The Impact of Sports Betting

Fandul, America's number one sportsbook. Draft Kings, now I know this is a bull and all, but everyone gets a free back. These days, it feels like it's everywhere. Is it the Caesar Sportsbook app with Caesar's rewards for the more you play, the more stuff you earn, and they have fast payouts because Caesar is the man? Yes! Constant advertisements for sports betting. Let me guess. You're one of those underdog guys. Everyone loves an underdog. It's America's newest obsession. Over the course of the time that it takes you to listen to this episode, millions of dollars will be wagered on basketball, football, hockey, and more obscure sports, like ping pong and darts. But gambling in America is nothing new. Back in the colonial days, there was a lot of gambling, particularly on early lotteries. that were quite popular. And the risks posed by gambling go back just as far. Whenever it does finally come out as a problem, it can be a really big problem, which is why prevention is so important. When getting help, whenever you see the warning signs, instead of waiting until the mole hill has become a mountain. We've been talking about doing this episode for several months now. And even in that time, we've seen lots of change on the topic. Like more research coming out? A record high number of Americans believe that legalized sports betting is harmful to society. It's according to a new poll from Pew Research Center. We've seen multiple major sports leagues marred by scandals. He planned to leave the game early with a supposed injury. Using that information, members of the group placed more than $200,000 in wagers on his under statistics. They undermine the integrity of the sport as a whole. And if people break the most widely known rule in all of baseball, they should suffer the consequences. And we've even seen one politician saying, He wishes he hadn't legalized it in his state. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine is taking a turn on sports betting, saying he now regrets signing a lot of legalize it back in 2021. This week on the Crossroads Suncast, America's new pastime, sports betting. We are in a great social experiment right now. The risk of addiction for kids and adults and how it's changing what it means to be a sports fan. I'm Bryce Patterson. May 14th, 2018. States and gaming companies can now legally allow betting on sports. That's because today the Supreme Court overturned a federal ban on sports betting, calling it unconstitutional. The landmark ruling that day struck down a 1992 federal law, the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act. It barred betting on the three major sports, baseball, basketball, and football, and others in most states. In the 2018 decision, Samuel Alito Samuel Alito wrote in his majority opinion, quote, The legalization of sports gambling requires an important policy choice, but the choice is not ours to make. The ruling follows a common theme we've seen from this group of justices in the current high court, returning rights back to the states. In her dissenting opinion, the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote that parts of the existing law should remain. That includes provisions for private parties and betting schemes. Ginsburg said, the Supreme Court usually preserves what it can in laws.

She said in this case, instead of using a scalpel to trim the statute, her colleagues used an axe. The Supreme Court faced some major opposition at the time of the decision. All four major U.S. sports leagues and the NCAA were opposed to overturning the law. So was the Trump administration. Now, direct sponsorship deals with various sports books and the top leagues are worth billions of dollars. Experts say, no matter how rich the leagues are, it's money that none of them will turn down, despite ethical concerns. Gambling in America dates back long before that 2018 Supreme Court decision. Executive Director of the Kentucky Council on Problem Gambling, Mike Stone, says we are currently in the third era of gambling in this country. The first? George Washington's Revolutionary War Army received funds from gambling participation. That first wave dies off, though. 16, 17, 1800s, where gambling was viewed as an ethical or moral. primarily moral, sinful activity and was railed against from the pulpit by preachers. And gambling kind of fell by the wayside for a little while, but then resurfaced in the 1800s, mid-1800s with the expansion west, you know, the romance of the riverboat gambler, and there were also a preponderance of lotteries. Then comes the third wave. with the landmark Supreme Court decision in 2018. We are seeing extreme amount of participation more than we've ever had before in American society. And we do not know where that is going to go. After that 2018 ruling, states race to legalize sports betting. Delaware was the first, less than a month after the Supreme Court gave them the power. Then came New Jersey, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, and many more. Just this fall, Missouri became the latest state in our region to legalize it, joining Kentucky, Illinois, and Tennessee. As of today, sports betting is legal in 39 states. So let's get to the stats. According to a Pew Research Center poll from earlier this year, 22% of adults say they've personally bet money on sports in the past year, up from 19% for years ago. And the poll shows, as it becomes more widespread, attitudes are changing. Four in ten US adults say sports betting being legal is a bad thing for society and sports. That total was about one-third in 2019. Here's where it starts to get really interesting. Young men are particularly likely to have an unfavorable view of sports betting's social impact. Pew Research data shows about half of men under age 30 now say it's a bad thing for society. more than double the report from 2022. But at the same time, young men are more likely than older adults to bet on sports. You've already heard from Mike Stone with the Kentucky Council and Problem Gambling. That group works on research, education, and prevention, and works closely with the 1-800 gambler hotline. The Pew Research backs up what he's seeing in Kentucky. We're seeing 75 to 80% of the calls are for mail, and probably 60 to 70% of those

fall within the age groups of 18 to 34. So we're seeing much more of younger. general demographic and much more skewed towards male participation. Stone emphasizes his group tackles all types of gambling addiction, the casino, the lottery, horse racing, but it's hard to overstate how significantly sports betting has changed the landscape of gambling addiction in general. The proof is in the statistics, the number of calls to the gambling hotline in the month after sports betting was legalized in Kentucky. So we saw that the monthly... that the contacts quadrupled and the reported service is doubled. And the monthly totals have remained consistent at these higher levels. In 2022, the year before sports betting was legalized in Kentucky, the gambler's hotline got about 60 calls a month. Fast forward to 2025, it's more than 200 a month. Stone says that doesn't necessarily mean that many more people are addicted to gambling. He compares it to recent instances of cancer rates rising. When messaging and awareness about a topic gets better, sometimes you see spikes in cases. After the beginning of sports betting, even before sports betting in Kentucky, there were the plethora of... ads for sports betting outlets on television, particularly during sporting events. And all of those, for the most part, have a message. Got a gambling problem? Call 100 gambler. Very possible that those folks are already. already had a gambling problem, but they just became aware that maybe their gambling was at a level that needed to be examined. Sports betting has really changed the picture for people working on awareness and education. For centuries, traditional gambling relied on time and location. You had to go out of your way to visit a casino if you wanted to place a bet. But sports betting changes that. If you're in a state where it's legal, you can bet from the dinner table, your bedroom, from work. Essentially, anywhere you have access to your phone. Everyone has a phone now, so that's a million different ways to gamble and place bets. And I think the prevalence is just there. We have a lot of easy access around here. Like we touched on at the top, the advertisements are constant. And that can help in... increase the likelihood of you feeling more confident in placing a bit. One Sportsbetter says this in a 60 minutes report. You know, you can wake up in the middle of the night and take your phone out, set an alarm for a match maybe overseas or something like that. I would place a bet on anything, anywhere, at any time. Someone who is a disordered gambler is not gambling for the money. Money is just the, say,

vehicle to keep participating in gainably. What the individual is searching for is something that's going on intern to their body. That's why some have called this a... Addiction without substance. Experts say they're starting to treat gambling addiction like they would substance use or alcoholism. But how patients get addicted is different. So we see gambling as more of a process addiction. It's more behavioral. We think of a substance use disorder as something we are ingesting to consume and feel a certain feeling. Whereas behavioral or process addictions like gambling, we are doing something. to get that same feeling. So we are gambling to get those feel-good neurotransmitters in our brain. That's Brittany Gillum with Four Rivers Behavioral Health in Paducah. She's going through training right now to become a certified gambling therapist. I did a 30-hour training for a week with the Kentucky Gambling Association to help get me trained to better provide services and be ahead of the curb. I learned that how... The way the bet is shown to us can change the way we perceive it and feel about it. If we toss a coin four times in a round, and it's a regular coin, it's not a trick at all. Heads or tails. I flip it, it's heads. I flip it again, it's heads. I flip it again, it's heads. This next time, what's it going to be? Heads or tails? At the end of the day, a lot of people might say it's going to be tails because it has to be, right? But really, that's gambler's fallacy. It's just believing that something's more likely to happen based on previous occurrences. When in actuality, it's a 50-50 chance. That quickly snowballs into more and more money lost. The number one issue is what is called chasing losses. You are so convinced of your ability to gamble. that when you lose, that you immediately try to find a way to win back and you place more bets. And it's never been easier to do that thanks to live betting. It can be as simple as who wins a game after it's already started, all the way down to what's called micro bets. Incredibly small details that are resolved fairly quickly. Think the speed of the next pitch in baseball, the method of the next basket and basketball, a three-pointer, free throw, dunk, or layup. or the total yards of the next play in football. It's these tiny little bets that keep the user engaged and spending. According to reporting from the New York Times, live bets accounted for more than half the money wagered on Fanduel and Draft Kings in recent quarters. According to Investment Bank's citizens, revenues from in-game bets could triple within the next five years to more than $14 billion. And it's attractive to more than just the sports books. Data companies that are supplying the information used to facilitate those bets will make money too. The leagues and broadcasters see it as a way to boost in-game viewership as well. That high-speed rate of betting has experts particularly concerned that your losses can snowball quickly. And it's not just the wins that get you hooked.

Some of the brain scans show that in people, whenever you actually get a near win, you release much more dopamine than whenever you get a big win. So that, even the science shows that our anticipation is really what keeps the draw going. We want to stay involved in it. So that in itself kind of just keeps us like. We want that anticipation. Stone emphasizes live or not all types bring risks. There is no one specific gambling problem that's more addictive than another. It's all a matter of what's your choice. If someone is unfortunately an abuser of alcohol and you can ask what's your favorite form of alcohol. They might say beer, they might say whiskey. Beer, a 12-ounce can of beer has the same alcohol amount in it as a shot of whiskey. One might get you inebriated faster than the other, but they both have the same effect. And it's the same thing with gambling. If you abuse it, can become an addictive behavior.

I was three years old when I was taken to a horse racetrack the first time. I was five years old when my grandfather taught me how to shoot dice. When I was six years old, I could take a deck of 52 cards and I could lay out the 10 winning hands in succession. that comprise a poker hand. Experts are particularly concerned about the rise of sports betting amongst kids, especially if they were exposed to it from an early age. So they were raised around the just general atmosphere of gambling, betting on cards, and it might just be... Family fun, but it does condition that same behavior, whether they use it as an unhealthy coping mechanism can happen later on, but others use it as a way to escape. Kentucky actually has survey data on this. Kentucky's youth under 18 gamble, some at a significant level, and some at a level that is causing them disruption in their personal life. harm, loss of money, and other items that are associated with gambling disorder or addiction. About 25% of graduating high school seniors have gambled for money or possessions at some point in their life. 11% of sixth graders say they've placed bets. But... The experts say those numbers might actually be much higher. Gambling itself has changed so much that it's, if you ask someone in a younger generation, if they gamble, they probably say no, because they think of it as like just walking into a casino. But it's so different now because it's gambling, it's gaming, it's waging, it's placing bits. all sorts of things that they might not see as just gambling. Therapists at Four Rivers say kids and college students are their target audiences for new programs and education they're launching next year. Cynthia Turner, also with Four Rivers, says in part, it's just biology. A young person in the brain is not fully developed until 25 or 26. So that prefrontal cortex part of their brain that's responsible for understanding those long-term decisions is really not there yet. So the risk is higher. Yeah, as well as impulsivity because they aren't going to see the potential long-term side effects of that and consequences. It's also the reason why we have a lot of... younger people that do get involved in sports betting or online because it is just readily available. You're probably asking, isn't sports betting illegal for anyone under 18?

Yes, but the experts here say it's very easy to get around those protections. Social media, which kids are already using, plays a big part too. These sports betting apps and things are able to tailor their marketing and go directly to the source of these younger populations and they may never have thought about it and then suddenly they see an ad pop up and they're like, oh, hey, that looks good. So how do you protect these kids? For Rivers says it has to start early. They were recently awarded a grant to start talking about these things in schools. We know that we already promote awareness months, such as alcohol awareness month in April, suicide prevention month in September. So one of our focuses is going to be to just tie problem gambling into what we're already doing. It's not just for the kids. Parents and even teachers will learn about what their kids are facing. We would like to make sure that the resources are there for people before they're needed. And if we can help prevent people from even needing those additional resources, that's even better. Like, we want to be here to help them, but if they don't have to come to us to get better, amazing. Ultimately, they say, it comes down to what they're learning at home. If you go ahead and set some limits on your apps or whatever you may have, then you're teaching your child healthier ways to do those things. If you... are open with them and talk about if you are old enough one day and decide to gamble, I want you to be doing this in a healthy, responsible way that you have to decide for yourself. No one can do it for you, but this is how I do it. leap by example is always a good way because we typically learn what we're shown a little bit more than what we're told. And when you're having those conversations, language matters. And if you ask a kid, do they smoke? Most of them will say no. They tape, yes. Yes. I mean, it's a different word, that's all. But at the end of the day, it's still nicotine.

If you or a loved one is struggling, experts say you have to be honest with yourself. Are you preoccupied with gambling? Is that the number one thing that you think about? Do you have financial difficulties that come from your gambling behavior? Is your gambling causing you problems? If that's the case, the therapists say just like your bets, it can really snowball into other parts of your life. It's called co-occurring disorders. They don't have to be happening at the same time, but when they do, they interact with each other. Think alcohol use disorder and depression. If you're drinking to cope with your depression, alcohol is a depressor, so it will typically make you more depressed. In this case, gambling can, again, if you are losing, it can make you feel like you are starting to be more depressed, and then if we start to drink or consume other things to try to cope with those. Probably going to continue that feeling of depression, probably add anxiety if we haven't told our family members about the financial losses, because it can affect a lot of people, as with substance use or any addiction can. Stone says the loved ones around you can often feel the brunt of a gambling addiction. One gambling counselor, he knows, involves the family from the very beginning. He always insisted at that first meeting that the spouse of the gambler, whether male or female, also attended that meeting so that they would become aware of the depth of the addiction. Anything that impacts the finances, obviously impacts the home, the family, everything. Most people... have a little bit tougher times now with everything being extremely expensive. And if they are making a certain amount of money, And thinking it's going to go to bills, but someone else is like, well, maybe if I place a bet, I'll be able to pay bills and they'll have extra, but then they don't win. Now, how are they going to come up with that money? The gamblers face with a choice. Do they tell the other person? Or is there now a secret that they can't talk about yet because they don't want to come out with this. This. thing that they're holding and carrying, which then, of course, can lead to depression and anxiety. In the crisis situation, absolute trial, higher suicidality rates. It can all play a part in this. And it can go beyond the household. The impact also transfers to society. The, uh, uh, uh, costs for criminal justice system, the costs for items like social service costs and unemployment insurance, costs from domestic and spousal abuse, lost productivity at work, all of those pieces add up. Again, the common theme here, the snowball effect. Obviously, the cost of treatment.

If people aren't able to afford their bills, they're more likely to be on government funded insurance or things like that, so that will at the end of the day be from taxpayer money. Also, if they can't afford to get the access and health that they need, they're less likely to do it unless they have those resources available. I've worked my whole life, so I got to check every week, but it would deposit right into whatever app I was using. Were you interested in the game itself? I am a sports fan, but as the years grew on, you become less interested in the game itself and more interested in the result. You just heard from a gambler speaking to 60 meds. That's a growing mindset for fans, priorities shifting from team loyalties to the outcome of their wager. In looking for someone to talk to us more about this, we've discovered one of the top experts in the country is in our own backyard. Meet Daniel Wan, professor at Murray State University. My area of research has been on the psychology of sport fandom. So trying to understand what it is that drives fans to do the things that they do, whether it be aggressive actions or consumption behaviors or the relationships with other fans, their desire to watch the team win, their disgust and the team loses, any aspect of fandom I've probably studied it over the three and a half plus decades that I've been doing this stuff. To understand how it correlates to sports betting, you have to ask the question, why do people become fans to begin with? I've given hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of interviews. And the most common question I get is that one, right? And it used to be that the answer was kind of low-key. But, yeah, well, you know, there's certain motives that are out there. It can be entertaining and, you know, it can surface an escape or distraction, blah, blah, blah. But he says the answer has actually changed in the last decade or so. By following sports. Doing so allows fans to better meet basic psychological needs. That by being a fan of a team that assists in their quest to meet several different basic psychological needs. Things like belonging, building social communities. 97, 98%. of individuals attending sporting events do so with family and friends or with the intent of meeting family and friends at the game. It is not something that people typically do in isolation, right? So it's easy to get this sense of belonging through your love for a team or players or a league or a sport. Another need, structure. Sport allows people to build in routines and we are routine driven. We love routine. And so it sets the days, the weeks, the months, the seasons, the calendar year. There are people out there that have already printed the invitations to their Super Bowl party, you know. And so it allows for structure. And fourth, purpose. Or gives us, at least it has the potential, to give us meaning and purpose in life, to feel like we're larger than something than ourselves. Let's go all the way back to the beginning. Remember that Supreme Court decision and the subsequent race to legalize sports betting in individual states?

Turns out, Dr. Juan has been researching the topic since those days. I was actually on the front lines of this. I got contacted, I don't know what it is now, 15 years ago by Chris Christie's office in New Jersey. Like we said, at the time, all the major sports leagues were against the idea, arguing it would change the nature of their fans. Chris Christie's office was trying to... you know, counter all of their arguments against us. And so he's, his people said, will you please write like a paper that explains what the prediction would be? His big takeaway? Yeah, some people would probably be attracted to sport because it would give them another hook, another attachment. Most people that don't gamble on sport aren't going to all of a sudden figure out that they want to do that, right? I mean, you know. change who we are that quickly. But to his surprise, opinions shifted rather quickly. I had no idea that it would be, you know, that balls roll, rocks rolled downhill. They'd gather the speed that it did so quickly. And, you know, the leagues were like, we can't do that. Wait, if they're betting on sports, they're consuming sports, and they're watching games. Ew. All right. Next thing you know, we have ESPN bet and things like that. So yeah. In the years since legalization, his research has continued. He's found sports betting has a bigger audience than just sports fans. Across the board, fans, non-fans, traditional betters, and non-betters are all more likely to play. But for fans betting on their teams, it's very high highs and very low lows. Anytime you have more invested in the outcome. whether it's psychological, financial, emotional, you know, that outcome is just going to have a greater impact. If you're just a fan and there's nothing, you know, financial writing on it. then you just have to do with the emotional sting. Gillum says that emotional attachment often blurs out logic. Whether it's you feel like you know because you watch the game, you know everything about that team, you know who's injured that week, who's not, they have home core advantage, whatever it may be, is the same as someone having like a machine that's their machine. Like, and they feel a bond to that machine. They know how that machine works, but really it still comes down to a lot of chance and a lot of things that we don't have control over. So it takes the logic out of it and it allows our emotions to kind of take the wheel on that. It's almost like I'm so worried that I'm going to be. so, you know, sad and depressed after a loss, I want to build in that, okay, if this bad thing happens, at least I'm guaranteed this one good outcome. I find that remarkable because to me it's, there's no way to have a win, right? I mean, so if your team wins, like, yay.

Oh, yeah, also, I got to cough up 50 bucks, you know. But I guess the thinking is that if they win, people won't care about the 50 bucks at that point. But anytime money is involved, whether it's your team or not, is when Juan says emotions get heightened. How dare they cost me, you know, my $100. So who they lash out at? I mean, they're not going to lash out at Las Vegas. They're going to lash out. at the players and the teams and potentially the referees, the umpires, if there's some questionable call. There's another concerning side effect of legalized sports betting. The threats anyone associated with a sport can receive if they're on the wrong side of someone's wager. People literally have an investment on the field, and when it doesn't go their way, they lash out. A lot of those messages come through social media. But recently, athletes say it's gone as far as online payment apps. Here's world number one golfer, Scotty Sheffler. I think everybody hears from fans, whether they have a financial benefit or anything in their outcome. That's why I had to get rid of my Venmo because I was either getting paid by people or people requesting me a bunch of money when I didn't win. It wasn't a good feeling. Other athletes report similar incidences due to the platform's search feature, allowing users to find personal accounts of athletes and celebrities easily. Venmo partnered with the NCAA this year to launch a hotline to combat abuse and harassment of college athletes. You've heard all the arguments against gambling by now, but there are some valid arguments for it, too. The biggest, the financial boost it gives to communities with tax revenue and job opportunities. We asked specifically about those counter arguments. Well, that pro or con depends on what your personal perception is and what your personal addiction is. If you happen to be someone that suffers from disordered gambling, you don't have any pros at all. You're all con. On the other hand, you've got folks that work in the industry. They don't have a gambling problem, and so they see all the benefits. Stone says it's ultimately up to governments to address problem and disordered gambling. That's what Kentucky did in 2023, with a portion of the tax revenue funding problem gambling resources. That's important, even if only a small portion of gamblers end up having issues. If you've got, you know, out of the population, only 1% it ends up being problematic. Well, you know, 1% of all the people that wage you're on sports is no small number, right? And so... We certainly would want to be cousins of that and aware of that. For all of the talk we've done about how dangerous and addictive sports betting can be, keep in mind, these experts aren't advocating against gambling. They're just advocating for safe and responsible gambling. The Kentucky Council is not out there to argue that gambling is something nefarious or that gambling is a sin. or a moral degradation. Gambling exists. It's everywhere. Contact Council exists to raise awareness that if you're crossing a line, you can get help, and you can find a way to recover. On the flip side, Four Rivers' behavioral health is that help. We're just trying to be as prepared as possible to be ahead of the curb on this because...

As anything is more accessible, more people will be involved in it. And we'd rather be ready with the available resources to help them and the supports out there before it becomes too big of a problem. A little bit of prevention is going to go. Obviously, an ounce of prevention is where the bottom of cure. And the great thing about Four Rivers is we're almost a one-stop shot for prevention, treatment, and recovery resources. As for the future, a lot of questions still remain. I mean, there were people that, you know, they got so wrapped up in soap operas that they lost their jobs, right? Soap operas, which are like the most, you know, vanilla things you could ever have to lose a job over. People who can get so wrapped up in anything that they take it too far and they can have a negative impact on their profession or their family and their friends. So is it an overall negative? I mean, time is going to have to tell on that. I certainly won't say that I have a crystal ball that I can look into. Are we going to... make people cognizant that gambling can be a problem and it becomes one that there are solutions that you can have so that it remains as largely an entertainment for the vast majority of people. Or does it become so out of control that the gambling addiction becomes more of an epidemic? Don't have a clue as to which way it's going to go. It's going to be fascinating 25 years from now. to see what the sociologists and historians write and record about this social experiment. If you or someone you know has a gambling problem, call 1-800 gambler. Reporting and writing on this episode by Senior Executive Producer Morgan Regal. Editing support from Jaden Bernie Sanders. We'll be back after the Christmas holiday to wrap up season three. Thank you for listening.