Earlier this year, Maryland state Senator Joanne C. Benson did something remarkable. She introduced Senate bill 1033, written for the “purpose of repealing online sports wagering” in the state. Now, I wouldn’t normally say a random state legislator introducing a proposal is a big deal. Except in this case, it’s the start of a counter-attack on the proliferation of corporate-run gambling across America, a trend that has largely gone un-rebutted since the 1970s. And Benson is not alone; lawmakers in Vermont and New York are seeking to push back, and more state legislatures are likely to follow.
Why the pushback? The answer is that corporate-run gambling is now pervasive in America, and Americans don’t like what they see. Gambling, particularly online sports betting, is now everywhere. About a fifth of Americans placed a bet in the past year, mostly through gambling apps. Since 2018, when online sports gambling got a big boost from a key Supreme Court decision, Americans have bet more than half a trillion dollars on sports.
And the attempts to change our culture are extremely visible; I watched the Dolphins-Ravens game last night on Amazon Prime, and I lost count of the number of ads for DraftKings and FanDuel, with various celebrities lending their names to this cultural phenomenon. Every major sports media network, sports league, and podcast are now working with a major gambling company. At this point, gambling is intrinsic to the financing of sports; FanDuel now operates “15 regional sports networks across the country previously on the brink of bankruptcy.”
The broad consequences are also extremely visible. Take athletics. Americans love sports, and that cultural centerpiece is being corrupted in an orgy of greed and speculative ferver. Last week, the government charged six people, including two NBA players, for gambling-related fraud. It’s also contributing to a courser culture, with a lot of unfair pressure on athletes. According to US News, “21% of sports bettors say they’ve verbally abused an athlete, either in person or online, after losing money on a bet.”
And that’s not even getting into the costs of fostering a nation of gamblers, lured in by an app-based model that is far more convenient and addictive than traditional in-person betting. Today, four out of five betters are using betting apps or online platforms. A quarter of bettors can’t pay a bill because of their wagers, a third have gambling debts, more than half carry credit card debts, and a quarter of them are afraid they can’t control their gambling. Economists are finding a “substantial increase in average bankruptcy rates, debt sent to collections, use of debt consolidation loans, and auto loan delinquencies” for consumers in states that legalized online sports betting versus those that restrict it to in-person locations. The estimates I’m told privately by experts in the field is that in the next five years, all gambling - including lotteries, Las Vegas casinos, and online sports betting - will likely see Americans lose a trillion dollars or so.
Last year, I did an Organized Money episode with Les Bernal and Dr. Kavita Fischer on the problem; Fischer is a psychiatrist who downloaded Draft Kings in 2022 to unwind after putting her kids to bed. She ended up losing $600,000, explaining to the Wall Street Journal the story of how DraftKings used sophisticated techniques to keep her betting, even as she desperately tried to stop. (Most of the loss was not on sports, but on standard casino games.)
Online sports betting is reaching new more politically empowered groups. Fischer’s story is very common, and it’s occurring among middle and upper middle class people who were never exposed to other forms of gambling, like state lotteries and casinos. It’s also hitting kids, who themselves are often calling in to help lines with addiction. It’s so common that Saturday Night Live did a viral skit for a fictional company called “Rock Bottom Kings,” which allows people to take bets on their degenerate gambling addict friend’s behavior.
Increasingly, people are turning against this form of betting. According to Pew, 43% of U.S. adults say “the fact that sports betting is now legal in much of the country is a bad thing for society,” up from 34% just a few years ago. And that’s concentrated among young men, who are most exposed; “47% of men under 30 say legal sports betting is a bad thing for society, up from 22% who said this in 2022.” And opposition is increasing faster among people who bet than people who don’t. It’s not that people oppose betting with friends, what’s problematic is the ability to build a business around being the house.
The Neoliberal Origins of Corporate Gambling
In an important sense, it’s odd that we’re even dealing with pervasive corporate-run gambling. Historically, Americans understood systemic gambling, and associated similar abuses of power like usury, as a moral and social catastrophe in waiting. That has been true since the 19th century, with many states making gambling unconstitutional, through to the fixing of the 1919 World Series, but it was also true well into the 20th century, when corporate gambling was constrained to mobster-run places like Las Vegas and Atlantic City. Even into the 1960s, courts prevented the patenting of gambling machines on the grounds they conflicted with the “sound morals of society.”
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