Societal opinions often change slowly, but occasionally they shift rather quickly. Gambling is a good example of a relatively rapid shift. People have always gambled, but it was done more quietly. How many movies do we have about underground gambling rings? There was something slightly unseemly about gambling, or at least talking all the time about your gambling. A societal consensus held that regular and high-stakes gambling was for people playing professional poker, but most of us should keep it occasional and small stakes—stick to church bingo, a regular game with friends, and the odd trip to Vegas or Atlantic City. Things have changed dramatically.
The old stigma around gambling could be seen in the refusal of professional sports leagues to put teams in Las Vegas. Times have changed. The Las Vegas Golden Knights (NHL) were founded in 2017. That same year, the WNBA team the Aces moved from San Antonio to Las Vegas. In 2020, the Raiders moved from Oakland to Las Vegas (NFL). The Oakland Athletics are on their way to Las Vegas now (MLB). This is a major societal shift, not just league realignment. Gambling has gone mainstream and connections between sports and betting are less suspect than ever.
Sports are in Vegas and, thanks to the internet, Vegas is everywhere. After a brief run of online poker and cards-related gambling—much of that got shut down—the major opportunities have shifted to sports betting. If you turn the television to any sports-related channel, you will see information about sports betting. There are ads for the apps, and there are odds offered by experts and the channels themselves. Gambling was once considered something that would sully sports, now you get incentives to sign up when you go to professional games. Poor Pete Rose, he was born too soon. What this means for sports is one thing, what this means for us societally is more significant.
To understand what makes present-day sports betting different and more dangerous, a good start would be listening to season four of Michael Lewis’s podcast, Against the Rules. It used to be that you could place sports bets in Vegas or with bookies. Now most people place them with the apps, which are omnipresent and always advertising. There are a few issues with the apps that should concern us all. First, they are designed to encourage addictive behavior. Second, they reward addictive behavior—turning unsuccessful high-stakes bettors into “VIPs” and rewarding them with concerts, tickets to sporting events, and more. Third, the apps do not allow people who bet well to bet much at all. If you understand sports betting enough to succeed, they will essentially cut you off or severely limit the amount you can wager. The entire ecosystem created by DraftKings and FanDuel, etc., feeds off people who do not make good bets. Only suckers can wager whatever they’d like.
The strategy is working well for the sports betting industry. In 2023, sports betting made $11 billion in revenue. According to ESPN’s reporting on information from the American Gaming Association, “The huge year for the industry represented a 44.5% year-over-year increase from 2022, which previously held the record. A handle of $119.84 billion (a 27.8% year-over-year increase) combined with an increased year-over-year sportsbook win percentage of 9.1% (up from 8.1% in 2022) contributed to the record.” This increase was due, in part, to legalization in more states (possible after a 2018 Supreme Court decision). 2023 was also a big year for land-based (in-person) gambling. All gambling combined “had a record year, posting $65.52 billion in 2023 revenue, a 10% increase from 2022’s record.” 2024 will likely also be a banner year once all the accounting is done.
Who is this predatory ecosystem affecting? All kinds of people, but especially men. Around 72% of American sports bettors are male. And many of them are young. College campuses across the country are seeing a major uptick in sports betting among students. Men are not only more often gamblers, they are twice as likely to become gambling addicts. College men are the demographic most susceptible to sports gambling addiction in America today and over 10% of college men place bets weekly. Three out of four college students have gambled in the past year.
Sports betting is an epidemic that is largely being ignored. Hop on Instagram or X, and you will see jokes about how “every college girl is reading books like she’s going to earn a reward and every college guy has $1000 gambling debt.” Ask around and see how many young people you know personally have money riding on games. Churches and schools say very little about sports betting among the young and parents seem largely unaware. Perhaps some fail to understand the contrasts between their weekly pool with friends and what the apps are pushing. Michael Lewis’s podcast is one of the only public voices raising an alarm about the situation.
One of the biggest riddles facing our society today is why young men are struggling. They aren’t finishing high school, getting into college, finishing college, or getting into medical school (or most other programs) as well as their female counterparts. There are all kinds of theories about why this is happening. We have debates about types of masculinity and which are acceptable and which should be acceptable. We consider the absence of coming-of-age rituals, the problems of deferred adulthood and safetyism, we warn against pornography and excessive use of videogames, we bemoan the inadequate advocacy for the trades… but we are doing worse than nothing about the very real threat presented by sports betting.
Legally and culturally, we have embraced sports betting. Sports betting is socially acceptable and constantly advertised in a targeted way. Yet it is a demonstrably bigger addictive threat to young men in their late teens and early twenties than it is to any other demographic. And we are doing nothing at all to protect this population—the same population whose lack of success we are allegedly fretting about. Young men will not be more marriageable or better at buying homes or paying off school loans if they are carrying debt or addicted to gambling. The same goes for women, even if they face lower risk. We warn young people about drinking and smoking and vaping, yet we do little to warn about the omnipresent tar pit of online gambling—which earlier generations did not have to dodge.
With the current state of sports betting, companies have managed to secure a largely unregulated, highly profitable, vice-driven field of operations. If we want to secure a better future for our country, enabling and/or ignoring sports betting, especially among the young, is not a good strategy. Americans love a thrill and a risk and a chance to get rich, but the adrenaline rush we are getting from gambling could be very expensive. While Einstein notably said that “God doesn’t play dice with the universe,” we are encouraging young men to roll the dice on their future—and by extension, on the future character of our society.
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