority interpreted the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act as doing so.

Here is how John Holden , an assistant professor of business at Oklahoma State University who has written extensively on sports gambling, explains the 2018 ruling:

“If the federal government wants to make sports betting illegal, they’re free to do so, but they can use the [Federal Bureau of Investigation] and the [Department of Justice] to enforce that,” Holden says. “They can’t tell a state legislature that you need to keep that law on the books and use your state police to go out and bust up gambling rings.”

A fundraising breakdown from the Los Angeles Times shows about $132 million has been raised to support Prop. 26, with about $43 million in opposition funding. Top backers include the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria, the Pechanga Band of Indians and the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation. Non-Native American casino and gaming interests are largely opposed — conversely, they have backed Prop. 27, which would open up sports betting to all gambling interests, not just Native American-run casinos.

Tribal gaming brings in nearly $40 billion a year across all tribes that operate gambling enterprises, according to the National Indian Gaming Commission . “Gaming operations have had a far-reaching and transformative effect on American Indian reservations and their economies,” write the authors of a 2015 paper about how the act affected tribal economic development. “Specifically, Indian gaming has allowed marked improvements in several important dimensions of reservation life.”

The landscape of legal sports betting

If California legalizes sports betting, it would represent a major coup for gaming interests in the state. In California, the most populous state, horse racing is the only legal form of sports betting.

Sports wagering is legal in 28 states plus the District of Columbia, according to a recent Washington Post analysis. Seven states prohibit online sports betting and only allow in-person wagers at licensed locations, such as casinos: Delaware, Maryland, Mississippi, Montana, New Mexico, North Carolina and North Dakota. Sports betting is legal but pending rollout in four states: Maine, Massachusetts, Nebraska and Ohio. Kansas is the most recent state to implement legal in-person and online sports gambling, as of Sept. 1.

States place a range of licensing fees on operators and tax rates on sports betting revenue, from a low of 6.75% in Nevada and Iowa to a high of 51% in New Hampshire and New York. States use tax revenues for a variety of purposes . Some, like Delaware, put sports wagering taxes toward their general fund. Colorado uses sports betting taxes to pay for its statewide water plan, Illinois funds transportation infrastructure and New York funds education programs.

In states where sports betting is legal, bettors can wager on nearly any major sporting event, both professional and amateur. For example, bettors can wager on the outcome of a baseball game, as well as events within the game, such as whether a particular player will hit a home run.

Polling indicates California may be unlikely to join the legal betting club. CalMatters reported earlier this month that despite various campaigns raising more than $440 million in marketing related to Props. 26 and 27, each measure is garnering support from less than a third of likely voters, according to October polling from the Institute of Governmental Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.

Below, we explore recent research on sports betting. Among the findings of the seven studies featured here:

• Sports bettors are more likely to be white, male, and exhibit psychological traits consistent with narcissism.
• Tax revenue from sports betting may appear substantial in raw numbers, but the impact on tax coffers is muted when compared with income and sales taxes, or tax revenue from other gambling offerings.
• Evidence is mixed as to whether introducing sports betting cannibalizes — eats away at — revenue from other types of gambling.
• Some college football referees may more heavily penalize betting favorites.

The nonprofit National Council on Problem Gambling estimates as many as 8 million adults in the U.S. may have a mild, moderate or severe gambling problem. However, there is a lack of comprehensive, recent academic research on the extent of gambling addiction in the U.S., and the societal costs.

If you feel you may have a problem with gambling you can get help from the National Council on Problem Gambling by call or text at 1-800-522-4700, or online chat at ncpgambling.org/chat .

Research roundup

The Income Elasticity of Gross Sports Betting Revenues in Nevada: Short-Run and Long-Run Estimates Ege Can and Mark Nichols. Journal of Sports Economics, October 2021.

The study: The authors analyze quarterly sports betting data from Nevada covering 1990 to 2019, to explore whether sports betting might be a viable tax revenue stream for other states. Sports betting has been legal in Nevada for decades, so it is the only state with long-run data that can potentially provide insight on the tax base future in states that have legalized sports betting since 2018. The authors note that Nevada is a “mature” market for sports betting, meaning industry growth is relatively stable year to year. A state that newly legalizes sports gambling is likely to see an immediate jump in sports betting revenue, with industry growth levelling off over time.

The findings: In the short-run, quarter-to-quarter, the rise and fall of sports betting revenue in Nevada is most closely tied to changing sports seasons. The authors suggest this is due to differences in how much bettors wager on various sports — the NFL, for example, is “the most popular sport to place wagers on,” with revenues rising and falling as an NFL season begins and ends. In the long run, taxable income in the state and sports betting revenues tend to grow at similar rates. Sports betting revenue in Nevada is a small fraction of revenues from other sources.

The authors write: “Total sports betting revenue in Nevada, the amount kept by the casinos, was $329 million in 2019, implying $22.2 million in tax revenue for the state. In contrast, casino gambling in Nevada in 2019 was $12 billion, generating $810 million in tax revenue. Sports betting is a gambling activity where the amount retained by the casino, and consequently retained by the state, is relatively small as most of the money from losing bets is transferred to those with winning bets. Therefore, sports gambling is a smaller contributor to tax coffers compared to more traditional tax sources such as income and taxable sales or, if applicable, casino revenue.”

A Comparative Analysis of Sports Gambling in the United States Brendan Dwyer, Ted Hayduk III and Joris Drayer. International Journal of Sports Marketing and Sponsorship, August 2022.

The study: The authors explore whether there are psychological differences between bettors and those who do not bet, as well as differences in how closely bettors identify with social institutions, such as religious organizations and far-right or far-left politics.

The authors surveyed 377 bettors and 402 non-betting sports fans from 47 states and explored differences between bettors and non-bettors in states with legal gambling and states where gambling is banned. They also asked about narcissism, which past research has found “is associated to gambling behavior especially as it relates to risky behavior such as participating in illegal gambling,” the authors write. Bettors in the sample were 81% male, compared with 69% of non-bettors. Among bettors, 64% were white and 27% were Black, while 77% of non-bettors were white and 17% were Black.

The findings: In legal gambling states, bettors felt more self-worth than non-bettors, though in states where gambling is illegal the difference in self-worth was almost nil. In legal gambling states, bettors reported a stronger personal identity, “or the importance with which an individual identifies with their relationship and career,” than non-bettors. This relationship flipped in illegal gambling states, with non-bettors showing a stronger personal identity than bettors. In both illegal and legal gambling states, bettors reported slightly higher levels of social uselessness — “an individual’s perceived lack of worth related to social institutions” — than non-bettors, though the gap was wider in illegal gambling states.

The authors write: “Bettors look different and come from different backgrounds and locations. Psychographically, they were clearly more narcissistic. They also indicated a higher social identity and self-worth, yet perceived themselves as less worthy members of important social institutions. In general, sports bettors out consumed non-bettors as it relates sports spectatorship.”

Game Changing Innovation or Bad Beat? How Sports Betting Can Reduce Fan Engagement Ashley Stadler Blank, Katherine Loveland, David Houghton. Journal of Business Research, June 2021.

The study: Legal sports betting means more than $4 billion in additional yearly revenue across the four major sports leagues, according to research the authors cite from the American Gaming Association. At the same time, there may be drawbacks that come with the financial windfall. The authors conduct two studies to explore how sports betting affects fan engagement — the emotional connection fans have with their favorite teams.

The first study included 325 people recruited from Mechanical Turk and focused on betting on a team to win, also called moneyline betting. The second was among 167 Mechanical Turk-recruited participants and focused on prop, or “proposition” bets. Prop bets are bets made on the outcome of some action during the game — whether the next foul ball is caught, missed or goes into the stands, for example. The study is among the first to explore whether there are negative emotional responses from fans related to sports betting.

Participants read a scenario — they were to imagine watching a Major League Baseball game, then randomly they were told they placed either no bet on the game or one of several types of bets. These bets included a $20 bet for the home team to win, along with prop bets. Gaming experts, according to the authors, contend that prop bets can potentially keep fans engaged even if the outcome of the game is obvious — if a team is up by 10 runs by the middle innings, for example. In each study, the participants were asked questions to gauge their emotional investment before and after being told the outcome of the game and their bets. Questions broadly asked about team loyalty, feelings of connectedness to the team and the likelihood participants would watch the team or attend a game, along with other measures of fan engagement.

The findings: In the short run, immediately after a game, the study indicates that betting and losing can decrease fan engagement. Participants who placed no bet were more likely to exhibit loyalty and purchase team-branded merchandise when the team lost, compared with those who placed a moneyline bet. Those who won a prop bet were slightly more likely to be engaged with the team than those who did not bet — but those who lost a prop bet were much less engaged than those who did not bet.

The authors write: “Although industry experts expect sports betting to increase fan engagement, results from two studies do not support this expectation. Instead, we find that when fans lose a bet, positive emotions and subsequent fan engagement decrease.”

College Football Referee Bias and Sports Betting Impact Rhett Brymer, Ryan Rodenberg, Huimiao Zheng and Tim Holcomb. Eastern Economic Journal, January 2021.

The study: The authors explore whether betting lines are related to bias in officiating in the six major Division I college football conferences across 6,598 games from 2005 to 2012. Betting lines indicate whether a sportsbook thinks a game will be close, will favor one team or the other, or be a blowout. The authors note that “college football and basketball are the only major U.S. sports in which conferences have primary managerial responsibility for officials.” If there is a game late in the season with an undefeated team playing a middling team, the conference will benefit financially if the undefeated team wins and goes on to play in a high-profile bowl game. “Referees, as employees of the conferences, are theoretically more likely to have implicit bias favoring the team with higher revenue potential,” the authors write. They use penalty yards per game as a proxy for whether an officiating crew exhibits bias toward one team or the other.

The findings: The authors find signs of bias during in-conference games in two conferences: the Atlantic Coast Conference and the Big East, which reorganized in 2013 and no longer sponsors football. In-conference games are those where two teams from the same conference play each other. In those ACC games where there one team was favored to win by three touchdowns or more, the authors find officials call 6.5 more penalty yards per game against the favorite. In the Big East, the penalty yards increase to 5.7 for the heavy favorite. Further, ACC officials appeared to flag fewer penalty yards against teams that had been in the league longer and enjoyed historic success, rather than newer teams enjoying more recent success. The authors found no officiating bias when an out-of-conference opponent was heavily favored.

The authors write: “… with increasing state regulation, there will likely be more scrutiny of officiating given that a wider spectrum of consumers will have a financial interest in game outcomes. Increased fan engagement via legal sports wagering highlights the importance of pinpointing evidence of bias and undertaking measures to ensure unbiased officiating and game integrity.”

Legalized Sports Betting, VLT Gambling, and State Gambling Revenues: Evidence from West Virginia Brad Humphreys. Eastern Economic Journal, January 2021.

The study: In one of the only studies to examine state-level sports betting revenue after the 2018 Supreme Court ruling, Humphreys looks at sports betting tax revenues in West Virginia and whether gamblers shifted their wagering from video lottery terminal games in casinos to sports betting.

The findings: From September to December 2018, casinos in West Virginia introduced five new sportsbooks, one at each of its licensed casinos. The year before, the state saw a windfall of $253 million in tax revenue from video lottery games. In the year after sports betting was introduced, the author estimates $45.4 million in lost video lottery revenue, with new sports betting revenue pegged at only $2.6 million. The state taxes video lottery revenues at 53.5%, while sports betting revenues are taxed at 10%.

The author writes: “These results should give state policy makers considering legalization of sports betting pause. While new revenue streams from legalized sports betting appear attractive on the surface, states already generate substantial tax revenues from gambling, and the introduction of sports betting to this mix does not leave spending on other forms of gambling untouched.”

Sports Betting’s Impact on Casino Gambling: Cannibalization or Expansion? Ernest Goss and Peyton Miller. University of Illinois Law Review, October 2021.

The study: Another one of few papers to examine how tax revenues and the games bettors played changed after the 2018 ruling, the authors analyze what happened after Iowa allowed sports gambling after August 2019. Iowa casinos that offer sportsbooks pay 6.75% of their sports betting revenue to the state, “a rate tied with Nevada for the lowest nationally,” the authors write. Like in West Virginia, taxes on all other forms of casino gambling are much higher — 22% on revenue over $3 million. The authors do not look at the specific effects of sports betting on other types of gambling, but rather whether there were any changes in overall revenues after August 2019.

The findings: Mobile sports betting and sports betting in casinos did not affect statewide gambling revenues from August 2019 to March 2020. After March, casinos shuttered due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The authors write: “While these results do not indicate cannibalization within the Iowa gambling market, there are relevant implications for both casinos and the state. Conditions within the state of Iowa may limit the applicability to other states. For example, the varying tax brackets across gambling forms differ from casino taxing in other states.”

Frameworks of Gambling Harms: A Comparative Review and Synthesis Virve Marionneau, Michael Egerer and Susanna Raisamo. Addiction Research and Theory, August 2022.

The study: The authors gather and analyze “harm frameworks” related to problem gambling. A framework in this context refers to a way of categorizing and thinking about an issue with an ultimate goal of understanding the issue in a comprehensive way and finding solutions. A harm is simply an outcome that most of society would classify as negative — losing one’s house, for example, because of gambling-related losses.

While not specifically related to sports betting, the frameworks explored in the paper are useful for those who want to better understand what can happen to individuals and families affected by problem gambling. After searching major academic research databases, the authors settled on seven papers published between 2000 and 2021 that developed an original harm framework related to problem gambling — four of the papers focused on developing the same framework, leaving four frameworks total. The authors, while applauding the research that has already been done, note that further research is needed.

The findings: Two of the frameworks discussed problem gambling harms related to the workplace and personal relationships. One framework separated psychological and cultural harms, and harms related to crime. Another framework mostly focused on risk factors related to problem gambling, risks which “also occur on the individual, familial, community, and societal levels,” the authors write. They note none of the models explore the degree to which problem gambling harms individuals, families, communities and society — all the harms or risks were “treated as somewhat equal,” they write. Financial harms, they argue, might be a relatively worse harm since they “can be seen to precede or even cause many of the other harms, including criminal acts or emotional suffering.” The authors argue for more research on social harms, where, on the whole, the existence of high levels of problem gambling, “can cause harms irrespective of individual participation, including corruption, economic substitution, match fixing, environmental damage related to tourism, or animal suffering.”

The authors write: “We have found that while existing conceptualizations include a wide definition of harms, most harm items are still seen to stem from individual engagement with gambling. Further incorporation of social and societal harms is still needed to conceptualize and operationalize gambling as a public health issue. This includes the development of societal-level harm measurement and harm minimization.”

A brief history of U.S. sports betting

Americans have a long tradition of gambling. College of the Holy Cross economist Victor Matheson recounts in a January 2021 article in the Eastern Economics Journal:

“Lotteries funded activities such as the original European settlement at Jamestown, the operations of prestigious universities such as Harvard and Princeton, and construction of historic Faneuil Hall in Boston … In the sports realm, by 1900 betting on horse races was made illegal except in Kentucky and Maryland, states that to this day host two of the three Triple Crown events in American horseracing, the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness Stakes. States began to relegalize gambling on horse racing in the 1930s as a method of economic stimulus during the Great Depression.”

By the early 1960s, illegal gambling enterprises run by organized crime groups were worth a combined $7 billion . For more than 30 years, the Wire Act , enacted in September 1961, was the only federal law that addressed sports gambling. The law prohibits the use of a wire — a phone, or, more recently, the internet — to transmit information about placing sports bets across state lines.

The Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, which became federal law in 1988, allowed federally recognized Native American tribes to operate casinos on their land. Sports betting in tribal-run casinos, however, was not allowed unless a tribal-state compact was signed. This is the root of the current legal dispute in Florida. Such compacts were in effect in 22 states as of June 2021, according to the International Center for Gaming Regulation at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

By the early 1990s, federal legislators were expressing moral panic over the possibility of states allowing sports betting within their borders, to take advantage of billions being wagered illegally.

Illegal transactions are, by nature, difficult to track. People who bet illegally and their bookies do not typically share receipts with the government or trade groups, so it is difficult to say with precision how big the illegal gambling market was before 2018.

Noting that caveat, the American Gaming Association estimated illegal sports betting as a $150 billion-a-year business before the 2018 Supreme Court ruling. It is an oft-repeated figure in news stories and on websites devoted to sports betting.

In 1991, when overall illegal sports bets were estimated in the tens of billions, a Senate report declared sports gambling a “national problem.” The report continued:

“The harms it inflicts are felt beyond the borders of those states that sanction it. The moral erosion it produces cannot be limited geographically. Once a state legalizes sports gambling, it will be extremely difficult for other States to resist the lure. The current pressures in such places as New Jersey and Florida to institute casino-style sports gambling illustrate the point. Without federal legislation, sports gambling is likely to spread on a piecemeal basis and ultimately develop an irreversible momentum.”

Professional sports league commissioners and former athletes were publicly and adamantly against legal sports betting. They objected that sports integrity would be irreparably harmed, including the possibility of fixed games.

Gary Bettman, the top lawyer for the National Basketball Association, made clear to federal lawmakers in 1990 that sports betting was at odds with the league’s profit motive: “Bettors do not care about the win of their team,” Bettman said during a Senate committee hearing. “They only care about the spread being covered and winning their bets. That is not our product. That is not the product we are selling.”

President George H. Bush signed the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act on Oct. 28, 1992. It went into effect on Jan. 1, 1993. Bettman became commissioner of the National Hockey League a month later — and, eventually, a fan of sports betting.

“What we’ve learned is that [sports gambling] is another point of engagement for the fans,” Bettman said during a 2019 American Gaming Association conference. “Ultimately, I think if you’re interested in sports betting, you’re going to have an increased opportunity to engage with the game.”

After 1992, some limited sports betting was grandfathered in Delaware, Oregon and Montana. Delaware, for example, allowed a certain type of bets on National Football League games. States were given one year to legalize casino sports betting after the federal law went into effect, but none did. Nevada was the only grandfathered state that fully allowed sports betting. For nearly three decades, the 1992 federal legislation enshrined Las Vegas as the U.S. sports betting hub.

“[Legal] betting was pretty much happening in Nevada, in a regulated market, and you’d have to be at casino to do it,” says Holden, who wrote a comprehensive overview of the rise of legal sports betting published February 2019 in the Georgia State University Law Review. “That gave us sort of the image of sportsbook-style betting that you would see in the movies, you would see on TV. You go to the counter, you place a bet and you watch the game on 50 different screens.”

Constitutional cracks emerged in the 2010s. In 2014, New Jersey legislators voted to reverse their law banning sports betting there. The National Collegiate Athletic Association brought the state to court. This was the case the Supreme Court heard years later, leading to the fall of the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act.

Major sports leagues today are on board with gambling. It is impossible to watch professional sports without encountering advertisements encouraging betting. Online sportsbooks spend $154 million yearly in local TV spots, according to Nielsen. Aside from accepting ad dollars from sportsbooks, every major sports league and numerous individual teams have lucrative partnership deals with sportsbooks.

About The Author

Clark Merrefield

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Pro sports have a gambling problem. How did we get here, and how bad is it?

Ayesha Rascoe

NPR's Ayesha Rascoe talks to sports columnist Jason Gay of the Wall Street Journal about the explosion of sports gambling and all the scandals that come with that growth.

AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:

Pro sports has a gambling problem. The NBA banned backup Jontay Porter for life for gambling on NBA games. Shohei Ohtani, the biggest name in baseball, had to explain how his interpreter stole and gambled $180 million of Ohtani's money. Two huge gambling scandals, and Jason Gay says they likely won't be the last. Gay is a sports columnist for The Wall Street Journal, and he joins us now. Welcome to the program.

JASON GAY: I appreciate that. Thank you.

RASCOE: So you're saying that global embarrassment for Ohtani and a lifetime ban for Porter won't serve as a wake-up call. Why do you say that?

GAY: I mean, it's very hard to watch television these days, especially sports television, and not be inundated with advertisements for legalized apps which make gambling easier than ever from our fingertips, from our living room while we're watching games. And, you know, that behavior that the public is being asked to participate in - well, athletes are no different from that. Most leagues have rules about betting on their own sports. However, in many instances, they are free to bet on others. So the opportunity is there. The technology is there. And just given the odds, you know, it's one bet I'm willing to make.

RASCOE: OK. For people who don't know a lot about the gambling apps, you can make a lot of bets, right?

GAY: That's right. So for example, if you're picking a winner in a specific game, you know, that's one bet. However, there's a whole other world of what's known as proposition bets or prop bets, and these are bets that can be based on individual performances. X player will score this amount, this many rebounds. You can almost think of anything under the sun, and it's an availability.

You know, in the case of Jontay Porter, you mentioned that he got the lifetime ban from the NBA for betting on NBA games. That's true. In addition to that, though, the NBA declared that he had provided inside information about himself to people who were placing bets. So he was actually participating in a scheme in order for somebody else to profit off of his performance in a game or, in his case, lack of performance in the game because he actually took himself out of a game in order to sort of achieve this statistical low amount in order for the person to win or the people to win.

RASCOE: So for decades, pro and college sports kept gambling at arm's length, I mean, at least publicly. What made them change their minds and kind of embrace sports betting in some instances?

GAY: It's always easy to give the one-word answer, money, right? You know, that's the primary driver here. But a lot of things were colliding all at once - the Supreme Court decision striking down the national prohibition on it, allowing states to vote on it for themselves. That certainly paved the way. Leagues have talked about the idea that legalization and putting these bets in public, under sunshine, sort of creates a transparency that would actually tamp down the amount of shenanigans. You know, that is potentially an upside here, but it's not without considerable downside. And you're already seeing the kind of reconsideration, whether it's the NCAA and Adam Silver himself this week in penalizing Porter talked about some reconsideration, perhaps, of the way that these applications apply to NBA action.

RASCOE: Well, I mean, so do you think, though, that we're past the point of no return when it comes to gambling overall? But there may be changes in how it's done, especially because, you know, people want to know these games aren't rigged and that they are real, you know, athletic endeavors and not, you know, somehow being manipulated.

GAY: Well, that's 100% accurate. That integrity is the absolute baseline expectation for all sports. The moment that people feel that what they're seeing is not really accurate or has been somehow manipulated, you're talking about losing an audience permanently, if not for generations. The competing issue, though, is that all sports are looking for alternative streams of revenue.

Legalizing betting, getting into business with gaming - it's a revenue stream that is also a hedge against the volatility that exists around these sports. It's a way to make sure that money is coming in because they know that there's a certain population of people who are always going to be betting that they can realize. And prior to that, they weren't able to realize one penny of it.

RASCOE: That's Jason Gay of The Wall Street Journal. Thank you so much for joining us.

GAY: I appreciate it. Goodbye.

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Understanding the Impact of Sports Betting on Society

This essay about the impact of sports betting on society explores its economic, social, and psychological dimensions. It examines how sports betting intersects with human instincts and influences behaviors, including the normalization of gambling in popular culture. The essay into the economic ramifications, from its lucrative revenues to the societal costs of problem gambling. It also discusses the social dynamics of sports betting, from fostering camaraderie to exacerbating toxicity and division. Moreover, it explores the psychological allure of instant gratification and the risks of addiction. Despite its negative effects, the essay suggests avenues for positive transformation, such as directing proceeds towards community initiatives and implementing harm minimization strategies. Ultimately, it advocates for a balanced approach that considers both the pitfalls and potential benefits of sports betting on society.

How it works

Sports betting, a ubiquitous facet of contemporary society, carries a significant impact on various dimensions of human life, from individual behaviors to broader societal trends. Understanding its multifaceted influence demands a nuanced examination that delves into its economic, social, and psychological ramifications.

At its core, sports betting intertwines with the human psyche, tapping into primal instincts of competition, risk-taking, and the desire for financial gain. For many, it represents more than just a leisure activity; it embodies a fervent pursuit of excitement, adrenaline, and the thrill of anticipation.

However, this seemingly innocuous pastime harbors deeper implications that resonate across society.

Economically, the sports betting industry burgeons into a colossal entity, generating staggering revenues that permeate through various sectors. From bookmakers and online platforms to advertising agencies and media outlets, a plethora of industries thrive on the fervor surrounding sports betting. The influx of capital cascades into sporting organizations, bolstering sponsorships, broadcast rights, and player salaries. Yet, this economic bonanza isn’t devoid of pitfalls. Problem gambling, exacerbated by the accessibility and allure of betting platforms, engenders financial distress, familial strife, and societal burdens, underscoring the need for stringent regulations and responsible gambling measures.

Moreover, the societal fabric weaves sports betting into its tapestry, shaping norms, values, and communal dynamics. The normalization of sports betting permeates popular culture, where it’s often glamorized through media portrayals and celebrity endorsements. This normalization can desensitize individuals to the risks associated with excessive gambling, fostering a cavalier attitude towards financial prudence and personal well-being. Additionally, sports betting engenders a sense of tribalism and camaraderie among enthusiasts, fostering social cohesion through shared experiences, rituals, and collective celebrations. However, this sense of unity can devolve into toxicity, as rivalries escalate into aggression and animosity, perpetuating a culture of division and exclusion.

Psychologically, sports betting exerts a profound influence on individual attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors, navigating the intricate labyrinth of human cognition and emotion. The allure of instant gratification, coupled with cognitive biases like the illusion of control and optimism bias, lures individuals into a cycle of compulsive betting, ensnaring them in its addictive grip. The dopamine rush accompanying wins fuels a feedback loop of reinforcement, reinforcing maladaptive patterns of behavior and exacerbating psychological distress. Furthermore, the pervasive nature of sports betting infiltrates vulnerable demographics, including adolescents and individuals grappling with mental health issues, amplifying the risk of pathological gambling and its attendant consequences.

Yet, amidst the shadows cast by its negative repercussions, sports betting harbors the potential for positive transformation and societal upliftment. By channeling a portion of its proceeds towards community initiatives, education, and public welfare programs, the industry can mitigate its adverse effects while fostering social responsibility and ethical conduct. Moreover, leveraging technology and data analytics, stakeholders can implement harm minimization strategies, such as self-exclusion tools and personalized interventions, to safeguard vulnerable individuals from the perils of excessive gambling.

In essence, the impact of sports betting on society transcends mere statistical figures and economic indices, permeating the intricate fabric of human existence. As we navigate the labyrinthine terrain of its influence, we must remain vigilant, cognizant of its potential for both harm and redemption. Through collaborative efforts, informed policymaking, and a steadfast commitment to ethical conduct, we can harness the transformative power of sports betting to sculpt a society that thrives on principles of equity, compassion, and collective well-being.

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The Sports Betting Issue: An Editorial Essay

Introduction, sports betting.

Sports betting is a popular way of gambling among millions of people around the globe. Many humans underestimate this problem, seeing it as a way of recreation and relaxation. However, in reality, gambling is extremely dangerous and leads to deplorable consequences. Sports betting is a serious problem; it destroys the gambler’s life, and has to be solved by making it illegal, funding rehabilitation centers, and educating people on the issue.

Gambling is popular in almost every country in the world, and, generally, is not perceived as a serious problem. However, sports betting is a psychological disorder, people who have it suddenly cease to control their behavior and emotions, which affects their daily life (Briley 6). Due to the issue, an individual is no longer able to derive pleasure from activities as they did it before. Gamblers gradually destroy their life: firstly, by losing all their money on betting, then, ruining relationships with close people, and, finally, they may be dangerous to others and themselves due to impulsiveness. In the end, such people may go to jail due to stealing money or other more serious crimes.

Such a problem must be solved immediately before it is too late. The first approach that has to be implemented is banning all the ways of gambling and making any betting illegal. Secondly, governments have to provide funding for rehabilitation centers and education of professionals who will help addicted cure. These people have to be treated properly and provided with support during such a difficult period of recovery. Finally, it is fundamental to educate people in schools and universities about the issue. Knowing all the aspects of the issue and how serious it is will likely prevent many people from making this mistake.

In conclusion, sports betting is a severe addiction that affects people around the globe. It damages gamblers’ mental health and affects all the spheres of their life. It is dangerous for the person who bets, and for their close people. The problem has to be solved by fully banning betting, providing addicted people with proper treatment, and educating the population on the issue and its consequences.

Briley, John. “Sports betting is exploding. This ex-gambler has a $15,000 cautionary tale.” The Washington Post , 2022. Web.

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IvyPanda. (2023, May 3). The Sports Betting Issue: An Editorial. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-sports-betting-issue-an-editorial/

"The Sports Betting Issue: An Editorial." IvyPanda , 3 May 2023, ivypanda.com/essays/the-sports-betting-issue-an-editorial/.

IvyPanda . (2023) 'The Sports Betting Issue: An Editorial'. 3 May.

IvyPanda . 2023. "The Sports Betting Issue: An Editorial." May 3, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-sports-betting-issue-an-editorial/.

1. IvyPanda . "The Sports Betting Issue: An Editorial." May 3, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-sports-betting-issue-an-editorial/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "The Sports Betting Issue: An Editorial." May 3, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-sports-betting-issue-an-editorial/.

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As more states legalize the practice, 19% of U.S. adults say they have bet money on sports in the past year

Around one-in-five U.S. adults (19%) say they have personally bet money on sports in some way in the last 12 months, whether with friends or family, in person at a casino or other gambling venue, or online with a betting app, according to a new Pew Research Center survey.

The survey comes more than four years after the Supreme Court effectively legalized commercial sports betting in the United States . As of this month, 35 states and the District of Columbia have authorized the practice in some form, with Massachusetts becoming the latest state to do so in August.

Despite the growth of commercial sports betting in the wake of the Supreme Court’s 2018 ruling, the most common way that Americans bet on sports is with friends or family, according to the Center’s survey, which was fielded July 5-17 among 6,034 adults. Some 15% of adults say they have bet money on sports with friends or family in the last 12 months, such as in a private betting pool, fantasy league or casual bet. Smaller shares say they have bet money on sports in person at a casino, racetrack or betting kiosk in the past year (8%) or that they have done so online with a betting app, sportsbook or casino (6%). All told, 19% of adults have bet money on sports in at least one of these ways in the past year.

The U.S. Supreme Court decided in 2018 to effectively legalize commercial sports betting in the United States . Pew Research Center conducted this analysis about four years later to find out what share of U.S. adults have personally bet on sports in the past year and to understand Americans’ broader views about the impact of sports betting on society and sports.

The analysis is based on a survey conducted July 5-17, 2022, among 6,034 U.S. adults. The poll included 4,996 respondents from the Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP), an online survey panel that is recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses. This way nearly all U.S. adults have a chance of selection. It also included an oversample of 1,038 respondents from Ipsos’ KnowledgePanel. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education and other categories. Read more about the ATP’s methodology . Here are the questions used for this analysis, along with responses, and its methodology .

This survey includes a total sample size of 234 Asian adults. The sample primarily includes English-speaking Asian Americans and, therefore, may not be representative of the overall Asian adult population. Despite this limitation, it is important to report the views of Asian Americans on the topics in this study. As always, Asian adults’ responses are incorporated into the general population figures throughout this analysis.

Men are more likely than women (24% vs. 15%) to say they have bet on sports in some form in the past year, as are adults under the age of 50 when compared with those 50 and older (22% vs. 17%). There are also differences by race and ethnicity: Black (27%) and Hispanic adults (24%) are more likely than White (18%) and Asian American adults (10%) to report doing so.

There are no significant differences in self-reported sports betting by educational attainment or household income level. For example, 18% of college graduates say they have bet on sports in some way in the past year, as have 20% of non-college graduates. Similar shares of adults in upper-income (22%), middle-income (19%) and lower-income households (19%) say they have bet on sports in the past year.

There is also no significant difference by party affiliation: 21% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents say they have bet on sports in some way in the last 12 months, as have 19% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents.

Public awareness of legal sports betting

Overall, 56% of adults say they have read or heard a lot (12%) or a little (44%) about the fact that sports betting is now legal in much of the country, while 44% say they have read or heard nothing at all about it.

Awareness of legalized sports betting varies by demographic group. Men are far more likely than women to say they have read or heard at least a little about it (69% vs. 44%). Americans ages 50 and older, those with a college degree and those in upper-income households are also among the groups who are more likely to have read or heard about it.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Americans who have read or heard a lot about the widespread legalization of sports betting in the U.S. are far more likely than other Americans to say they personally have bet on sports in the past year. Among this group of Americans, nearly half (46%) report betting on sports in some way in the past year, compared with 23% of those who have read or heard only a little and just 9% of those who have read or heard nothing at all about the fact that sports betting is now legal in much of the country.

Perceptions about legal sports betting’s effect on society, sports

The widespread legalization of sports betting has created a new revenue stream for many state governments , but it has also raised concerns about gambling addiction and other societal harms.

So how do Americans feel about the fact that sports betting is now legal in much of the U.S.? Regardless of how much they have heard or read about it, a majority of adults (57%) say it is neither a good nor bad thing for society, while about a third (34%) say it is a bad thing. Only 8% say it is a good thing for society.

The public is slightly more divided on a separate question about whether the widespread legalization of sports betting is a good or bad thing for sports . Around half of Americans (49%) say the fact that sports betting is now legal in much of the country is neither a good nor bad thing for sports, while a third say it is a bad thing for sports and 16% say it is a good thing.

On these questions, too, there are some demographic differences. Americans 50 and older are more likely than adults under 50 to say that legalized sports betting is a bad thing for both society (41% vs. 27%) and sports (38% vs. 29%). College graduates and those in upper-income households are also more likely to see the widespread legalization of sports betting as a bad thing for both society and sports.

While there are no significant partisan differences on most of the Center’s questions related to sports betting, one such divide does appear on the question of whether legalized sports betting is a good or bad thing for society. Republicans are slightly more likely than Democrats to say this is a bad thing for society (38% vs. 31%). Still, more than half in both groups (54% of Republicans and 59% of Democrats) see it as neither a good nor bad thing for society.

Note: Here are the questions used for this analysis, along with responses, and its methodology .

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• v.11(3); 2022 Sep

Sports betting around the world: A systematic review

Repairer etuk.

1 Department of Psychology, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, NV, USA

2 William F. Harrah College of Hospitality, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, NV, USA

3 International Gaming Institute, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, NV, USA

Brett Abarbanel

6 Gambling Treatment & Research Centre, University of Sydney, Australia

Marc N. Potenza

4 Department of Psychiatry, Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA

5 Department of Neuroscience, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA

Shane W. Kraus

Background and aims.

This systematic review examines whether sports betting behaviors differ among and between sports bettors in different countries, evaluates psychosocial problems related to sports betting behaviors and how problems may vary by country, and lastly, summarizes the current regulatory guidelines for sports betting.

We followed the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines and included peer-reviewed articles from PubMed, Web of Science, and PsycINFO. Studies on sports betting behavior were included if they were published in English or Chinese between January 1, 2010 and March 28th, 2022. We gathered regulatory information from peer-reviewed articles, legal acts, and relevant websites. Of 2,450 articles screened, 65 were included in the final review.

Marketing and promotion of sports betting were more prominent for sports betting in Australia and the United Kingdom. Interviews with sports bettors demonstrated that sports betting is persuasive and normalized. Psychosocial problems do not appear to differ greatly by country, and sports betting appears to be associated with elevated levels of problem gambling. Responsible gambling approaches have helped address risky sports betting behaviors. China and South Korea have imposed more strict regulations and restrictions on sports betting access in comparison to countries such as Australia or the United States.

Discussion and conclusions

Currently, sports betting is easy to access, normalized, and contains many attractive features for sports bettors. Psychoeducation about potential risks of sports betting and encouragement of responsible gambling strategies could help lessen risky sports-betting behaviors, though cross-cultural adaptations should be explored.

Introduction

Sports betting is a rapidly growing industry that obtained a worldwide market size of over 200 billion United States (US) dollars in 2019 ( Ibisworld, 2020 ). In total, there are over 30,000 sports-betting-related businesses globally ( Ibisworld, 2020 ). Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the sports-betting industry in the regions of Asia, the Middle East, and South America had grown at above-average rates ( Ibisworld, 2020 ), while in 2021 weekly sports betting in the United States doubled ( Morning Consult, 2022 ). Although sports betting may be defined in different ways, the present study defines sports betting as placing a monetary wager on the outcome of one or multiple sporting events, occurrence/non-occurrence of an event within a sporting event, or betting on sports in a week-long or season-long competition. As sports betting continues to grow in the United States and elsewhere ( American Gaming Association, 2022 ), recent research has focused on identifying possible risk factors associated with problematic sports-betting behaviors (e.g., chasing losses, distorted gambling cognitions, preoccupation with gambling, social or financial problems due to sports-betting behaviors) ( Hing, Russell, Vitartas, & Lamont, 2016 ; Russell, Hing, & Browne, 2019 ). Research on this topic is of great importance, as problematic sport-betting behavior could eventually develop into a gambling disorder (GD). In the DSM-5, GD is an addictive disorder characterized by dysregulated and recurrent gambling behaviors that can generate clinically significant levels of distress and impairments in functioning ( American Psychological Association, 2013 ). GD requires meeting at least 4 of 9 diagnostic criteria in the DSM-5, and some gambling behaviors that do not meet full diagnostic criteria for a GD (e.g., 2–3 inclusionary criteria for GD in DSM-5) have been linked to adverse measures of functioning ( Loo, Kraus, & Potenza, 2019 ) and have been described as subthreshold GD or “problem gambling” or “at/risk gambling.”

The current systematic review examines the associations between sports-betting behaviors and psychosocial problems (e.g., erroneous sports-betting beliefs, mental health disorders, and family-related problems) and investigates whether sports-betting behaviors differ across Western and non-Western cultures. Furthermore, we also examine whether current regulations and policies for sports betting differ by Western and non-Western jurisdictions and cultures and make recommendations for future clinical and public health efforts aimed at reducing problematic sports betting.

Clinical correlates of problematic sports betting

For Australian sports bettors, greater engagement in gambling has been associated with the development of gambling problems ( Russell, Hing, & Browne, 2019 ). In another Australian study, researchers found that sports betting may also include cultural elements relevant to gambling risk, with speaking an additional language other than English potentially increasing risk for problematic online gambling in ethnic minorities ( Hing, Russell, & Browne, 2017 ). Similarly, Oei, Raylu, and Loo's (2019) review on culture's role in gambling and GD found support for cross-cultural differences more generally in GD, gambling behaviors, and gambling beliefs. Specifically, there were higher prevalence estimates of GD among culturally and linguistically diverse groups (e.g., ethnic minorities or Aboriginal groups within Western countries). Their review revealed cultural differences in gambling behaviors and beliefs, including stigma around gambling, motivations for gambling, willingness to seek out treatment for gambling, and gambling-related cognitions ( Oei, Raylu, & Loo, 2019 ). Notably, cultural differences have been more often seen between collectivist (e.g., typical cultures within China, Taiwan, Macau, etc.) versus individualist cultures (e.g., typical cultures found within Australia and Canada) ( Dhillon, Horch, & Hodgins, 2011 ; Oei & Raylu, 2010 ; Oei et al., 2019 ; Po Oei, Lin, & Raylu, 2008 ). While Oei and colleagues' ( 2019 ) review provides a valuable foundation for cross-cultural research in gambling, the potential cultural differences specific to sports betting remain largely unexplored.

The extant sports-betting literature has produced few reviews to date. Previous reviews have focused on in-play sports betting (i.e., placing a bet on a sporting event that is in progress) in primarily Western countries ( Killick & Griffiths, 2019 ) or examined general sports-betting behaviors and cognitions worldwide, rather than specific differences between countries ( Mercier et al., 2018 ). As such, a review of jurisdictional and cultural differences in sports betting will provide a unique overview of the current findings in this area and suggest future directions for sports-betting cross-cultural research. Although some previous research has examined cultural differences within sports betting and general gambling, this research frequently involves comparisons between only two countries (e.g., one Western country, such as Canada, and one Eastern country, such as China) or ethnic groups (e.g., White/European compared to East Asian individuals). A review of sports betting across jurisdictions can examine comprehensively for potential cultural differences between several different countries and ethnic communities.

To address current gaps in the literature, our systematic review explored three study aims: (1) to assess whether sports-betting behaviors differ within and between different countries (e.g., United States, Australia, United Kingdom, China); (2) to evaluate psychosocial problems related to sports-betting behaviors and how problems may differ by country; and (3) to summarize the current regulatory guidelines for sports betting in different countries, for the purpose of making broad recommendations for reducing problematic sports betting across Western and non-Western countries. In the interest of brevity, we chose to focus on traditional forms of land-based/online sports betting for this current review, and do not include esports betting, or forms of gambling-related activities that occur within video games, such as microtransactions or loot boxes.

Search strategy

We followed the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines for this systematic review ( Moher, Liberati, Tetzlaff, & Altman, 2009 ). This review only included peer-reviewed articles, which we collected from the databases PubMed, Web of Science, and PsycINFO. The search strategy included the following terms: (sport* AND gambl*) OR (sport* AND betting) OR (sport* AND bet) OR (sport* AND bettor*) OR (sport* AND wager*). In addition, we conducted searches of reference lists of included articles. To achieve the aims of this review, for the 65 articles included in the final review, we assessed the country of origin for each article and determined which (if any) sports-betting behaviors/psychosocial problems differed by country. Figure 1 describes the selection and screening process of identified studies.

PRISMA flow diagram of the systematic review phases

Selection criteria and review process

All studies were managed and organized through Rayyan ( Ouzzani, Hammady, Fedorowicz, & Elmagarmid, 2016 ), a web-based application for systematic reviews. Two authors (RE, TX) screened each reference title and abstract independently for the full-text review and exchanged their decisions subsequently. When a selection could not be made, the authors discussed article inclusions as a group to reach a consensus. Studies were included in the initial pool of articles (after duplicates were eliminated) if they were: (1) published in English or Chinese as these languages were spoken by the researchers (the search criteria terms, however, were only in English) and (2) published between January 1, 2010, and March 28th, 2022, inclusively. This date range was chosen to focus on more recent studies and developments. We did not deliberately exclude any countries in the initial pool of articles. If a study met the following exclusionary/inclusionary criteria, it was included in this systematic review.

Exclusionary criteria

The following exclusion criteria were employed: (1) participants who were children, adolescents, college students, sports athletes, or treatment-seeking; (2) studies focused on esports, loot boxes/microtransactions, horse racing, social media account analyses (i.e., Twitter account data), or predictions of the outcomes of sports events; (3) studies that were a review, a case report, a book chapter, a thesis or dissertation, secondary data, or a conference paper; (4) studies that focused on measure validation, illegal gambling, or testing gambling models; and (5) non-human subjects were used (e.g., mice, rats). The reasoning behind these exclusionary criteria is explained below.

This review focuses on adults participating in legal sports betting, and therefore, it does not examine issues of legality. This review examines sports betting generally, and as such does not examine specific populations, such as college students or treatment-seeking sports bettors. Furthermore, studies that focus on esports, loot boxes/microtransactions, horse racing, social media account analyses, or predicting the outcomes of sports events were not included in the review for reasons of parsimony, and because this review focuses on sports-betting behavior as related to traditional sporting events. Measure validation, and animal studies were also considered to fall outside of the scope of this review. Lastly, articles had to be original, peer-reviewed studies published in scholarly journals to be included in the review. We thus excluded reviews, case reports, book chapters, theses or dissertations, secondary data, or conference papers.

Inclusionary criteria

Included articles had the following characteristics: (1) they were published in English (the primary language of the authors); (2) had a major focus on sports betting or sports bettors; (3) were primary data sources (studies using original data); (4) had been published in peer-reviewed journals (to guarantee studies had been critically examined and approved by other researchers); and (5) did not contain any of the exclusionary criteria previously covered in the methods section. We found no relevant publications in Chinese to include in the final review.

Regulatory guidelines

PRISMA systematic review guidelines were not used to find regulatory information for sports betting. Instead, we examined peer-reviewed articles, legal acts, and relevant websites in order to evaluate current sports-betting regulations within individual jurisdictions. As it was not feasible to include sports-betting regulations for every country, Table 1 includes regulations for countries that were most strongly represented (i.e., at least 3 articles for each Western country and at least 1 article for each Eastern country) from the articles included in this review.

Table 1.

Summary of sports betting regulations

Article categorization

The authors determined article category by grouping articles with similar aims and topics. This categorization was based on natural groups that derived from the literature review. For articles that could be classified into multiple categories, the authors conferred on which category was the best fit for the article, until full consensus was reached. This review found six common domains explored in relation to sports betting. These domains were created by the authors after examining the themes covered in the included articles of this review. The six domains included: Marketing, Fantasy Sports (i.e., activities in which participants create virtual teams that consist of real sports players), Qualitative Studies, Responsible Gambling, Problem Gambling, and Psychosocial. Articles may share some overlap between domains but were placed in the “primary” and best-fitting domain. Studies that could not be grouped by these common themes were put into an “Uncategorized” domain.

Sixty-five articles were included in the present systematic review. The most heavily researched topics included the marketing of sports betting ( n = 13) and fantasy sports betting ( n = 13), followed by problem gambling in sports betting ( n = 12), psychosocial aspects of sports betting ( n  = 9), qualitative interviews with sports bettors ( n = 7), and responsible gambling initiatives ( n = 5), with the remaining articles making up the uncategorized studies category ( n = 6). Most studies were conducted in Australia, the United States, or the United Kingdom, while a limited number of articles examined sports betting in Asia.

For the countries in this review, their regulatory guidelines for sports betting included state or federal regulations and/or sanctions (see Table 1 ). Countries differed in the types of sports betting allowed (e.g., sports lotteries are the only legal form of sports betting within China and Taiwan, and all online sports betting is illegal in Iceland), and in their sports-betting restrictions (e.g., in Australia, in-play betting is not allowed unless the bet is placed over the telephone or by using a machine at a licensed venue). Generally, Eastern countries tended to have more conservative and restrictive guidelines as compared to Western countries. For a full summary of sports-betting regulations for countries, see Table 1 .

Domain 1: marketing and sports betting

Thirteen studies investigated marketing within sports betting, and several of these studies examined the content of advertisements. As concluded by Lopez-Gonzalez, Estévez, and Griffiths (2018) , sports-betting advertisements aimed to reduce the perceived risk of gambling and to enhance the perceived control of bettors. Most characters in advertisements were male ( Lopez-Gonzalez, Guerrero-Solé, & Griffiths, 2018 ), as likewise found by Roth-Cohen and Tamir (2017) . Gender may play an important role in sports-betting promotions, as Hing, Vitartas, and Lamont (2017) found that attractive, non-expert, female presenters gained more attention from all gambling groups than other presenters.

In-play betting has been regularly marketed within sports-betting advertising, and overall seems to be quite persuasive to sports bettors ( Thomas, Lewis, Duong, & McLeod, 2012 ). Consistent with the finding of Thomas et al. (2012) , which found that in-play betting was one of the main themes of the advertisements, 46% of sports-betting television advertisements ( n = 135) contained in-play betting ( Lopez-Gonzalez, Guerrero-Solé, & Griffiths, 2018 ). Similarly, other research has suggested that advertising encouraged in-play betting and found that 39.1% of World Cup 2018 advertised bets could be determined before the match ended ( Newall, Thobhani, Walasek, & Meyer, 2019 ). Another form of marketing that was commonly used involved inducements (refund/stake-back offers, followed by sign-up offers and promotional odds), which were typically subject to numerous, difficult-to-understand terms and conditions ( Hing, Sproston, Brook, & Brading, 2017 ). Among them, bonus bets with play-through conditions, such as multi-bet offers, and refer-a-friend offers seemed particularly difficult to interpret for bettors, who frequently underestimated of the true costs of the inducements ( Hing et al., 2019 ). Generally, individuals with problematic sports-betting behaviors showed high approval of gambling promotions ( Hing, Lamont, Vitartas, & Fink, 2015 ). See Table 2 for a review of these articles.

Table 2.

Summary of studies exploring marketing and sports betting

Note . Problem Gambling Severity Index (PGSI).

Domain 2: fantasy sports and sports betting

Thirteen studies explored fantasy sports and sports betting. Fantasy sports have become increasingly popular, particularly in the United States ( Fantasy Sports & Gaming Association ). Betting on fantasy sports typically involves betting in two forms: (a) fantasy sports leagues and (b) daily fantasy sports (DFS). Betting in a fantasy sports league involves players creating a virtual team to compete against others for real money wagers. These competitions are generally longer-term and may run over an entire sports season. In contrast, DFS are an accelerated form of fantasy sports betting, wherein players create a virtual team, but participate in shorter-term competitions (usually with entry fees) that take place over a day or a week. Table 3 provides an overview of studies exploring fantasy sports betting.

Table 3.

Summary of studies investigating fantasy sports and sports betting

Note . Articles were listed as being in the USA due to the vast majority of these players being located in the USA. Problem Gambling Severity Index (PGSI), Motivational Scale for Fantasy Football Participation (MSSFP), Daily fantasy sports (DFS).

The majority of articles in this domain investigated DFS betting. Nower, Caler, Pickering, and Blaszczynski (2018) found that when comparing DFS participants to non-DFS gamblers, DFS participants reported involvement in higher numbers of gambling activities, gambling more frequently, and having similar problematic behaviors to those found within online gambling. The level of involvement in DFS is also important to consider, as previous research suggests that heavily involved DFS participants often show increasing engagement (i.e., escalating entries, entry fees and participation) in DFS over time ( Edson & LaPlante, 2020 ). Engagement in DFS could be also related to a big win, with a big win in DFS being associated with increased DFS engagement and loses, although this effect declined over time ( Edson, Tom, Philander, Louderback, & LaPlante, 2021 ). DFS participants' motivations to play may influence their cognitions, behaviors, and engagement, as extrinsically motivated (by financial gain) DFS participants were found to have similar cognitions to people with gambling problems, while intrinsically motivated (by entertainment) DFS participants spent more time and money on DFS activities than extrinsically motivated DFS participants ( Drayer, Dwyer, & Shapiro, 2019 ).

We found three studies that explicitly assessed DFS participation and traditional-only fantasy sports league betting. Dwyer and Weiner (2018) investigated similarities and differences in causality orientations of skill or chance (perceived beliefs that outcomes are determined by either skill or chance). Their results indicated similar relationships among causality orientations for both forms of fantasy sport involvement; however, no relationship was found between the Autonomy (skill) and Impersonal (chance) orientations. Although small differences have been found between DFS and traditional fantasy sports participants on impulsivity measures ( Dwyer, Drayer, & Shapiro, 2019 ) and motivations to play ( Weiner & Dwyer, 2017 ), overall, the two groups appear to present similarly. Broadly, the overall playing of pay to play fantasy sports is associated with higher levels of sports betting and online gambling ( Houghton, Nowlin, & Walker, 2019 ).

Domain 3: qualitative studies of sports betting

Seven studies have explored sports-betting behaviors through qualitative interviews. Three studies used Australian sports-betting samples, three samples were from the United Kingdom, and one sample was based in Nigeria. Table 4 contains a summary of the qualitative sports-betting studies.

Table 4.

Summary of studies qualitatively examining sports betting

Note . Problem Gambling Severity Index (PGSI)

Interviews with sports bettors have been used to evaluate sports-betting behaviors and opinions on sports betting. Overall, sports betting is easy to access and can be very pervasive, especially when considering modern online sports-betting features (i.e., in-play betting) ( Parke & Parke, 2019 ). For many sports bettors, sports betting is normative and enjoyable ( McGee, 2020 ). Although, many sports bettors were aware of the potentially addictive nature of sports betting, they saw mostly positives related to the activity, including beliefs that sports betting could alleviate their poverty or unemployment ( Akanle & Fageyinbo, 2019 ).

Thematic analyses were often performed to analyze the qualitative interviews, and the “normality” of sports betting was again identified. Positive themes related to sports betting included perceiving sports betting as embedded within sporting rituals, having a sense of identity around sports betting, as well as having shared cultural values and desired acumen/skill related to sports betting ( Deans, Thomas, Daube, & Derevensky, 2017 ; Gordon, Gurrieri, & Chapman, 2015 ). Relatedly, sports bettors may be motivated by fulfilling psychological needs of relatedness and competence ( Lamont & Hing, 2020 ). Some of the riskier aspects of sports betting described themes of feeling social pressure to gamble and temptations to gamble; interviewees also mentioned they felt a lack of industry protection from gambling-related harms ( Deans et al., 2017 ; Killick & Griffiths, 2020 ).

Domain 4: responsible gambling strategies and sports betting

Only five articles examined strategies for responsible gambling. Responsible gambling has been designed to minimize gambling-related harms among gamblers ( Blaszczynski, Ladouceur, & Shaffer, 2004 ), yet a content analysis of sports-betting advertisements revealed that few responsible gambling messages were displayed ( Thomas et al., 2012 ). These findings resonated with previous work which found that only 12% of sports-and race-betting inducements ( n = 223) contained information on responsible gambling in website advertisements ( Hing, Sproston, et al., 2017 ). These findings may be especially problematic when considering that gamblers tend to look more at information regarding inducement offers as compared to messages about responsible gambling ( Lole et al., 2019 ).

Responsible gambling strategies (RGS) in sports bettors' decision-making processes have been defined as “diverse strategies or regulations that contribute to minimizing negative personal and social impacts such as problem gambling ( Lee, Chen, Song, & Lee, 2014 ).” RGS may be divided into two types: supplementary RGS (e.g., voluntary treatment programs) and compulsory RGS (e.g., betting limits) ( Lee, Chen, et al., 2014 ). Supplementary RGS have been positively related to both harmonious passion and obsessive passion for sports betting ( Lee, Chung, & Bernhard, 2014 ). On the other hand, compulsory RGS have been negatively associated with obsessive passion ( Lee, Chung, et al., 2014 ). Thus, implementing compulsory RGS has been suggested as being possibly effective in protecting sports bettors against problem gambling by reducing their obsessive passion for sports betting. Similar RGS involved sending sports bettors messages aimed at increasing deposit limit-setting and were effective as sports bettors frequently set limits as compared to controls ( Heirene & Gainsbury, 2021 ). In other work, a consortium of gambling operators developed the Markers of Harm system (i.e., an algorithm) to identify problematic sports-betting behaviors. Although some markers were positively associated with gambling engagement and proxies of problem gambling, researchers suggested that further adjustments should be made to improve the algorithm's group classification and risk thresholds ( McAuliffe, Louderback, Edson, LaPlante, & Nelson, 2022 ). Table 5 summarizes these studies.

Table 5.

Summary of studies exploring responsible gambling strategies and sports betting

Domain 5: problem gambling and sports betting

The twelve studies within this category primarily focused on associations between problem-gambling behaviors, problem gambling, and sports betting. Table 6 contains a synopsis of these studies. Overall, sports bettors tend to be young, impulsive, and engaged in sports betting, with those with problem and moderate-risk gambling being more likely to have greater levels of sports-betting involvement than those with non-problem and low-risk gambling ( Russell, Hing, & Browne, 2019 ). Other factors associated with sports-betting problems included stronger gambling urges, more erroneous cognitions, overconfidence, poorer self-control, and problematic use of alcohol ( Bum, Choi, & Lee, 2018 ; Russell, Hing, Li, & Vitartas, 2019 ). Comparably, for participants in sports lottery, level of sports-lottery consumption was associated with financial and social consequences and compulsive (disordered) gambling ( Li et al., 2012 ). Sports bettors appear to be a high-risk group for developing problem gambling ( Cooper, Olfert, & Marmurek, 2021 ; Lopez-Gonzalez, Russell, Hing, Estévez, & Griffiths, 2019 ).

Table 6.

Summary of studies examining problem gambling and sports betting

Another problematic gambling behavior may be related to custom sports betting, in which gamblers create unique individualized bets. For example, one study found that custom sports betting was correlated with problem-gambling severity, gambling-related harms, and gambling consumption ( Newall, Cassidy, Walasek, Ludvig, & Meyer, 2021 ). Lastly, a study investigating problem-gambling behaviors in online sports bettors found that the amount of money spent was the strongest statistical predictor of problem-gambling-related exclusion for sports bettors ( Ukhov, Bjurgert, Auer, & Griffiths, 2020 ).

Domain 6: studies investigating psychosocial aspects of sports betting

Several articles investigated how psychosocial factors relate to sports-betting behaviors (see Table 7 ). Cognitive distortions have frequently been examined in GD, but these cognitions could also contribute to maintaining sports-betting behaviors. A recent study found that substance use mediated the relationship between cognitive distortions and suicidal ideation among sports bettors ( Chukwuorji et al., 2020 ). Other studies have more specifically examined sports bettors' cognitions (i.e., biases, illusion of control or decision-making). One study found similar levels of overconfidence bias for both sporadic and frequent gamblers ( Erceg & Galić, 2014 ). With regard to illusion of control, there was no significant difference between the groups with and without problematic sports-betting behaviors ( Huberfeld, Gersner, Rosenberg, Kotler, & Dannon, 2013 ).

Table 7.

Summary of studies investigating psychosocial aspects of sports betting

Note . Problem Gambling Severity Index (PGSI), South Oaks Gambling Screen (SOGS).

Personality features, such as aggression and neuroticism, may also influence sports-betting behaviors ( Lin & Lu, 2015 ; Polat & Yildiz, 2021 ). In a study exploring the relationship between sport spectators' gambling motivations and aggression propensities, greater propensities for violence were related to higher fandom levels among sports spectators who gambled ( Polat & Yildiz, 2021 ). A separate study found that sports lottery bettors with neurotic tendencies had lower risk tolerance, while bettors with extroversion, openness, and agreeable tendencies had higher risk tolerance ( Lin & Lu, 2015 ).

Domain 7: uncategorized studies examining sports betting

Six studies on sports betting that did not fit into the previous categories covered in this review were included in Table 8 as uncategorized. Overall, it remains unclear whether measuring gambling in a multidimensional measure is appropriate, as previous research did not find support for a taxonomic or dimensional model for extreme gambling behaviors among sports bettors ( Braverman, LaBrie, & Shaffer, 2011 ). A separate study investigated relationships between sports-betting behaviors and various factors (e.g., hunger level, alcohol consumption, and recreational drug use), and found that these factors had both indirect and direct effects on impulsive bet size ( Li, Hing, Russell, & Vitartas, 2020 ).

Table 8.

Summary of uncategorized studies examining sports betting

Several studies have analyzed sports bettors' account data (generally for online betting). One study found that most bets were placed on races or sports, with 77.63% of bets resulting in player losses ( Gainsbury & Russell, 2015 ). A different study investigating patterns of gambling behavior found higher losses for players, as subscribers to an online betting website lost 96% of the amounts they wagered ( Gray, Jónsson, LaPlante, & Shaffer, 2015 ).

Sports betting has grown to become a profitable and widely accepted activity around the world. The current systematic review aimed to assess whether sports-betting behaviors differ among and between different countries. We evaluated psychosocial problems related to sports-betting behaviors and how problems may differ by country, and additionally summarized the current regulatory guidelines for sports betting across different countries.

Overall, we found that research on marketing and promotion of sports betting was most prevalent in Australia and the United Kingdom. This could possibly be due to these locations having an environment where marketing and promotion of sports betting is acceptable and common. Indeed, large number of studies in these regions suggest that sports-betting advertisements are influential, persuasive, and associated with higher sports-betting-related behaviors. Qualitative studies have also suggested that sports-betting advertising and promotions may motivate sports bettors to gamble. Furthermore, sports betting has been normalized and is appealing for many sports bettors, perhaps especially due to the ease of access to participate in sports betting. Social factors such as perceived social pressure to bet on sports or camaraderie obtained through sports betting could be factors that maintain sports-betting behaviors. It should be noted that most of the marketing and qualitative articles in this review were from Western countries, and presently, it remains largely unclear how these domains of sports betting may present similarly or differently within Eastern countries.

This review found that RGS for sports betting have been researched in South Korea and Australia, and that messages promoting responsible sports betting have potential to help individuals who may be at risk of developing sports-betting-related problems. As expected, most research on fantasy sports betting has been conducted in the United States, which could be attributed in part to American football and fantasy sports in general being more popular within the United States than internationally. Most research of fantasy sports betting involved DFS participants, and results varied as most studies had unique aims. No major differences were noted between DFS and traditional fantasy sports bettors within studies that directly compared these two groups.

Psychosocial problems were related to sports betting, particularly among those reporting issues with problem gambling. Sports bettors in general tended to have high levels of problem gambling, and sports-betting involvement was frequently associated with greater problem-gambling severity. Psychosocial problems do not appear to differ greatly by country; however, certain countries are more restrictive (e.g., China, South Korea) with respect to which forms of sports betting are legal, which makes it more difficult to compare sports bettors as there may be vastly different sports-betting environments across countries. However, more strict restrictions on sports betting could limit the popularity and ease of access to these activities in some countries. While not as consistent as the relationship between sports betting and problem-gambling severity, several studies found that erroneous cognitions about gambling were associated with sports-betting-related problems. The relationship between erroneous gambling cognitions and problem-gambling severity has been reported in individuals seeking treatment for GD ( Ledgerwood et al., 2020 ); however, it is unclear whether cognitive distortions present similarly or differently for sports bettors who seek treatment for GD. When considering that sports bettors often endorsed ease of access, normality, and persuasive qualities of sports betting, psychoeducation about the potential dangers of sports betting may help reduce risky sports-betting behaviors. Psychoeducation could also be used in addition to RGS (e.g., limit setting), which have shown potential to assist sports bettors in managing their betting behaviors ( Heirene & Gainsbury, 2021 ).

Study limitations include a strict search criterion, which may have resulted in the potential loss of relevant articles, such as those published as grey literature. Relatedly, this review found relatively few studies from Eastern countries, which made cross-cultural comparisons difficult. This could reflect our search restrictions, which included a limit to English or Chinese language, or a general lack of articles from Eastern regions. This review chose not to include esports betting, but future cross-cultural research should include esports, since this is a profitable and growing area for the sports-betting industry, with an estimated esports sports betting market size between 200 and 300 million US dollars ( EsportsBettingTop, 2022 ). Additionally, studies that focused on horse racing were excluded from this review but could be examined in future studies. Strengths of the current review include its focus on recent sports-betting articles, which provides a wide-ranging review of the current sports-betting literature among different countries. Furthermore, the specificity of this study can be considered a strength as the findings of this review may be particularly helpful in explaining how the general population of sports bettors are affected by this activity. The findings of this review also provide a valuable overview of sports-betting behaviors internationally. Moreover, our review includes a detailed summary about the current sports-betting regulations around the world, offering a framework within which interpretation of research results from different jurisdictions may be considered for promoting healthy gambling behaviors.

Conclusions

This study examined differences in regulations, behaviors, and psychosocial problems related to sports betting. Among the included articles in this review, existing data suggest that cultural differences in sports betting may not differ greatly between Eastern and Western countries, with the biggest difference being a stronger emphasis of research on marketing and promotion of sports betting in specific Western countries (i.e., United Kingdom and Australia). Similarly, there were few differences between countries in types of psychosocial problems related to sports betting. Regulatory guidelines for sports betting had more prominent differences between countries as Eastern countries tended to be more restrictive in their sports-betting guidelines. As sports-betting restrictions varied by country, future cross-cultural research could explore how different elements of sports-betting regulations are related to problem gambling. If risk factors differ by country, then treatment for sports-betting-related problems may vary in focus for different countries and cultures.

Funding sources

This study was supported by a grant for pre-doctoral students (R.E., T.X.; Mentor: S.W.K) focused on sports wagering research, that was provided by the International Center for Responsible Gaming. Support for S.W.K. was provided by Kindbridge Research Institute. M.N.P. was supported through the Connecticut Council on Problem Gambling. The funding agencies did not provide input or comment on the content of the manuscript, and the content of the manuscript reflects the contributions and thoughts of the authors and does not necessarily reflect the views of the funding agencies.

Authors’ contribution

Drafting the article: RE and TX; Revising it critically for important intellectual content: MNP, SWK, BA; Supervision of draft: SWK and BA; and Final approval of the version to be published: BA, MNP, and SWK.

Conflict of interest

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and publication of this article. Marc N. Potenza is an Associate Editor of the Journal of Behavioral Addictions.

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It’s Easy (and Legal) to Bet on Sports. Do Young Adults Know the Risks?

Americans wagered $13 billion on sports in 2019. With sports betting now legal in nearly half the states, experts fear the addiction danger is not being adequately addressed.

Saul Malek at his family’s home in Houston. “Making these bets online, it didn’t seem like real money,” he said of his addiction to sports betting. “I didn’t even really know what the value of money was.” Credit... Callaghan O'Hare for The New York Times

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By Marie Fazio

• April 1, 2021

Saul Malek grew up surrounded by sports.

He played soccer and Little League, and shot hoops at the neighborhood court. He was obsessed with the Houston Astros. When they won, he was ecstatic. Once when they lost, he whipped a belt at a wall so hard he chipped the paint.

Mr. Malek joined a fantasy baseball league while in middle school. In college, an acquaintance connected him with a bookie. Winning his first bet — $10 that the Royals would beat the Blue Jays — made him feel “like a big shot,” he said.

But he soon found that he needed “nonstop action.” He would find an online sports book and maybe win enough to pay a former bookie back. More often, though, he’d lose. Then he would block the bookie’s number, find a new sports book and repeat.

His parents bailed him out for hundreds of dollars several times, but he didn’t seek help until he “felt physically uncomfortable” one night after not placing a bet in time. He realized he didn’t have any close relationships left.

Mr. Malek, now 23 and living in Houston, said he had never considered that sports betting could escalate to an addiction that would lead him to lie, cheat and manipulate people for money. And yet he has come to have plenty of company as policy shifts and technological advances have made it easier than ever to wager money on sports.

Analysts and recovery advocates worry that efforts to research the long-term implications of legal sports betting and warn participants about the risks for addiction are falling short, particularly for people in their late teens and early 20s who are most vulnerable.

“We’re now in a phase where the nation has an appetite for sports betting,” said Dr. Timothy Fong, a professor of psychiatry with specialty in addiction at the University of California, Los Angeles. “It’s created this new form of entertainment that society has approved, but that form of entertainment does have a potential for addiction.”

Long restricted to Nevada, sports betting expanded rapidly after the Supreme Court overturned federal prohibitions against it in 2018. It is now legal in 21 states and Washington, D.C. In many states, people can legally and conveniently wager money using their smartphones, betting on point spreads or results, or placing so-called proposition bets on events like the coin toss or which color of Gatorade will be dumped on the winning coach.

Americans wagered $13 billion on sports with legal operators in 2019, according to the American Gaming Association , the industry’s trade group, with popular events like the Super Bowl whipping bettors into a frenzy. The Gaming Association expects 47 million Americans to place bets on the N.C.A.A. “March Madness” basketball tournaments , which reach a climax with the Final Four stage for the women on Friday and the men on Saturday.

Most adults who bet on sports do so without major negative consequences. But about 1 percent of American adults have a gambling disorder, in which the core symptom is continuing to gamble despite harmful consequences, said Dr. Fong, who is a director of the Gambling Studies Program at U.C.L.A.

A vast majority of those with a serious gambling problem never seek or gain access to treatment, he said.

Studies have shown that sports bettors are typically male, under 35, single, educated and employed or preparing for a career. According to a new survey commissioned by the National Council on Problem Gambling, sports bettors showed significantly higher levels of problematic gambling than other gamblers. The risk of addiction is higher for young adults — specifically sports bettors — than for those of any other age, the survey found.

According to CollegeGambling.org , a subgroup of the International Center for Responsible Gaming, 6 percent of college students in the United States have a serious gambling problem that can lead to psychological difficulties, unmanageable debt and failing grades.

Young adults are at particular risk for developing a gambling problem, especially if there is a family history of gambling or if they are introduced to it at a young age, Dr. Fong said. The increased accessibility of online gambling may accelerate the development of problems, he said — a phenomenon known as telescoping .

As sports betting has grown — household names like FanDuel and DraftKings now offer legal avenues — the need for recovery programs and dedicated treatment facilities has quickly outpaced their availability, recovery experts said. Rick Benson, the founder of the Algamus Gambling Recovery Center in Arizona, said the number of young adults who have sought treatment for gambling problems has more than doubled in the past two years.

Sex, drugs and alcohol are commonly covered in school and in the coming-of-age conversations that parents have with their children, but discussions about the consequences of gambling are rare, former gamblers and experts said. This can lead young people to underestimate the addictive nature of sports betting and other forms of gambling. Warnings, often in small fonts, that caution visitors to online sports books and gambling websites about the risks of addiction are easily overlooked.

“You can do it 24/7 from right on your phone,” said one recovered gambling addict, a 38-year-old man who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was about to embark on a job search.

“It’s really, really dangerous,” he said, noting he had contacted a few websites during his recovery and asked to be blocked, but they had allowed him to reopen his accounts after he relapsed.

Over the last 30 years in the United States, there has been a shift in the cultural perception of gambling, said Keith Whyte, director of the National Council on Problem Gambling, a research and advocacy group. Once viewed as a vice, sports betting in particular has become more widely accepted as a form of entertainment and as a new source of tax revenue for the states that have legalized it, he said.

“It’s now become a positive element of state, financial or economic policy. But it’s also addictive, and therein lies the rub,” said Mr. Whyte, whose organization is neutral on the legalization of gambling. “It’s the only addictive service or product where a state government is so heavily involved.”

But when people become addicted, the blame often falls on the individual rather than on an industry whose advertising and marketing, including bonuses and risk-free trials, are targeted to young men.

More than half of adults surveyed by the National Council on Problem Gambling attributed gambling problems “at least in part to moral weakness or lack of willpower,” and fewer than half said they believed a medical or a genetic condition played a role. Half of those surveyed said “people with a gambling problem are to blame for their problems.”

“It’s still seen as a moral failing rather than a medical disorder,” Mr. Whyte said. “Americans have made that connection with drugs and alcohol, but they haven’t made that connection yet for gambling.”

According to the American Gaming Association , $4.4 billion was wagered with legal sports books across the country in January, the sixth consecutive month in which a “national handle record” was broken. The association found that legal U.S. operators took in nearly $908.9 million in sports betting revenue from more than $13 billion in wagers in 2019, more than double the $430.7 million in revenue they collected in 2018.

The states that authorized gambling on sports as a new source of revenue and jobs “are also the ones who are supposed to be protecting their citizens from the adverse effects they’re talking about,” Mr. Whyte said. “They’re supposed to be balancing the costs and benefits.”

Many young adults have embraced gambling and sports betting as new social traditions. There are March Madness brackets, poker nights and casino fund-raisers for fraternities and sororities.

“It’s just so accepted, so acceptable, it makes it just so easy to get involved with,” Mr. Malek said. “It’s advertised as a normal part of being, like, a 20-year-old guy: Make some money, make some sports bets, make your fantasy team — whatever. It’s just cool.”

Mr. Malek said his struggle with addiction motivated him to pursue a master’s degree in clinical mental health counseling at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. He discusses his addiction openly with the hope that doing so will sound an alarm about how quickly and easily dabbling in sports betting can lead to disaster.

He recalled the older participants in the 12-step program he completed sharing stories of reading the newspaper to find out the scores of games from the night before, and calling their bookies on the phone.

“I think that the industry of sports betting is definitely evolving, which is scary for the public,” Mr. Malek said. “You’re always clicks away from it anytime you want it. It’s out there 24/7. I don’t think that people are aware of how devastating the consequences of this will be.”

Marie Fazio is a general assignment reporter on the Express desk and a member of the 2020-2021 New York Times Fellowship class. More about Marie Fazio

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Should sports betting be legal?

• should sports betting be legal?

*Updated 2023

In 2018, the supreme court reversed a more-than-three-decades-old federal ban on sports betting, enabling each state to decide whether to allow bets to be placed on professional baseball, basketball, football, and hockey, among other sports games. previously, sports betting had been prohibited nationwide, except in four states – delaware, nevada, montana and oregon. a vast majority of the american people supported the legalization of sports betting. therefore, this change in the federal government’s approach to the subject is not surprising. since then, in just five years, sports betting, which is currently legal in more than 30 states , has turned into a us$13.7 billion industry . however, the recent suspension of pro-football players for violating the nfl’s gambling policy shows that this decision and its benefits may not be so clear-cut., here are three reasons why the legalization of sports betting is positive and three more explaining why its negative:, in support of legalized sports betting.

It was already a thriving industry

Even before the Supreme Court’s decision, the betting industry blossomed regardless of its legality. Illegal sports betting was already a multi-billion-dollar industry (as of 2018, some estimates were as high as  $150 billion ); anyone who wanted to place a bet could do so easily online or through local office pools and offshore books. Since the Supreme Court decision,  states have been more inclined  to consider or pass legislation to legalize sports betting, thus allowing people to continue betting but in a regulated and fairer environment. This has prevented betters from having to deal with questionable bookies. Moreover, betting addicts now have fewer stigmas, which may make it easier for them to seek help.

It`s the economy, stupid

Sports betting is good for the economy. Legalizing sports betting has obviously created huge state tax revenues. More importantly, it has created more tourism to states where betting is legal and jobs (a potential for 100,000 new jobs ), including new roles, content and shows on mainstream sports channels like ESPN. Sources say that overall state tax revenues from sports gambling have jumped from $38 million (2018) to $126 million (2019) to more than $1 billion (2022).

Sports betting won’t corrupt the leagues

Louis Brandeis, an American lawyer and Associate Justice on the US Supreme Court, once said: “Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman…” Meaning, legalized sports betting will actually make it harder to fix games. This is because once legalized, sports betting – and advertisements promoting it – will be monitored , and any irregular activity will be easily detected. It is easier to fix games in an unmonitored environment, in which money flows under the radar. Proof of such successful monitoring is the recent suspension of 5 NFL players who were caught violating the league’s gambling policy. Therefore, the common belief that legalizing sports betting will corrupt sports is wrong.

Against Legalized Sports Betting

The house always wins

Many of those who argued for the legalization of sports betting claimed that it’s more about skills than luck. They said that much like stock trading, it’s about wittingly identifying opportunities and acting on them. But this assertion is wrong. The human element has a huge impact on sports; often, the unexpected happens, which can affect everyone from team owners down to the last player. Even where skill may improve the odds of winning, people who bet on sports may not always possess the deep understanding of statistics required to win. People usually bet on sports based on a hunch, not knowledge. Sports betting is not just about skills and it’s not like stock trading; it’s gambling, and as in gambling, the house tends to always win.

Legalizing sports betting won’t mitigate illegal betting or related problems  

The main reason people bet with bookies is not the lack of alternatives but availability and, most importantly, the generous line of credit that bookies offer. Bettors don’t need to deposit money to bet with bookies, which makes it easier for them to bet with money they don’t have. This is also the main reason wagers get into troubling debt situations. Moreover, bookies will offer better margins and betting rates for their customers since they won’t pay taxes. Thus, legalizing sports betting may not fully eliminate illegal betting and the  problems that accompany it . Moreover, current opportunities to gamble on sports have now increased around the US, and with the opportunity so has technology enabling one-click betting at home. Therefore, the ease of access to betting (i.e., apps) has increased for gamblers, yet  services to help gambling addicts  have not risen in parallel.

It will change the nature of American sports

Legalizing gambling in sports may gradually change American sports. As with everything that involves money, the sports industry is becoming even more commercialized than before. In a slow but consistent process, a focus of American sports has become betting rather than the game itself. Companies are now spending tens (if not hundreds) of millions of ad dollars promoting some form of gambling (in 2021, FanDuel reportedly spent $1 billion on advertising), and the American Gaming Association noted a 40% year-over-year increase in bets just on the 2022 NFL season alone. Such numbers show that gambling companies and their ads have managed to co-opt professional sports and have made them synonymous with gambling. Anyone who has ever gambled on a sporting event knows that once you place a bet, the focus of the game suddenly becomes money, not the game itself. And that’s not what sports are about.

The Bottom Line: The Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the federal ban on sports betting is reasonable, especially since it is already happening to a large extent, and states deserve to monetarily benefit from it. On the other hand, legalizing betting won’t eliminate illegal betting and will negatively change the nature of sporting events. Do you support the legalization of sports betting? Would you place a bet on your favorite team?

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Essay on Sports: 100+ Topics and Examples

How to Write an Essay on Sports

Various sports, like basketball, tennis, and soccer, are popular among young and older generations worldwide. In addition to the fact that playing sports brings mental and physical health in shape, it also projects sportsmen and women's leadership skills. These role models give sports fans reasons to keep rooting for their favorite players and fuel young athletes' motivation to keep practicing and perfecting themselves in various youth sports.

If you are interested in professional sports or the career development of professional athletes, we encourage you to write a college essay on sports.

Choosing a relevant topic when writing an essay on sports requires deep knowledge of a specific sports industry and its representatives.

• Choose a topic of your interest. Usually, tasks we are genuinely curious about require equal mental stimulation but less tension and stress. For instance, you could choose the topic of the influence of physical fitness on mental health in case you are interested in health science.
• Look for relevant resources to provide trustworthy and valuable information regarding the shortlist of sports essay topics. For example, you could check out famous journals that prioritize writing about physical activity and sports cultures, such as the British Journal of Sports Medicine or the Journal of Human Sport and Exercise.
• After gathering relevant data, list the major issues you will write about in the sports essay. For instance, if you'd rather concentrate on the features your favorite athlete acquires, we suggest you write on persuasive sports essay topics. Highlight the major events in the sports career of chosen male or female athletes that helped them go pro.
• Construct an essay outline highlighting the major points you will touch down throughout your essay. This will loosen the essay writing process and will save some time for you as well.
• As you point out the major issue of reflection in the thesis statement part of your introductory paragraph, proceed with the body paragraphs of arguments supporting your perspective regarding the statement.

Keep reading to find a variety of essay topics like an essay on sports day in English, as well as specified issues relating to sports competitions, such as an essay on concussions in sports, etc.

Essay Topics on Sports

College students who are interested in doing and writing about sports can find many essay topics listed below on sports ranging from Olympic games to performance-enhancing drugs, sports nutrition to sports injuries, and so on.

Persuasive Essay Topics on Sports

• Cross-country skiing is the most dangerous winter sport.
• American universities should pay college athletes
• Ice-Skating is the most aesthetically pleasing sport.
• Soccer is one of the most played college sports in the US.
• Alcohol consumption should be prohibited during the Olympic games.
• More awareness should be raised about racist team players in all kinds of sports.
• FIFA's primary mission is to promote intercultural relations.
• We should reconsider the age range of baseball players.
• There is a link between team sports and math.
• Dealing with Medicine is the most disputable issue of the Olympic Games.
• Sports culture in the US is much higher than in East European countries.
• Cricket should be included in the Summer Olympics.
• The UEFA Championship promotes youth sports.
• The New Orleans Saints as a revolutionary NFL team.
• Everyone should be developed at least in one sport.
• Fitness obsession is a benefit for physical health.
• Sports nutrition is more important than physical activity.
• Dancing is one of the best confidence boosters.
• The rise of Charlotte Horne's value because of MJ.
• International teams in football attract a wide range of audience.

Feel free to ask to ' write me an essay ' on a wide range of persuasive essay topics on sports. Our writers are always at your service to help you achieve academic success.

Argumentative Essay Topics on Sports

• Should major sports events be taken in politically dangerous zones?
• Sports programs should be accessible through all types of TV channel packages.
• Transgender athletes should have the freedom to choose their own pronouns.
• Current sports organizations are corrupt.
• Athletic training should be psychological too.
• Soccer is number one of the most popular sports around the US.
• The most quality games were played at the World Cup 2022.
• School athletics should be paid for.
• American football is not popular around the world.
• Ice hockey is the most dangerous of winter sports.
• Sporting events are mostly watched during work days.
• Physical exercise is as important as mental through athletic development.
• Sports psychology: implementation of a mental training course for student-athletes.
• Many current sports organizations degrade women's sports.
• Sports history: development of baseball around the USA.
• Playing sports should be obligatory for school children.
• Professional athletes should be paid more in Western European countries.
• Toxic masculinity ruins the success of team sports.
• Cheerleading should be part of the Olympic games.
• Are video games sports?

Simply ask to do my paper on various argumentative essay topics on sports and receive the high-quality finished product in the nick of time.

Essay on Sports and Games in School

• Should sports be made compulsory in schools?
• The impact of promoting Air Jordans on developing a winner's mindset in school children.
• The importance of having sports clubs in schools.
• Should school sports participation be an excuse to miss classes?
• Governments should encourage more youngsters to play school sports.
• Is sports a solution to the current mental health crisis in school children?
• Should governments promote more opportunities for high schoolers to pursue aesthetically pleasing sports?
• Which sport is most popular among youngsters around the US?
• Should prospective basketball players be rejected due to height measures in school basketball teams?
• The importance of physical therapy in high school athletes.
• Does sport teach the importance of teamwork?
• Should parents encourage students to play sports?
• Can the gym be a substitute for physical fitness?
• Do sports conflict with academic learning?
• Sports medicine application to mental exhaustion in school athletes.
• Does sport help students develop leadership skills?
• Is playing chess stimulating analytical thinking?
• Importance of media coverage of sports events.
• The pressure of performance in sports
• The chances of school students making it into the national basketball team.

Argumentative Essay on Gender Inequality in Sports

Check out some of the best sports essay topics if you are willing to write an argumentative essay on gender inequality in sports:

• Why are female athletes paid less than their male counterparts in most sports?
• Male athletes have more chances of going pro in basketball than women.
• Club sports exclude some players based on gender.
• Male and female athletes are equally resilient to sports injuries.
• Soccer and Ice hockey are male-dominated sports.
• The marketing strategies of UCR's Women's Basketball are inefficient.
• Height should not be a decisive factor for either men's or women's basketball.
• Gender prejudices discriminate against myriads of potentially successful athletes in various sports.
• National teams should be completed with males as well as females.
• Women's sports are not valued as much as Men's sports.
• Sports medicine is actively used by female athletes under pressure to enhance performance.
• The number of female athletes participating in the Olympic games should increase.
• Fewer female students choose to play sports after graduating from high school compared to the number of male students.
• Negative psychological aspects of post-traumatic stress disorder in athletes.
• More female students should be encouraged to play sports while performing their academic duties.
• Comparatively, more men make it to major league baseball than women.
• Performance-enhancing drugs adversely affect growing healthy muscle groups.
• Ancient sports like the ancient Greek Olympics have nothing in common with modern Olympic games.
• Lack of women professional football players in America.
• Women's soccer is less promoted by European high schools than Men's.

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Essay on Benefits of Games and Sports

Playing professional sports brings about its advantages. Consider writing an essay on benefits of games and sports and choose from a wide variety of topics below:

• Benefits of Playing Sports: Improved concentration
• Benefits of Playing Sports: Increased dopamine and serotonin level
• Benefits of Playing Sports: Improved mood
• Benefits of Playing Sports: Improved sleeping habits
• Benefits of Playing Sports: Reduced stress and depression
• Benefits of Playing Sports: Boosted Self-confidence
• Benefits of Playing Sports: Development of leadership traits
• Benefits of Playing Sports: Improved mental health
• Benefits of Playing Sports: Healthy sleeping habits
• Benefits of Playing Sports: Maintaining healthy body weight
• Benefits of Playing Sports: Improved academic performance in school children
• Benefits of Playing Sports: Better scholastic outcomes
• Benefits of Playing Sports: Active blood circulation
• Benefits of Playing Sports: Developing school athletes as better team players
• Benefits of Playing Sports: Enhanced analytic thinking
• Benefits of Playing Sports: Effective multitasking
• Benefits of Playing Sports: Improved mental and physical health.
• Benefits of Playing Sports: Opportunity to develop a career outside the home nation.
• Benefits of Playing Sports: Better communication skills.
• Benefits of Playing Sports: Smart time management.

Essay on My Favorite Sports Person

Famous sports figures often inspire school students. Take a look at the list of topics to write an essay on my favourite sports person:

• Roger Federer: my favorite tennis player
• Tiger Woods: the best golfer in the US
• Cristiano Ronaldo: The GOAT of GOATs.
• Rafael Nadal: the most prominent tennis player in Spain
• Kevin Durant: the rising star of the NBA
• Lebron James: the best basketball player in the modern NBA
• Usain Bolt: greatest sprinter of all time
• Alexi Lalas: most beloved American soccer player
• Michael Schumacher: seven-time World Champion
• Frank Thomas: greatest baseball player
• Shaun White: the best American snowboarder
• Jennie Finch: most honorable softball player in America
• Dirk Nowitzki: the guy who beat Lebron James.
• Kevin Garnett: most emotional and dedicated in NBA
• Ray Bourque: the best of hockey players
• Billie Jean King: Honor for women tennis players
• Bill Elliot: Nascar's most popular driver
• Mark Messier: greatest leader in hockey history
• Khvicha Kvaratskhelia: Rising star of European football
• Maradona: most prominent soccer player of all time

Feel free to write an essay on sports and games for 10th class from the above topics.

Persuasive Essay on Sports Betting

If you decide to write a persuasive essay on sports betting, take some inspiration from the topics below:

• Beginners should be taught how to place a bet.
• Money-line betting is addictive
• Sports betting should be prohibited under the 18
• Betting on NFL wins totals
• Scandal and controversy in sports are always connected to betting
• Game theory has a direct relation to gambling
• Online casinos should be banned
• Math is used in gambling to assess the risks of winning
• Sports bettors are great analysts
• Mobile betting is a better option than desktop
• Sportsbooks are the main guide to learning sports betting
• Gambling is more entertaining than addictive
• The FIFA World Cup has the biggest betting volume
• The Super Bowl makes up half of all sports bets summed up
• Kentucky Derby is one of the highest-rated betting events in horse racing
• The Grand National horse racing attracts the highest sports bettings around the UK
• Las Vegas is the best gambling destination in the world
• Singapore has one of the strictest gambling rules in the world
• Monte Carlo is the classiest gambling point
• Aruba is the Vegas of the Caribbean

Common App Essay on Sports

You can easily craft top-notch essays related to sports in your college application. Take some of the examples from the topics listed below, and do not hesitate to write a common app essay on sports.

• Learning to take constructive criticism as a soccer player
• Sports is the greatest teacher of teamwork
• Keeping a winner mindset through the challenges of chess
• How I Learned to be a leader through my college sports experience
• Basketball taught me the value of my own contribution to the team's success
• How Failures in soccer championships boosted my self-confidence
• The constant practice resulted in major success: how sport taught me the value of invested work
• How I learned to appreciate my body through the aesthetics of ice skating
• Hip-Hop dancing is the best teacher of networking with people of multicultural origins
• Winning a national tournament in swimming after numerous defeats
• Overcoming a sports injury and going back to a fresh start taught me resilience
• Being a part of the basketball team helped me better perceive my athletic abilities
• Coming from a family of immigrants, my soccer team helped me develop a sense of belonging on American land
• Being a high school student and an athlete led me to better time management
• Baseball player enhanced my concentration skills; within me
• Getting in touch with professional sports persons and mentors led me to personal growth
• Learning from mistakes and using defeat for my own benefit is what playing ice hockey taught me
• Running on the track made me become mentally sharp
• I learned how to lead the game through soccer
• Playing sports led me to broaden my network of professionals

Sample College Essay on Sports

The winning mindset plays a major role in helping athletes develop to the best of their potential. The profound legend of modern-day basketball, Michael Jordan is one of those rare athlete leaders that set an example for millions of college basketball players in and out of the USA on mastering his mind and shaping himself through tough discipline. Therefore, if you are interested in sports psychology, you could pick a related topic and represent an athlete or specific sports teams that similarly show off psychological discipline through their performance that later results in their success.

We have prepared a sample essay on sports below. Examine it carefully to understand a sports research paper format better!

Final Words

We are hoping that not only have you gained some ideas about essay topics on sports, but you are also leaving this article with the motivation to keep working despite any rejections or failures that come along the way.

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Research on Sports Betting

Introduction.

Individuals now have access to a greater choice of online gambling markets and athletic events than ever before, thanks to technology improvements and shifting consumer behavior. The accessibility of smartphone devices has improved real-time sports betting. As a result, sports betting has grown in popularity throughout America and the rest of the world. The purpose of this research paper is to discuss what are people’s views and opinions about online sports betting? What factors contribute to the rise in online sports betting? This is an intriguing issue to examine because the majority of people who participate in sports betting do it for the sake of amusement. While watching live sports is entertaining, the intensity and excitement may be amplified when money is on the line. Sports betting may be an enjoyable pastime and past time as long as you gamble for pleasure and only wager amounts that you are comfortable losing. Sports betting provides a lot of fun for a fraction of the cost of other hobbies and pastimes.

I researched articles on google scholar, selected them based on the year of publication and review them for main themes which are people’s views and opinions about online sports betting and factors that contribute to the rise in online sports betting. According to the most organization’s survey, which was backed up by a 2017 report, the rise in online betting is due to a variety of factors, including joblessness, intense betting advertising, addiction, skills and luck, smartphone and internet availability, and advancements in online betting that make it easy and simple.

a. Collect data using survey of online bettors

Only a small percentage of individuals ever win the lottery. The majority of people lose their money, while the majority of people make a pittance. According to Geopoll, a mobile-based research organization, adolescents are the ones that bet the most. Sports betting has also become one of the continent’s most popular forms of gambling. The trend is rising, according to a poll performed by the university in April. According to Geopoll, gaming has grown in popularity not only in Europe but across the world. The business is expected to generate Sh63.5 trillion in circulation income by 2022, according to the report (Hamari, 2021).

According to most researchers the transition from Betting at a Bookmaker’s Shop to Online Betting led to the increased number of people betting online. This is because of convenience and privacy. Many of the participants stated how they first started betting in a high street bookmaker’s store, then moved on to internet gambling when it became more popular. In 2020, legal sports betting became accessible in five states and Washington, D.C., increasing the total number of sports betting states to 21, just as the Covid-19 outbreak prompted a surge in internet gambling of all kinds as casinos shuttered and Americans dug down in their homes Omanchi, & Okpamen, 2018). An expansion in the sum of online bookmakers, welcome incentives and other inducements given by online workers, and the ease of longing in online betting websites were all causes that drove sports bettors to wager online. Everyone in the study group used a smartphone to place sports bets as their preferred way of wagering. People opted to place bets online because it provided a cash-out facility, which was not available at high-street bookmakers, according to the study.

b. Survey study

Accessibility of Betting via a Smartphone

Across all age groups, it’s worth noting that about half of low-income gambling customers are between the ages of 18 and 25. According to another 2017 survey conducted by bankmycell, one of the things perpetuating gambling is the increasing penetration of information technology, aided by mobile phones. Aside from joblessness, one of the things perpetuating gambling is the increasing penetration of information technology, aided by mobile phones. According to bankmycell, with mobile devices that have Internet connectivity, gamers do not require desktop computers to gamble, providing them plenty of time to wager even in the comfort of their own homes. According to the Communications Authority’s figures released this year, there are 6.378 billion smartphone users in the globe today, accounting for 80.63 percent of the worldwide population (Skogman, 2015). In all, 7.101 billion people, or 89.76 percent of the world’s population, own a smart or feature phone. The percentage of people who own a mobile phone has surpassed 100%, and the majority of these people are young.

https://cdn.shortpixel.ai/spai/ret_img/https://www.bankmycell.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/global_smartphone_penetration_wordwide-2016-2020.webp

One of the main themes was the ease with which in-play sports betting could be done on cellphones. In most locations and situations, sports bettors today have rapid access to sports betting websites. The findings imply that smartphone betting provides instant access to gambling, corroborating prior study that internet gambling is simple to access via mobile devices. It has previously been proposed that greater access to online betting websites and the ease with which online platforms may be used may hasten the development of maladaptive learnt habits, such as problem gambling. Sports bettors in the current sample preferred to place bets on phones, which matches prior study that found that 84.4 percent of sports bettors prefer to put bets on a remote device rather than visiting to a betting shop (Hamari, 2021). Furthermore, addicted gamblers were more likely to choose to utilize a mobile device, according to the same study. This is because:

a. Placing a Bet is Simple

When compared to other ways, several resechers concluded on how simple it is to place a bet using a tablet or a smartphone than using a high-street bookmakers or a laptop. Others claim that people wager using their cell phone since it saves them time.

There were additional applications identified that were accessible on cellphones and aided users with bet placing, in addition to gambling apps. Flash Scores and Odds Checker is a service that allows sports bettors to keep track of live match updates. As a result, sports bettors may easily compare odds from various online bookies. According to rush, one participant described how using his smartphone made it easier to compare different rewards across several gambling sites.

b. Possibility of Betting Anywhere

As previously said, making bets on a smartphone was the most preferred manner of doing so. Some attendees talked about how they could now use gambling applications from anywhere, at any time, and they didn’t have to rely on a laptop or PC to place a wager. As a result, one of the primary benefits of using a smartphone was the location freedom it provided. Some attendees talked about how they used their iPhones to place bets in multiple places (Skogman, 2015). Betting sites that were often cited were the player’s home, the bar, friends’ homes, and work. Smart phones are also useful for checking the progress of one’s bets from anywhere.

Joblessness/Unemployment

According to the organization’s survey, which was backed up by a 2017 report, the rise in online betting is due to a variety of factors, including joblessness (Skogman, 2015). The survey show that unemployment has led people to trying out their luck in gambling. it show that some people may consider themselves to be very lucky, others may have a lot of skill that call themselves professional gamblers helping other analyze game before placing them online on the betting websites. However, some people think that sports betting is a combination of both luck and skill. If you’re an outsider, you may think that sports betting is about luck alone. Unfortunately, this is not the case at all. Some very successful people don’t just rely on luck. They know that sports betting is a lot more complex than this.

To be successful in the sports betting world, however, you need to have skill as well as luck. You cannot determine the outcome of a game merely due to skill. Luck also plays a part. After you have chosen the sport in question, you will need to take a look at the history of those who are on the field. Their history can help you to determine how well they are likely to perform. When you understand this, your ability to win can improve.

Themes that emerged from the study were grouped into two general categories: 1. Accessibility of Betting via a Smartphone 2. Joblessness

According to the survey study and data collected the finding it concluded that addiction to gambling is a lot like addiction to drugs or alcohol. This is because even with the pandemic lockdown people still find their way to bet. And they did that by placing their bets online. Since most casinos were closed up. Because alcohol is already such a significant part of the athletic experience, the high level of parallelism between addiction to alcohol and gambling is particularly intriguing. Despite being a long-standing feature of before tailgating, beer stalls are now commonplace at professional sporting games and are steadily penetrating collegiate athletic venues. As previously said, apprehension over the extent to which sports gambling is integrated into the athletic experience may prevent it from obtaining the same level of ubiquity as alcohol. Lack of jobs, has also led to the growth fuel obsession with gambling. According to the survey gambling is usually portrayed in advertising as thrilling, glamorous, and skilled, with easy money and social benefits. Gambling advertisements tend to have a particularly strong impact on young people and problem gamblers. Bonuses for sports betting tend to boost Internet gambling among problem gamblers in particular.

Sports betting is still a contentious issue, with the advantages and disadvantages of legalizing needing to be properly weighed. It does, however, have an unmistakably favorable economic impact on a state’s economy. More money is being traded between parties, and residents from other states may be able to contribute to gaming profits. Furthermore, mobile sports betting appears to be the most obvious predictor of financial success. According to many respondents in the studies, sports gambling is not regarded unethical. But it is a game of luck, easy to access and a chance for income many people don’t get elsewhere. It is because of luck and skills that people are so more involved in betting while there are professional gamblers others are trying out there luck. Joblessness is also a key factor to the rise of online betting. Gambling addiction was also compared to alcohol and drug addiction by respondents. Problem gambling has a close link to many alcohol and drug issues, according to study. Because of the intimate relationship between the two, they are perceived in a similar way. This fact supports the notion that betting has become socially acceptable. Betting has mixed reviews in terms of whether it was beneficial or harmful to society as a whole. According to the researchers, the majority of their respondents agreed that more responsible betting measures were needed, but it was unclear who would bear the cost of action: the sports betting providers, health organizations, or state governments.

Macey, J., Abarbanel, B., & Hamari, J. (2021). What predicts sports betting? A study on consumption of video games, esports, gambling and demographic factors. New Media & Society, 23(6), 1481-1505.

Nienaber, M. B. (2016). The State of the Online Sport Betting Industry in South Africa. University of Johannesburg (South Africa).

Omanchi, S. A., & Okpamen, K. O. (2018). The Changing Patterns of Gambling in Benue State: The Case of Emerging Role of ICT (Information and Communications Technology) in Contemporary Makurdi Metropolis.  American Association of Science & Technology ,  5 (2), 30-35.

Skogman, V. (2015). A STRATEGIC ASSESSMENT OF THE ONLINE SPORTS BETTING INDUSTRY IN THE UNITED KINGDOM.

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Essay On Issues In Sport Betting And Gambling

Type of paper: Essay

Topic: Management , Sports , Ethics , World , Gambling , Athletes , Betting , Policy

Published: 11/27/2019

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Gambling is an act that is practiced in many parts of the world. The act is evident in almost all major economic and entertaining activities. Gambling has been an illegal act for quite some time. However, it is slowly getting accepted and even some governments have formulated regulatory policies to control the act.

Sports serve as a major revenue source for many countries. This has led to the increase in betting and gambling acts, which is majorly done by sports agents. Most of these sports agents break codes of ethics just to make sure they remain afloat in sports. The major role of sports agents is to discover and market new talent, who become their clients. They are supposed to represent their clients and look for opportunities for them to exhibit their skills. Some sports agents also add up as managers of the sports men and women. For all these, they get to keep a certain percentage of whatever pay that the athlete earns. This has led to increased chances of gambling as the agents want to get the larger share of the pay, as well as get many deals to their credits.

The issue of gambling and betting among the agents has got its benefits and harms. One benefit is that the athlete has more time to concentrate on other important things such as exercising and practice, since there is someone else taking care of other relatively important things. Following their experience in the sporting field, an agent may be in a better position to advice their client on which team to join, what pay to ask for and most importantly, what contract to take or leave.

Having agents who bet and gamble for their clients may be harmful in that it may ruin the reputations o their clients. More to that, agents may mislead their clients so as to favor another client who is paying them better. Following the success of the athletes and sportsmen, chances that small mistakes from the side of the agent may ruin their reputation in the sporting world.

This can be controlled by the sports management setting stringent rules and policies to control gambling and betting. Since gambling is more of a moral vice, it should be completely banned from the society. This would promote fair play and chances or all players. Hefty fines and severe punishments could serve as a big solution to this vice. The sports management could also form associations to protect athletes and sports people from unscrupulous agents.

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The legalization of sports gambling in the US was a mistake

The Toronto Raptors’ Jontay Porter was just banned for life for violating betting rules. There will be much more of this to come

O n Wednesday, the NBA announced that Jontay Porter, a center for the Toronto Raptors, was banned from the league for life. An investigation found that the bench player disclosed confidential information to gamblers, exited a match early to influence an “over/under” wager on his stat line, and bet on games using a friend’s account.

Porter’s actions shouldn’t be trivialized. Sport is an important part of our culture – and fair competition and the integrity of results are essential to it. But the real threat to sports and the livelihoods of billions of fans lies with the leagues, special interests and media outlets integrating addictive gambling with the games we love. The profit-seeking corporate encouragement of this behavior needs to be countered with strict federal regulation before an emerging public health crisis gets even worse.

In the 2010s, the Democratic governor, Phil Murphy, and the state of New Jersey challenged the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (Paspa), which prohibited new state-sanctioned sports gambling. Legal books were limited to a few grandfathered states, like Nevada. At the time, the scope of illegal sports gambling was unclear, with some putting the number at $50bn .

The US supreme court took on the case in 2018, ruling that Paspa was unconstitutional. Today, 38 states and the District of Columbia have made sports betting legal, with legislation pending in other areas. The dream of figures like the NBA’s Adam Silver, who immediately after becoming commissioner in 2014 published a New York Times op-ed advocating legalization, was fulfilled.

The early results have made billions for gambling companies, television networks, state governments, and players and owners alike. It’s been a nightmare, however, for millions of ordinary people.

When I bet on sports in high school, the process involved studying the Vegas lines in the Daily News and placing small bets with a local bookie. By college, it meant navigating to an offshore gambling site, possibly converting some money to bitcoin, and placing a wager before the start of a match. Today, technology has changed things radically: we can seamlessly place bets on our addictive smartphones and we don’t just bet before the games, we can bet on the outcome of every play, with AI models generating odds in real time.

Sports betting apps store dozens of data points on every customer: they know what you like to bet on, when to send you push notifications, and what offers can draw you back in if you haven’t gambled in a while. Like any drug, gambling activates the brain’s reward system. But most street-level dopamine-peddlers don’t have access to the power of big data.

Nor do they have marketing departments. If you’ve watched a sports game, there’s no doubt you’ve seen advertisements from FanDuel, Draft Kings, BetMGM or any number of legal sportsbooks. They feature celebrities and athletes – people like Kevin Garnett, Jamie Foxx, Kevin Hart, Patton Oswalt and the entire Manning football dynasty – encouraging you to sign up and risk your wages. Podcasts at media networks like the Ringer are dedicated entirely to betting. ESPN, owned by the conservative Disney corporation, has even gone to the extreme of hosting its own sportsbook, ESPN BET.

The efforts are paying off. Last year, Americans legally wagered $120bn on sports, up 27.5% compared with 2022. And billions more are probably still bet illegally.

This sharp increase is a reminder that legalization does not just bring black markets into the light of day – it serves to radically expand markets. In addition to the social stigma that surrounded it, the barrier to entry for sports gambling used to be knowing a bookie and being willing to wager in cash. Then it became being tech-savvy enough to navigate sketchy offshore sites. Now it’s just being 18 years old and having a smartphone and a credit card.

It’s no surprise that young people are suffering the most from legalization. According to a St Bonaventure/Siena Research survey , 39% of men and 20% of women aged 18 to 49 years old bet on sporting events. Among young men, 38% say they’re betting more than they should, 19% have lied about the extent of their betting, and 18% have bet and lost money meant for meeting their financial obligations.

Gambling helplines have naturally been flooded. A recent 60 Minutes program notes that in the five years since New Jersey legalized sports gambling, calls to the state’s service has tripled, with the largest caller demographic being between 25 and 34.

Yet there seems to be no real constituency for tight federal regulation, much less prohibition. A libertarian-influenced Republican party is happy to support free markets, no matter their corrosive social effects.

Many progressives are also more wary of punitive states than the actions of powerful corporations. Legalized gambling gives them more taxes to spend without trying to take it from the pockets of big business or wealthy individuals. Never mind that the state is forced to absorb the externalities created by legalization and that the push has facilitated a redistribution of wealth from the poor to the rich.

Advances in artificial intelligence will only make online betting more addictive in the years to come, and no doubt this environment will create more Jontay Porters in the future. Ultimately, Americans won’t be able to take on the powerful forces corrupting our culture until we decide we want to live in a society that celebrates earning money, not winning it.

Bhaskar Sunkara is the president of the Nation, founding editor of Jacobin, and author of The Socialist Manifesto: The Case for Radical Politics in an Era of Extreme Inequalities

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