gambling

Public Opinion on Legal Sports Betting is Souring, Survey Shows — But Young Americans Are Betting More Than Ever

More Americans believe legal sports betting is bad today than in 2022, a new Pew Research survey shows.

Unfortunately, more Americans than ever are betting on sports — a dangerous trend driven almost exclusively by young people placing online sports bets.

Of the nearly 10,000 American adults Pew polled on the question this year, 43% said legal sports betting is bad for society and 40% said it’s bad for sports.

In a similar 2022 survey, only 34% of surveyed adults said legal sports betting was bad for society. Even fewer (33%) felt it was bad for sports.

The data suggests Americans are becoming more aware of the harms of commercial sports betting — an inherently predatory industry that makes most of its money by targeting people who are addicted to gambling.

But increased public disapproval of legal sports betting has not yet decreased the number of Americans who bet on sports. An estimated 7% of U.S. adults placed a commercial sports bet in the last year, according to Pew, compared to just 4% in 2022.

This increase is driven entirely by online sports betting. The number of respondents who reported placing an online sports bet in the past year nearly doubled from 2022 (6%) to 2025 (10%), while the number of people who reported betting on sports in person stayed constant.

This is bad news. Online sports books use the same technology that makes smartphones addictive to offer endless potential wagers, instantaneous money transfers and ways to bet without missing a second of the big game.

In other words, it has never been faster or easier to bet money, lose it and chase your losses.

But it isn’t just about addictive product design. Online sportsbooks actively target their most lucrative customers — problem gamblers.

In April, the city of Baltimore sued DraftKings and FanDuel, the two biggest online sports books in the country, for using deceptive and fraudulent business practices.

The complaint alleged the sports books used extensive data collection to identify professional and problem gamblers. Professionals were purportedly banned from the platform while problem gamblers were assigned VIP hosts to funnel them perks, promotions and encouragement to keep gambling.

Worse, the overall increase in online sports betting between 2022 and 2025 was driven by young people. This year, 17% of surveyed adults under 30 reported betting on an online sportsbook in the past year — a 10% increase from 2022.

Young people, particularly college-age men, were early adopters of online sports betting and some of the first to become addicted. They are also some of the most vulnerable to addiction because their brains are still developing.

The same is true of adolescents. The Lancet’s 2024 Public Health Commission on problem gambling estimates 10.3% of adolescents around the world gambled online in 2023 — often illegally. Of those who bet on sports, the commission estimates more than 16% could have a gambling disorder.

Problem gambling is a horrible, often hidden addiction with cascading impacts on the families and communities of those suffering.

Problem gamblers are statistically more likely than their peers to both commit and be the victim of domestic violence. Upwards of 30% of problem gamblers experience suicidal ideation, per the American Psychological Association.

As America contends with the proliferation of legal commercial sports betting, Les Bernal, the National Director of Stop Predatory Gambling, says parents can do two important things to protect their kids — beyond refusing to gamble themselves.

First, Bernal tells the Daily Citizen, parents should include predatory gambling — particularly online gambling — in the list of addictive products to warn their kids about. Commercial gambling should never be normalized as a harmless form of entertainment.

Second, Bernal encourages parents to support online gambling reform in their communities and at the ballot box. The gambling industry must take responsibility for selling addictive products, he argues, the same way tobacco and opioid companies do. 

Legal commercial sports betting is not harmless entertainment. As baseball season winds down, and football and basketball ramp up, please consider how you will protect your children and family from its influence.

Additional Articles and Resources

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Baltimore Sues FanDuel, DraftKings for Targeting Problem Gamblers

FanDuel and DraftKings target people with gambling problems, the city of Baltimore alleged in its lawsuit against the two largest online sports books in America.

The case makes Baltimore the first public entity to take online sports betting companies to court over exploitative business practices that have become industry staples.

The suit, filed in Baltimore Circuit Court in April, accuses FanDuel and DraftKings of:

  • Using misleading promotions like “no sweat” bets to encourage Baltimoreans to wager every day.
  • Using extensive online data collection to identify lucrative problem gamblers and exclude professional gamblers.
  • Targeting problem gamblers with special promotions and services to extract maximum profit.

Baltimore claims this business model violates both a city code preventing businesses from engaging in “unfair, abusive or deceptive trade practices” and a state gambling regulation forbidding sports books from “[conducting] sports wagering in a manner that may adversely impact the public or the integrity of sports wagering.”

“[FanDuel and DraftKings’] actions demonstrate a callous disregard not only for the rule of law, but also for the public health, safety and well-being of Baltimore consumers,” the case concludes, requesting the judge fine the companies and force them to abandon business practices targeting problem gamblers.

Background

In 2018, the Supreme Court overturned a law preventing states outside of Nevada from licensing sports betting companies. Today, online sports betting is legal in 34 states and the District of Columbia.

DraftKings and FanDuel own approximately 70% of the national online sports betting industry, which made more than $10 billion in 2023. Marylanders bet more than $457 million on these two platforms in January alone.

While legalized sports betting captures record revenue for the gambling industry, indicators of problem gambling, particularly among young men, have increased apace.

Calls to the problem gambling hotline at the Maryland Center of Excellence on Problem Gambling (MCEPG) skyrocketed after the state legalized online sports betting in 2022. According to program director Mary Drexler, many of the new calls came from young men or their parents.

Baltimore’s suit quotes Drexler:

As the industry booms, problem gambling is growing too, especially among 18- to 24-year-old men who grew up loving sports — and their phones — and can’t restrain their mobile sports betting impulses.

Drexler’s observation helps contextualize MCEPG data showing one in five online sports bettors in Maryland demonstrated signs of problem gambling, compared to just one in 10 who bet on sports in person.

“No Sweat” Bets

FanDuel and DraftKings offer new customers “free, no risk” bets for signing up. The fine print on these “no sweat” or “bonus” bets show they have an expiration date and can only be wagered in small amounts at a time.

These qualifications effectively manipulate new gamblers into betting every day to “get their money’s worth.”

Even if a user makes a profit off their “no sweat” bets without forming a daily gambling habit, FanDuel and DraftKings don’t allow customers to cash out “no sweat” bets alone. They must wager some of their own money to access their winnings

In its suit, Baltimore calls this marketing “deceptive,” alleging:

These tactics prompt users to place larger and more frequent wagers than they might have initially intended when considering their personal limits on reasonable betting, by implanting the false idea that users are obtaining “free bets,” or otherwise taking on substantially less financial risk than they actually are.
Big Data

Once gamblers sign up, FanDuel and DraftKings deploy machine learning algorithms to determine each bettor’s lifetime value (LTV), or “the total income a business can expect from a typical customer during their lifetime.”

“Perversely, the metrics used to calculate LTV in sports betting … closely mirror established indicators of gambling addiction,” the suit notes, including:

  • Frequency and size of bets.
  • Time spent betting.
  • Loss chasing, or betting increasingly higher amounts to recoup money lost.
  • Deposit amounts and times.

These metrics allow online sportsbooks to identify and kick professional gamblers off their platforms. But, instead of excluding suspected problem gamblers, FanDuel and DraftKings use their treasure trove of data to create personalized notifications and promotions enticing big spenders back into the game.

Baltimore writes in the suit:

These notifications and promotions are not random, but, rather, are systematically designed and deployed using Defendants’ extensive data analytics capabilities to target users at moments when they are most likely to resume gambling.
VIP Programs

FanDuel and DraftKings assign VIP hosts to their best customers — the people losing the most money on their platforms. These employees establish one-on-one relationships with “clients” and funnel them a steady stream of promotions perks designed to keep them spending.

Kavita Fischer, a psychologist who lost $400,000 on gambling apps, says her DraftKings VIP host facilitated her gambling, even when she wanted to stop.

The Wall Street Journal’s Kate Linebaugh recounts one of Kavita’s experiences:

In January, Kavita emailed her DraftKings host to say she was doing terribly and that she wanted to try a different game or quit gambling completely. But Kavita also asked her host for another bonus.
In response, her host added $500 to her account and wished her luck, writing, “Hope you can get hot.”

Though Kavita displayed clear signs of problem gambling, including asking if DraftKings offered small loans for VIP clients, her host accepted her word that she was “gambling within her means.”

Baltimore alleges Kavita’s experience isn’t unique — it’s part of sportsbooks’ profit strategy:

Access and robust user data, coupled with the hosts’ and managers’ directive to keep these players betting as much as possible, creates an extremely potent mechanism to break down the defenses of individuals struggling with a gambling disorder.
Why It Matters

Problem gambling devastates families and communities. The social and monetary fallout burdens taxpayers.

But online sports betting companies have no incentive to exclude these problem gamblers, and every incentive to exploit them. Baltimore’s case presents convincing evidence that FanDuel and DraftKings not only allow exploitation to occur, but engineer it.

Consumer protection laws have prohibited these kinds of practices for generations. It’s about time governments started enforcing the law against online sports books.

Additional Articles and Resources

March Madness Sends Gambling Industry Profits Sky High

‘Addictive, Exploitative, Manipulative’: Les Bernal Breaks Down Predatory Gambling Ahead of the Super Bowl

Online Sports Betting Hooking Young Men on Gambling, Research Suggests

Online Super Bowl Betting Breaks Records

March Madness Sends Gambling Industry Profits Sky High

The gambling industry is going gangbusters.

Sportsbooks will make a record-breaking $3.1 billion on Americans’ March Madness bets by the tournament’s conclusion on Saturday, the American Gaming Association (AGA) predicts, comfortably outpacing last year’s $2.7 billion.

March Madness profits, and the estimated $1.39 billion Americans bet on February’s Superbowl, put 2025 on pace to become the gambling industry’s most lucrative year yet.

Bill Miller, CEO and President of AGA, waxed eloquent on legal gambling’s benefits in a press release announcing Americans spent more than $71 billion on gambling in 2024.

“Every dollar of gaming revenue fuels jobs, investment and economic growth — reinforcing why the legal industry’s expansion is so important,” Miller wrote.

Les Bernal, the National Director of Stop Predatory Gambling, says these economic benefits are nothing more than smoke and mirrors.

“Betting interests like to say that the money [they make] will go to some state interest like education, but this is a revenue source that makes money from people who are addicted to gambling,” Bernal tells the Daily Citizen.

Commercial gambling operations enable addicts, but they don’t clean up the financial or social consequences of gambling addiction. That, says Bernal, falls to taxpayers:

Who do you think pays for all the social services for that half of 1% whose lives have been ruined? Who do you think pays when [the gambler] steals from their employer and the company shuts down? Who pays for all those employees who lost their jobs?

The “half of 1%” Bernal references comes from a Wall Street Journal article finding PointsBet, an online sports book, made 70% of its profits between 2019 and 2020 from just 0.5% of its customers — gambling addicts.

This business model is industry wide. Online sportsbooks and gambling games use computer algorithms to identify compulsive gamblers and deploy “VIP-customer representatives” to keep them coming back for more.

VIP reps prevent out of control gamblers from quitting by offering well-timed rewards and vouchers for free bets.

“If you show a likelihood of chasing your losses — and, by that, I mean you gamble to recoup the money you lost gambling — you are the number one target demographic for the gambling industry,” Bernal emphasizes. “Because you won’t stop and you’re inevitably going to keep losing.”

Legal, online sports betting makes college campuses breeding grounds for gambling addiction. A 2023 survey of 3,527 college students by the NCAA found more than a fourth of students (27.5%) had placed an online sports bet. A startling 6% of respondents — 212 students — had lost $500 or more on sports betting in a single day.

Evan Ozmat counsels students at the University of Albany, where he is earning his PhD in psychology. In December 2023, he told Time magazine:

Since the beginning of [my counseling] three years ago, students have brought up, unprompted, gambling. We started asking about it in every appointment and everyone has something to say. It’s everywhere.

Ozmat compares the students’ experiences to drug or alcohol fueled binges:

It almost feels like binge drinking or methamphetamines, where they are going on benders. They’ll make bets and bets and bets and then wonder, “How the hell did I get here?”

Sportsbooks enable gambling binges by creating a seamless betting experience; the faster users can place a bet, the less time they spend considering the wisdom of another wager.

More broadly, the gambling industry markets to kids — future customers — using sports.

Sports betting has become inextricably entwined with American athletics — from TV ads, to stadium names, to sports broadcasters analyzing odds on air. Sportsbooks bombard kids with the idea that true sports fans gamble from the time they buy their first baseball cap to the day they place their first bet.

Consequently, kids begin sports gambling early and often, with no concept of the danger they’re in.

Ironically, sports betting actually worsens competition, and fans’ experience, by introducing incentives for athletes to perform poorly. Among the college basketball teams competing in March Madness, three are under federal investigation in connection with an NBA gambling ring. Players from three other colleges are being investigated for betting on themselves in fantasy games.

The remainder of March Madness will be filled with invitations to gamble. Bernal says parents can protect their kids in three ways.

The first is to simply forgo gambling yourself. Do not engage in behavior you don’t want your kids to emulate.

The second is adding gambling to the list of dangerous and addictive habits you warn your kids against, like vaping, drugs and watching pornography.

The third is to support online gambling and online gambling advertising reform at the ballot box. Bernal emphasizes:

We don’t allow Purdue Pharma, the opioid maker, to market to kids. That’s how addictive [gambling] is, and we’re allowing the gambling industry to market these hardcore products in the middle of the day, exposing kids to them.

Additional Articles and Resources

‘Addictive, Exploitative, Manipulative’: Les Bernal Breaks Down Predatory Gambling Ahead of the Super Bowl

Online Sports Betting Hooking Young Men on Gambling, Research Suggests

Online Super Bowl Betting Breaks Records

‘Addictive, Exploitive, Manipulative’: Les Bernal Breaks Down Predatory Gambling Ahead of Super Bowl

Forget Chiefs and Eagles. Super Bowl 59’s biggest winners will be sports betting operations.

Americans will shell out an eye-popping $1.39 billion on Sunday, the American Gaming Association (AGA) predicts, outstripping last year’s $1.25 billion record.

A national survey from Lending Tree indicates more than half of all male respondents, and 66% of Gen Z respondents, plan to bet on the big game. Of those, 63% plan to use an online sports book.

The Daily Citizen has previously reported on the risks online gambling and sports betting pose to families and kids. This year, we asked Les Bernal to weigh in on the gambling industry’s predatory business model, its fixation on young people, and what parents can do to keep their kids from getting hooked.

Bernal is the National Director of Stop Predatory Gambling, a non-profit and advocacy network dedicated to exposing commercial gambling’s effect on communities and families.

“Predatory gambling is America’s most neglected major problem,” he tells the Daily Citizen. “It affects everybody [in a profound way], regardless of whether you gamble or not.”

Bernal defines predatory gambling as any business with a “house” designed to make a profit:

When gambling is used as a business, there is a predatory and adversarial relationship between the gambling operator and its customer. That’s how they make their money. It’s the only business in the world where the business owner or the business operator is trying to hurt you.

Gambling operators have always endeavored to keep the high-rollers paying big bucks. But unlike brick-and-mortar operations, online casinos and sports books can use data analytics to find their preferred victims — gambling addicts.

“The number one indicator of an addictive gambler, or someone who could become [one], is chasing losses,” says Bernal. “By that, I mean, gambling another hundred bucks to recoup the $100 you already lost that day.”

Online betting groups make most of their money by finding and exploiting these users. Bernal references a Wall Street Journal article finding one online sports book, PointsBet, made 70% of its 2019-2020 profit on bets from just 0.5% of its customers.

The article follows the story of Kavita Fischer, a psychiatrist and mother who became addicted to apps like PointsBet and DraftKings. Though she tried to quit multiple times, special “VIP-customer representatives” used gifts and bonus tokens to keep her coming back.  

“With a real-time view of a customer’s gambling activity, VIP hosts keep in close touch,” the Journal writes. “They track when customers last used the app and offer credits and other incentives to persuade their most valuable gamblers — by definition, the biggest losers — to return.”

Like all addictive products, says Bernal, gambling poses elevated risk to kids. But the gambling industry intentionally markets itself to young people by cozying up to sports.

Bernal uses Fanatics, the sports merchandise company, as an example:

[Fanatics] made their money in sports merchandise. So you have kids wearing Fanatics hats, collecting Fanatics sports cards, and getting used to the brand.
When they turn 18, the company starts transitioning them over to these gambling apps. It’s a pipeline to addiction.

Consequently, sports games and advertisements make gambling seem like a requirement:

What they’re doing is squeezing the sports around gambling. The marketing makes it appear that you’re no longer a sports fan unless you’re betting on something.

The intimate consequences of gambling addiction are brutal and cascading, says Bernal, but few people understand the cost it exerts on all American families. Taxpayers foot the bill for the social and economic ripple effects of one person’s missteps, from unemployment benefits to the cost of keeping someone in prison.

“You the taxpayer, long term, end up paying higher taxes for fewer services because of all these forms of hardcore gambling the state promotes,” he points out. “You pay even if you don’t play.”

Sunday’s game will be filled with invitations to gamble. Bernal says there are two ways parents can protect their kids — beyond refusing to gamble themselves.

The first is adding predatory gambling to the list of “dangerous, addictive products,” like smoking, vaping and drugs, to warn kids against.

The second is supporting online gambling reform at the ballot box.

“This needs to be a top issue for every parent in America,” Bernal contends. “We must demand reform that protects kids from predatory gambling interests.”

He puts it in perspective:

We don’t allow Purdue Pharma, the opioid maker, to market to kids. That’s how addictive [gambling] is, and we’re allowing the gambling industry to market these hardcore products in the middle of the day, exposing kids to them.

This Super Bowl Sunday, take Bernal’s advice and stay off the gambling apps. They’re not worth your time, your money or your kids’ wellbeing.

Additional Articles and Resources

Online Sports Betting Hooking Young Men on Gambling, Research Suggests

Online Super Bowl Betting Breaks Records