Category Archives: Gambling

KAITLIN BROWN'S WORK cellphone has an obscenely loud ringtone, and when it goes off during the day, it routinely startles her and her 2-year-old daughter, Emilia. The phone is always there -- on the counter in front of her, on the couch beside her, even on the changing table if there's a new diaper necessary.

In early December, her phone rings and shows a caller ID that sends her rushing to pick up as soon as humanly possible. "CCPG HELPLINE," it says.

Brown, 36, is the exact person you want answering a problem gambling help line. A licensed counselor for drug, alcohol and gambling addiction, she's a 14-year veteran working in addiction services, including the past five at the Connecticut Council on Problem Gambling. As a little girl, she attended 12-step meetings with her dad as he tried to get sober (he did), and has seen the ravages of addiction elsewhere in her family, too. She's hesitant to talk about herself, but she has the perfect blend of empathy and fierceness to deal with people struggling with addiction.

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The incoming call is from someone who reached out to Connecticut's version of what many states now have, a toll-free help line for people who think they might have a gambling problem. Like other states that have rushed to legalize sports betting since the Supreme Court struck down a federal ban in May 2018, Connecticut is in the middle of giant spike in both the volume of calls and the number of callers who specifically mention sports gambling as a part of their problem.

On this December day, Brown grabs her phone and answers with her standard greeting: "Connecticut Council on Problem Gambling help line. Can I help you?"

The man gives his name -- Brown can't provide personal information, so let's call him Mike -- and says he's in his early 20s. Last October, as soon as Connecticut legalized sports gambling, Mike downloaded the FanDuel app and started betting ... and now he says he can't stop. He says it's just so easy now, 10 seconds away on his phone. He blew through thousands of dollars that his parents thought were going toward college. The man, like so many of the younger callers Brown talks to these days, says he dabbles in cryptocurrency and day trading, too.

"I can't tell my parents about any of this," he says. "I can't talk to anybody about it. What do I do?"

Brown listens to Mike explain his situation, then she begins running through a checklist that she helped create for Connecticut. She first asks if he is considering harming himself or someone else. Compared with other addictions, studies have shown that problem gamblers are much more likely to attempt suicide or have suicidal thoughts.

"No," Mike says.

Then she works her way through options. Her main goal isn't to diagnose, it's to funnel people toward the right next step. Sometimes people want help locating a Gamblers Anonymous meeting. Sometimes people are desperate to get sent to treatment, which Brown can often do within 24 hours or so. Sometimes callers aren't gamblers themselves but are worried about a friend or loved one who might have a problem. Data collected by CCPG shows that the average problem gambler directly impacts nine other people.

Mike is one of the many callers who is contemplating, for the first time, whether he might have a gambling problem. Brown gets a few calls a week like this, where the person on the other end has never said that out loud to another person.

Help line callers often decline to give their name, then proceed to tell the most intimate, truthful version of their life story that they've ever put into words. Gambling is often tricky for others to see and is considered a hidden addiction -- you can't smell sports betting on someone's breath or find them passed out on the bathroom floor from a gambling overdose. In studies, problem gamblers report much higher rates of feeling like they're living secret lives and having more shame than with other addictions.

That's the case with Mike. He says he's scared, and he asks questions about whether he might have a problem. Callers regularly want someone on the other end of the line to give them an answer about whether they do or do not have a problem. But gambling counselors like Brown shy away from that. There are a few cardinal rules that the problem gambling councils adhere to. One is that the councils take no position, for or against, gambling itself. And secondly, they won't declare you an addict. "I never tell somebody they have a gambling problem," she says. "It's up to that person to decide if they have a problem."

Mike pushes for her opinion, so Brown sidesteps by mentioning some of the things that are most common to problem gambling. Is it causing significant issues in your life? Do you have gambling debt? Do you set limits that you don't stick to? Is gambling fun and entertaining, or a compulsion that you become preoccupied with? She'll occasionally tell people to check out Gamblers Anonymous' 20-question survey, which covers some of the same topics and includes a statement that most problem gamblers answer yes to seven or more questions.

Mike listens intently, but he's mostly noncommittal. She asks if Mike wants to set up a session with a counselor, or if he's considering entering formal treatment.

"I don't think I need that," he says.

After she floats those options, Brown usually mentions Gamblers Anonymous as a possibility. "Want me to find a meeting near your house?" she asks him.

"Nah, I don't think so," he says. "You know what? I'm just going to delete the apps."

He doesn't want to go any further than that, so she winds down the call by giving him her direct number. Brown says many callers are just getting to the point of wanting help and not knowing how to start, so having a sympathetic, actual human being to call back later -- versus dialing the help line again -- has proven successful.

"If you change your mind and want to talk more, you can call me directly," she tells him.

Mike thanks her, and before he hangs up, he says, "This call really helped me. Thank you. I feel a little better now than I did when I called. I felt such shame and fear, and I've never told anybody the stuff I just told you. It really helped me to talk to someone who didn't judge me."

They say goodbye, and Brown is as happy as you can be doing her job. Maybe deleting the apps will work for Mike. Maybe it won't. The only thing she knows for sure is someone else will be calling soon.

OVER THE NEXT few months, gambling help line workers are anticipating two of their busiest times ever. First, the Super Bowl, where last year 23 million Americans bet about $4.5 billion, the highest totals for any single event in the country. Then, a month later, they expect an influx of calls around March Madness, which includes twice as many bettors and overall dollars wagered over the course of three weeks.

The U.S. is already deep in a gambling boom that the help lines and councils aren't equipped to deal with yet. The National Council for Problem Gambling cites studies showing that about 2.2% of American adults -- nearly 6 million people -- are susceptible to problem gambling, and that number doubles for people who regularly bet. In Connecticut, that means three CCPG employees are dealing with a population of 58,000 problem gamblers, with as many as 500,000 friends and loved ones in the direct path of those struggling addicts.

Calls to the help line have quadrupled since sports betting became legal, and the number of online chat requests went from 13,344 in 2021 to 13,143 in January 2022 alone. It's been a crushing surge, and Brown says she thinks the guardrails for problem gambling are about 40 years behind other addictions. "I thought it would be three, four, five years till we were seeing this level of people looking for help," Brown says. "But it took about six to eight weeks."

Gambling might seem different than substance abuse. But it has a very similar effect on the brain for those 20-million-plus Americans believed to be struggling with addiction; the American Psychiatric Association announced in 2013 that problem gambling belongs under the same umbrella of disorders as opiate or alcohol abuse. Experts stress that it's too soon to make broad declarations on the impact of legalized sports betting across the country, but early signs -- especially the enormous spike in help line calls -- show that gambling addiction may be every bit the public health danger as opiates or alcohol because of the stunning speed of its destructive path. The bottom often comes fast, with far-reaching consequences for family members.

A few weeks ago, Brown wasn't available to grab a help line call on a Monday morning, so it kicked to her boss, CCPG executive director Diana Goode. If Goode or communications director Paul Tarbox can't grab it, they have trained backup phone workers on call 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Somebody is always there.

The man on the other end of the line had a painful story that he needed somebody to hear. He hadn't gambled since 2004. He'd called the help line years ago and got set up on the state's self-exclusion lists. Connecticut has worked with its two casinos, Mohegan Sun and Foxwoods, to allow people with a problem to ban themselves from the establishments. Something like 30% of help line calls are people inquiring about the self-exclusion lists.

But this man was one of the growing number of people calling because they know they have an issue with casinos and sportsbooks but have relapsed as technology has brought gambling closer to home. He'd seen such a steady stream of Facebook ads for FanDuel and DraftKings that eventually he couldn't resist one of the sizable "no risk," free money offers to sign up. He'd started gambling again and spent his life savings, all using his phone. The casino had come to him. He could bet with one swipe of his finger, and when he'd lose, he ended up chasing his losses with in-game bets. He bet over and over again, and in just a few weeks, everything was gone. He needed help.

Goode set him up with treatment options and hung up the phone. She'd done her job, and as she tells that story, she reiterates a common theme from the problem gambling treatment community: They don't want to ban gambling. The goal is to create a safety net at a rate commensurate with the deluge of ads. "We are not here to tell you how to spend your disposable income -- we're not the fun police," she says. "We just want to make sure that as gambling becomes easier and more accessible that safeguards are in place for people who gamble and run into trouble. And that's not true in Connecticut right now. We don't have the funding."

Funding is a thorny universal issue across the country. Most problem gambling councils are nonprofits funded by casinos, lotteries and sportsbooks. In nearly every one of the 33 state legislatures that have legalized sports gambling, the bills mandated the gambling operators themselves provide funding for problem gambling councils.

"It's been harder to work with state governments than the industry operators themselves," says Keith Whyte, executive director of the National Council on Problem Gambling. "Most people would think that their state governments are of course there to protect citizens. Frankly that hasn't been the case."

Whyte gives credit to FanDuel and DraftKings, who both have employees devoted to internally advocating for responsible gaming. But he also thinks the future of funding might involve heavy investment from leagues themselves. The NFL recently gave $6.2 million to Whyte and the NPGC, which he can use to boost his staff from nine to 11 employees, beef up ads for what to do if you need help and open up a grant submission process for individual states to apply for their needs.

Whyte says he hopes the NFL will expand its investment in problem gambling treatment, while also being quick to point out what a breakthrough it is to have a league providing funding. Most big pro sports leagues in the U.S. have joined as NCPG members -- the NHL and UFC are the most notable absences -- but the NFL is the only one to make a donation. In fact, the NFL is the largest single donor in the 50-year history of the organization.

"Leagues need to cover their own butt and make sure some of their fans don't get jammed up," Whyte says. "It's a competitive advantage to take the lead in problem gambling."

FOR THE PAST few years, and for the foreseeable future, the No. 1 most effective tool for problem gambling is the help line -- if you can figure out which one to use.

On almost every front, the National Problem Gambling Council and the individual state councils are on the same page. But the litany of help line numbers remains a complicated topic.

At the end of every FanDuel and DraftKings ad or online story, there is a long paragraph with all the numbers you can call. There are usually eight numbers (not every state has a help line). The NCPG has its own number, 1-800-522-4700, and New Jersey snagged perhaps the most memorable one, 1-800-GAMBLER, which takes calls from seven different states.

But the vast majority of state help lines are devoted specifically to residents of that state. When Brown gets a call from somebody in Pennsylvania or New York, she passes them along to resources in those places.

The NCPG has broached the idea of one convenient, universal number. But the state councils largely believe there is value in keeping some autonomy and local know-how in the process. Help line conversations can be incredibly intimate and intimidating for the problem gambler on the other end of the phone. Brown thinks it is a different kind of personal interaction when she is able to say, "Oh, you're calling from Hartford? You guys got quite a bit of snow last Wednesday, huh?" and can name specific rehabs, with specific counselors, who might be able to help.

The calls themselves, though, remain a wild grab bag every day. Many states report getting close to 60-70% of calls from aggravated FanDuel or DraftKings users who can't log into their accounts or want to know the lottery numbers. Connecticut added a short, recorded menu at the beginning of a call that explains this is a problem gambling help line, not a way to help you get back to gambling, and gives options for directly contacting the companies. Still, about half of the calls the CCPG got in December were people punching the option for a live person to help them recover their account username.

All told, Brown thinks the number of serious treatment inquiries is about 30%. In December, that translated to an average of six to seven people every day.

In early January, Brown starts to tell a story about a call she had gotten earlier that morning. A woman had called about her husband, who had gambled away their life savings once and gotten help. They'd rebuilt their financial lives over the course of a few years as he stayed away from casinos.

But she'd called the help line that morning because he'd relapsed, and everything was gone again. The culprit? Legalized sports betting. "I need help," she told Brown.

Brown is halfway through that story when she says, "I'm sorry, hold on." There's muffled talking in the background. "My 2-year-old is stuck in a chair."

She has been doing this life-changing work from her house the past two years during the pandemic, all while managing new motherhood. Emilia recognizes the help line ringtone and knows that she must find something to do on her own for a few minutes if she hears it. (Does she finagle extra screen time and some bonus snacks to hold up her end of the bargain? Yes.)

Once Emilia has been unstuck from the chair, Brown picks up where she left off about the woman whose husband relapsed. Brown had run through the options for treatment, both for her and her husband. As tough as problem gambler calls can be, loved ones in pain are especially devastating to pick up. The path of wreckage behind a problem gambler can be big enough to affect generations. "When we treat people, we don't just treat the gambler," she says. "We treat the whole family, because it's a family disease."

By the end of the call, Brown has given the woman her cellphone number and contact information for treatment facilities. The woman sounded like she was hoping her husband would check into rehab. Did he? Did she get herself help, too? Perhaps she followed through on Brown's suggestion to read up on Gam-Anon, a 12-step program for friends and loved ones with a problem gambler in their lives?

Brown doesn't know. She has gotten used to the uncertainty of wondering whether a caller starts gambling again five minutes later or goes to treatment and lives happily ever after. She has a framed version of the serenity prayer hanging behind her office chair, a gift from someone she helped get into substance abuse treatment years ago. She embraces the message of the prayer, which asks for the serenity to accept the things that cannot be changed, the courage to change the things that can, and the wisdom to know the difference. She's learned to focus on the effort and let go of the results. Not everybody gets sober. But they all deserve a chance.

As she thinks about success stories, though, she remembers a recent rare case when she heard back from a problem gambler.

He said he'd called the help line and spoken to her a few years ago. He'd enrolled in treatment and hadn't gambled since. He had called back to let her know he was getting married, and was happier than ever. "That was nice to hear," she says. "A lot of the impact is left to your imagination."

Brown sleeps pretty well at night -- unless her CCPG ringtone goes off. It's rare that the night counselors on call don't get to the help line before it kicks to her in the middle of the night. But it happens once in a while and usually wakes up the whole house. Her daughter and husband know how important that ringtone is to her.

Brown says one night a few months ago, she leapt up, turned the light on and grabbed the phone. She started talking to the person on the other end of the line, and she could hear her daughter, in her quietest 2-year-old voice, say, "Dad, shhhhhhh. Mommy's helping people."

If you or someone you know has a gambling problem, crisis counseling and referral services can be assessed by calling 1-800-GAMBLER (1-800-426-2537) for residents of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, West Virginia or Wyoming. If you're in Arizona, use 1-800-NEXT-STEP. In Colorado and New Hampshire, use 1-800-522-4700. In Connecticut, use 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat. In Iowa, call 1-800-BETS-OFF. In New York, you can call 1-877-8-HOPENY or text HOPENY to 467369. In Tennessee, call or text 1-800-889-9789. In Virginia, call 1-888-532-3500. For GA information and meetings near you, check out gamblersanonymous.org.

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Inside the life of a gambling help line worker - ESPN

[Read how the Los Angeles Rams won the Super Bowl.]

During a 2012 deposition, a lawyer for the N.F.L. argued that the league was adamantly opposed to sports gambling because it would negatively impact our long-term relationship with our fans, negatively impact the perception of our sport across the country.

Today, not so much.

For Sundays Super Bowl, 31.4 million Americans are expected to place $7.6 billion in legal bets, both records and increases of 35 and 78 percent over last year, respectively, according to the American Gaming Association.

This past year, partnerships with sports gambling companies and casinos represented a significant chunk of the N.F.L.s record $1.8 billion in sponsorship revenue, with virtually every big name including DraftKings, FanDuel, Caesars, BetMGM and PointsBet getting a piece of the action.

And earlier this week, the N.F.L. reached its first sportsbook deal in Canada, in anticipation of the introduction of regulated sports betting in Ontario in April.

Its a tectonic shift its massive in terms of taking one side of one issue, and benefiting from the other side 10 years later, said Max Bichsel, the vice president of NewYorkBets.com, a sports betting research and analysis company.

For those who may have only recently started to pay attention to sports betting perhaps because of the barrage of commercials during the N.F.L. playoffs and the Olympics featuring the Manning family and other former athletes here is a guide to how the N.F.L. did an about-face in just a decade.

Very.

For decades, the N.F.L. feared that legalized gambling would commingle with match-fixing and corruption and hurt the integrity of the sport. One of the defining scandals in the N.F.L.s pre-merger days was the 1963 suspension of two major stars, the Hall of Famers Paul Hornung of the Green Bay Packers and Alex Karras of the Detroit Lions, for betting on league games and associating with gamblers or known hoodlums.

That reluctance only intensified in 1992, when President George H.W. Bush signed the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act, or PASPA, which banned sports wagering in most states, with Nevada being the most notable exemption.

N.F.L. players were prohibited from participating in events that took place at or were sponsored by casinos. The best-known example, perhaps, was when the former Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo was blocked in 2015 from attending a fantasy football event at a convention center attached to a casino in Las Vegas.

In 2014, Adam Silver, the N.B.A. commissioner, wrote an opinion piece in The New York Times supporting efforts to regulate and legalize sports betting. After all, Silver argued, underground sports betting worth an estimated $400 billion annually was already occurring, and times had changed since PASPA was enacted. Lotteries and casinos had become ubiquitous.

The N.F.L. and everyone else took notice.

This was not a light-switch moment this was very slow and very steady, said John Holden, a business professor at Oklahoma State University who has written extensively about sports gambling. The N.F.L. watched as the other three leagues jumped, and then the N.F.L. said, OK.

Just as important was the fact that two of the most prominent N.F.L. team owners, Robert Kraft of the New England Patriots and Jerry Jones of the Dallas Cowboys, were early and enthusiastic investors in DraftKings and fantasy sports. And while the N.F.L. challenged New Jerseys new sports betting statute in 2012 a case decided by the Supreme Court individual teams signed sponsorship deals with sportsbooks companies, which began spending big on television spots during the N.F.L. season.

Those contradictions were never more evident than in 2017, when the leagues owners voted overwhelmingly to allow the Raiders to move to Las Vegas from Oakland, Calif., and local officials paid $750 million in construction costs for a new stadium right off the Strip, said David G. Schwartz, an Atlantic City, N.J., native and longtime chronicler of gambling history who is now the ombuds at the University of Nevada Las Vegas.

The seismic change in sports betting, of course, occurred in 2018, when the Supreme Court struck down the 1992 law. States that had anticipated the decision, like New Jersey, got an early jump on sports betting. Leagues and teams became even more emboldened to collaborate with gambling-related businesses, including casinos and betting apps.

When the world is changing, you want control, said Oliver Hahl, a Carnegie Mellon University business professor who has studied sports authenticity and organizational theory.

To be sure, the N.F.L. and other leagues tried to exert more control by arguing, chiefly in statehouses around the country, that there should be some taxes or fees that went to the leagues, and not the sportsbooks. But the leagues have had only limited success, said Chris Grove, a distinguished fellow at U.N.L.V.s International Center for Gaming Regulation, and a partner emeritus at Eilers & Krejcik Gaming, a research and consulting firm.

A wave of scrutiny. The most popular sports league in America is facing criticism and legal issues on several fronts, ranging from discrimination to athletes injuries. Heres a look at some of the recent controversies confronting the N.F.L., its executives and teams:

A demoralizing culture for women. After the 2014 Ray Rice scandal, the N.F.L. stepped up its efforts to hire and promote women. But more than 30 former staff members interviewed by The Times described a stifling corporate culture that has left many women feeling pushed aside.

Sexual harassment claims. Daniel Snyder, the owner of the Washington Commanders, is the subject of an N.F.L. inquiry after sexual harassment allegationswere made against him by former employees. In July, the league fined the franchise $10 million after an investigation into allegations of harassmentin the teams front office.

More than 30 states have authorized sports wagering since the Supreme Court decision, and California could join them later this year. Meanwhile, New York, where the N.F.L. has its main headquarters, has quickly become the nations largest sports betting market, topping New Jersey, after just four weeks of accepting mobile bets.

In a few short years, the very idea of sports betting has been transformed from a taboo and sub rosa vice into a major business opportunity, according to a recent report from MoffettNathanson, a research firm. All the leagues have flipped positions to now embrace sports gambling with exclusive partnerships. Following the money and consumer interest, media companies have struck many deals to align themselves with various sports betting operators.

Football is the most popular sport for bettors, and the N.F.L. continues to worry about the integrity of the game. In 2019, the league suspended Josh Shaw, an injured Arizona Cardinals defensive back at the time, for betting on N.F.L. games. And any scandal that ensnares players, coaches or referees on the order of Tim Donaghy, a former N.B.A. referee who went to prison for betting on games, would be devastating.

The N.F.L. has also been under pressure to tackle compulsive gambling behavior. It started a campaign to encourage responsible gambling at the beginning of the current season, through a $6.2 million partnership with the National Council on Problem Gambling.

Still, more controls are needed, especially on in-game sports betting, which feeds into a compulsive gamblers desire for more and faster opportunities to bet, said Keith Miller, a professor at Drake University Law School. Miller spoke during a panel Wednesday on the ethics of legal sports gambling organized by Baruch Colleges Zicklin School of Business.

What the N.F.L. and the country should keep in mind, said Holden, who was also on the panel, is the experience of the United Kingdom and Europe, where legal sports betting has been more established: Both have witnessed serious gambling addiction issues.

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How The NFL Did An About-Face on Sports Gambling - The New York Times

When future historians ponder the forces that unraveled the American social fabric between the 1960s and the 2020s, I hope they spare some time for one besetting vice in particular: our fatal impulse toward consistency.

This is a good weekend for thinking about that impulse, because Super Bowl Sunday is capping off a transition in big-time sports that has made the symbiosis between professional athletics and professional gambling all but complete. The cascading, state-after-state legalization of sports betting, the ubiquitous ads for online gambling in the football playoffs, the billion dollars that the National Football League hopes to soon be making annually from its deals with sports betting companies everywhere you look, the thin wall separating the games from the gambling industry is being torn away.

This transformation will separate many millions of nonwealthy Americans from their money, very often harmlessly but in some cases disastrously, with a lot of sustainable-or-are-they gambling addictions falling somewhere in between. And weve reached this point, in part, because of our unwillingness to live with inconsistencies and hypocrisies instead of ironing them out, our inability to take a cautious step or two down a slippery slope without tobogganing to the bottom.

In the case of gambling, that tobogganing impulse meant that once we decided that some forms of gambling should be legally available, in some places, with some people profiting, it became inevitable that restrictions would eventually crumble on a much larger scale. The multigenerational path from Las Vegas and Atlantic City to Native American casinos to todays ubiquitous online gambling looks like one continuous process, with no natural stopping place along the way.

But the trouble is that societal health often depends on law and custom not being perfectly consistent, not taking every permission to its logical conclusion.

In the case of gambling, some limited permission was always necessary: Betting will always be with us, its a harmless vice for many people, and if you overpolice it, youll end up with an array of injustices.

But the easier it is to gamble, the more unhappy outcomes youll get. The more money in the industry, the stronger the incentives to come up with new ways to hook people and then bleed and ruin them. And all that damage is likely to fall disproportionately on the psychologically vulnerable and economically marginal, the strong preying on the weak.

So what you want, then, is for society to be able to say this far and no farther, even if the limiting principle is somewhat arbitrary. Did it make perfect rational sense to have the betting regime of my youth, where a couple of American cities were gambling havens for accidental historical reasons? Not really: If gambling is bad, its bad everywhere, and if its OK for Nevadans, why shouldnt it be OK for everyone? And did it make constitutional sense for this arbitrary system to be partially propped up by a federal ban on state-sanctioned sports gambling? No, the Supreme Court decided in 2018, it does not.

But that contingent, somewhat irrational, arguably unconstitutional system nevertheless struck a useful balance, making gambling available without making it universal, encouraging Americans to treat the gambling experience as a holiday from the everyday, not seriously wicked but still a little bit shameful or indulgent which is why it stays under the table or in Vegas.

And in abandoning this approach, in rationalizing our gambling regime by making it ever more universal, were following the same misguided principle that weve followed in other cases. With pornography, for instance, where the difficulty of identifying a perfectly consistent rule that would allow the publication of Lolita but not Penthouse has led to a world where online porn doubles as sex education and its assumed that the internet will always be a sewer and we just have to live with it. Or now with marijuana, where the injustice and hypocrisy of the drug war made a good case for partial decriminalization but stopping at decriminalization may be impossible when the consistent logic of commercialization beckons.

The reliability of this process doesnt mean that it can never be questioned or reversed. Part of what were witnessing from #MeToo-era feminism, for instance, is a backlash against the ruthless logic of an unregulated sexual marketplace and a quest for some organic form of social regulation, some new set of imperfect-but-still-useful scruples and taboos.

But its a lot easier to tear down an inconsistent but workable system than it is to build one up from scratch and the impulse to rebuild usually becomes powerful only once youve reached the bottom of consistencys long slope.

Im not sure where we are with gamblings cultural trajectory. But every time this playoff season served up another ad for Caesars Sportsbook, it felt like a sign that weve accelerated downward, with a long way yet to fall.

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Opinion | On Super Bowl Sunday and the Dark Side of Gambling - The New York Times

This has not happened by chance. It is a strategic and methodical effort to make sports betting seem no different than going to the grocery store to pick up a loaf of bread. The difference, however, is that gambling addiction can and will cause suffering to individuals, families and businesses. The evidence is abundant. According to the Wall Street Journal, the National Problem Gambling helpline (1-800-522-4700) received an average of more than 22,500 calls a month in 2021, up from a monthly average of 14,800 the year before. Problem gamblers carry an average of $55,000 in debt and more than 20 percent end up filing for bankruptcy.

I know the gambling industry intimately. I know how the C-suite thinks. I know what investors demand from the companies. I know how the marketing people develop strategies and promotions to get the consumer to play the games. I know because I developed those strategies. I have held positions as Senior VP of Marketing for Steve Wynn, president and COO for Donald Trump, and COO for Merv Griffin. I also owned or operated gambling operations in five U.S. States and Greece. I know the language of hooking a small-time gambler and how to land a whale, someone willing to risk tens of thousands of dollars on a single bet. But for the past 20 years, I have worked in the addiction and behavioral health field. Currently, I am the CEO of C4 Recovery Foundation, an organization that, among other things, is an advocate for individuals suffering from addiction.

To the uninitiated, this might look like the free market at work. If the activity is legal, one might ask, why shouldnt companies be allowed to attract customers by any means necessary? For the same reason, we dont let cigarette companies make smoking look fun by using cool cartoon camels. Smoking might be legal, but we know its dangerous. The same logic should apply to sports gambling.

For elected officials concerned with protecting their constituents, runaway gambling ads should be their worst nightmare. But unfortunately they are sleeping on the job. Despite studies that show a direct correlation between increased exposure to gambling advertising and problem gambling, the last time a local or state government cared about the social impact of gambling on its residents was back in 1976 when New Jersey first legalized casino gambling.

As a result of the citizens of New Jersey voting to approve casino style gambling in Atlantic City as a tool for urban development, a strict set of regulations was enacted. In 1977 the New Jersey Casino Control Act was signed into law. At the time, the state referred to legalized gambling as an experiment. Regulators and state officials were skeptical that the benefits of legal casinos would outweigh the negative. The most pressing concern was that of increased crime and the social impact gambling would have on the states residents. They were particularly concerned about increases in gambling addiction.

One of the thousands of regulations and controls the state deemed necessary was to limit advertising of the gaming products. A casino property could advertise its hotel, food offerings and entertainment, but it was forbidden to advertise the casino games themselves, including slot machines and the size of the jackpots or odds offered. That, the regulators deemed, was too dangerous to leave in the hands of the operators. Regulators were convinced that if allowed, the industry would prey on the young and those who could least afford to be spending money in a casino. Regulators knew the industry would make false and unrealistic claims about betting and would glorify the ease of winning.

The example that regulators gave was the only other legal location to gamble at the time: Nevada. In Nevada, every street in almost every town had billboards with enticements to gamble. Advertisements screaming Loosest Slots, 99% payback created a cant-lose impression. One could even play slot machines at the local grocery store. New Jersey was determined not to let the operators do to Atlantic City what they had done to Nevada. Problem gambling afflicts 6 percent of Nevada residents, according to the International Problem Gambling Center, well above the national average of just over 1 percent.

The story of New Jersey is actually a great case study comparison for what is happening with sports betting currently. New Jersey eventually relaxed many of its restrictions on advertising, as gaming expanded, and competition increased. But the state didnt surrender total control. There were still limitations and approvals needed for certain types of promotions and offerings to entice people to play the games. There was a time when every promotion required advance approval, to assure it was not misleading or unfair to the potential customer. There have been no such restrictions for sports betting.

So, what should regulators be concerned about today? Brain chemistry. The neuroscience of gambling is exactly the same as other addictive behaviors, such as drugs, alcohol, sex and eating. Like other addictive behaviors, when one gambles, the brain releases dopamine, which is a feel-good neurotransmitter that makes you feel excited. It would be logical to think this feeling only occurs when one wins, but the brain releases dopamine no matter the outcome. An individual who gets a positive response from an activity is not capable of logically deciding when he should stop betting.

The problem lies with advertising hooks. The operators of sports betting sites are not just making betting available, they are offering incentives to begin betting and to keep on betting. A good example is one site that offers a new customer $200 in free bets for making just one $5 bet.

Why does this make good business sense? The answer goes right back to brain chemistry. The operators know the more bets an individual places, the more dopamine is being released in the brain. So instead of feeling good for one single bet, they are assuring that the player is going to get several more feel-good jolts, making it very likely that the player will crave more after they have exhausted the $200 of free play.

Back in the early days of Atlantic City, every casino gave free cash to people who rode buses on day trips to the city. You could get $50 for simply showing up. The casino operators knew that most of the $50 would be deposited in the slot machines in the first hour after they arrived. With five more hours before the bus left for home, the customer would reach into his own pocket to keep the rush going. The only difference between the tactic the casinos used back then and what the online companies are doing now is that bettors are using their phones while sitting on their couch at home.

And like most products, the sports betting companies know that familiar pitch men and humor can appeal to various demographics, creating a sense of trust. Older bettors are bound to feel good seeing Brent Musburger encourage one to place a bet, and every 30- to 40-year-old will undoubtedly believe Drew Brees, having watched him play for the past 25 years, encouraging you to live your Bet life. And the even more troubling creation of fictional characters dressed in costumes having fun in a fantasy world, reminiscent of Camel Joe cigarette ads and his appeal to younger demographics, including underage individuals.

I am not suggesting that everyone who watches an ad for sports betting is going to become addicted to the activity. The reality is, like other forms of gambling, it is a very small percentage of individuals who become addicted. It is estimated that at least 2.5 million Americans have a severe addiction to gambling. But most experts agree the number is likely much larger.

There are no physical side effects as with alcohol or drug addiction. The first sign to an outsider that a person is suffering from a gambling addiction might be the loss of a home, divorce or even suicide.

But the easy accessibility of gambling products, accelerated by ubiquitous advertising, means that the pool of individuals susceptible to addiction has grown enormously, without adding some type of guardrail for the industry. DraftKings, currently the largest company providing sports betting services, believes there are in excess of 50 million bettors in the U.S. roughly one in seven Americans. And they admit their goal is not only to target existing bettors, but also to expand the aperture, meaning create new bettors.

At a recent conference of the American Gaming Association in New Jersey, when discussing the overwhelming frequency of betting ads, industry leaders asked their membership, How much is too much? They expressed a fear of backlash from legislators and gaming regulators. The last thing they want is anything that will make it harder to create new bettors. They also admitted that the current spending pace on advertising is so over top that it is not sustainable for the industry. It will undoubtedly drag some sports betting companies into bankruptcy.

But the industry cannot self-regulate. I know how the industry thinks: They will say that illegal betting has been around forever and its enough for them to include some warnings and toll-free numbers in their ads. Beyond that, theyll say, they have no obligation to protect the public from itself. But the gambling companies are not the ones who have to cover the social costs of an epidemic of gambling debt. This alone is reason enough for legislators to step in and provide the kind of national guardrails that New Jersey once applied.

In the business of gambling, the house always wins. They are going to make their money; it is just a matter of how many lives will be ruined in the process before they are mandated to change the way they prey on their victims. This Sunday, there will be one loser on the field but as you watch the blitz of gambling ads, think about the millions of losers off the field.

Originally posted here:

Opinion | The Ugly Truth Behind All Those Fun Gambling Ads - POLITICO

Each year, British punters lose more than 11bn to the gambling industry, equivalent to nearly 164 for every man, woman and child in the UK. This money-spinning national love affair with betting owes much to the liberalisation of gambling laws under Tony Blairs Labour government in 2005. The growth of the UK betting sector since then has created billionaires, such as Bet365s Denise Coates and Betfreds Done brothers. At the other end of the scale, what starts out as a harmless flutter has driven countless customers into financial ruin, family breakups, and worse.

The betting industry promotes its wares predominantly through advertising on TV, social media or via wall-to-wall sponsorship of football clubs. But gambling has always been different from other consumer products. Coca-Cola advertises in the knowledge that you probably already know how it tastes. The occasional memory jog will remind you why you like it, and might lead you to buy more and to choose Coke over Pepsi when you do. Convincing a customer to choose your brand and remain loyal is only half the battle with gambling. Betting firms also need to persuade punters that they have a decent shot at winning some money, even though in the long term at least they dont.

The gambling industry could not exist unless the bookmaker or casino had a better grasp of the odds than the punter. Thats the foundation upon which the industry is built, and its a bargain that unless they are completely delusional the gambler enters into knowingly. They bet believing they might just be the one who can beat the bookie, if not by judgment then by luck.

For six years, Ive been reporting on the human damage caused by the gambling industry. Ive heard the desperation in the voice of someone who has lost hundreds of thousands of pounds in a matter of weeks, and Ive sat with the parents of young people who had their whole lives ahead of them, until a gambling addiction drove them to suicide.

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Those affected know the trauma all too well. What is less well widely understood is how gambling companies are able to influence otherwise happy, intelligent and sociable people, causing them to act irrationally, against their own interests. The techniques gambling products use to tap into our psyches are both artful and terrible, marrying simplicity of concept with ingenuity of execution to nudge us towards dark choices.

The starting point is understanding cognitive bias. Humans are irrational we misjudge reality based on our flawed perception of it. Our love of football or support of a team convinces us that our gut feeling about a game is more reliable than it is, while our optimism tells us that, even thought the chances of winning a slot machine jackpot are stacked against us, fate may have chosen to upset the odds this time.

Kim Lund, founder of poker game firm Aftermath Interactive, has made a career out of game design and has seen at first-hand how cold, hard probability defeats the illogical human mind every time and allows the gambling companies to cash in. All gambling games are based on psychological triggers that mean they work, he tells me. The human brain is incapable of dealing with randomness. Were obsessed with finding patterns in things because that prevents us from going insane. We want to make sense of things.

Unlike many forms of gambling, poker requires a high degree of skill; if your opponent is a bad player, they are unlikely to get the better of you with luck, at least not over time. Dr Philip Newall, a former poker player turned academic psychologist, has been studying dynamics like these for much of his professional life. At the poker table, he enjoyed a degree of success because he played just one type of game fixed-limit hold em where all bets and raises are fixed at a certain amount. Newall stuck to what he knew and, for the most part, only played against people he could be fairly sure, from telltale signs such as their patterns of play, werent professionals. That background, coupled with his in-depth study of psychology, makes him well placed to explain what the industry knows and exploits about how our minds work.

Newall used to walk down Walworth Road in London, a high street replete with bookmakers shops. He would pass William Hill, Betfred and Ladbrokes, and notice they were all offering similar types of bet that went something like this: Manchester United to win 31 v Burnley and Marcus Rashford to score first. This very common type of bet is known in the trade as a scorecast. It requires a combination of events to occur at once, in this case the exact score, the winning team and the first goal scorer. As soon as you start combining probabilities of multiple events, the odds lengthen very quickly. This means that a scorecast outcome is pretty unlikely, so the bookmaker can offer what looks like a bargain 151, knowing the chances of it happening may be more like 501.

To the average person in the street, the idea of Marcus Rashford scoring the first goal to help Manchester United to a 31 win over Burnley sounds like a pretty plausible scenario. When a gambler thinks about that scorecast bet, they are picturing in their minds eye an in-form striker opening the scoring in a routine victory over an inferior team. A standard Saturday afternoon.

But bookmakers are sitting on a mine of information on their historical return from scorecasts, and will have a good idea of the difference between the odds theyre offering and the real odds. They dont publicise this for obvious reasons. That, in Newalls words, would be killing their own action, giving a disproportionate amount of information to the person on the other side of the bet. In poker, the saying is: Dont teach the fish fish being bad players you can easily take money from. Instead of teaching the fish, gambling companies try to ensure, through the types of bet they promote most heavily, that as many people opt to gamble their money on more complex probability scenarios, rather than sticking to simpler outcomes.

Jos Perales is an associate professor in the Mind, Brain and Behaviour Research Centre at the University of Granada in Spain. He has studied the same phenomena as Newall and explains that this is the result of something called the representativeness heuristic. He said: A heuristic is a rule of thumb, something you can use that works pretty well in your daily life, but can convince you to make quite serious mistakes, especially when theyre deliberately exploited, which is the case here.

The football match scenario in question is something gamblers can easily envisage happening and that they may even have seen before. It could happen. But the necessary confluence of multiple events means it is actually far less likely than it instinctively feels. There are many other possible outcomes that are just as likely.

Gambling companies are getting better and better at targeting this sort of weakness in our mental defences. Newall tracked TV adverts over two World Cups in 2014 and 2018, drawing on data collected by the Guardian data journalist Pamela Duncan. He found that standard home win, draw, away win bets (on the winner of the match) simply disappeared from one tournament to the next. These straightforward, easier-to-understand wagers featured in nearly 8% of adverts at the 2014 tournament, but had dwindled to nothing at the next. By contrast, high odds, complex bets shot up from 4% to nearly 35%. The result? A very lucrative World Cup for the gambling companies. As the odds lengthen, the gamblers ability to calculate them weakens.

This is an example of how the betting industry benefits from informational asymmetry. Online casino operators know everything about you particularly when they can track your online patterns of play and analyse the data in minute detail. The majority of punters, by contrast, know very little about the company on the other end of the bet.

Philip Newall coined the phrase dark nudges to describe techniques used by the betting firms. The phrase is a nod to the 2008 book Nudge, by economists Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein. A favourite of former UK prime minister David Cameron, the book draws on psychology and behavioural economics to examine how people in positions of authority can nudge others into making decisions that benefit them and society. The idea is that you can drive positive changes without needing to be openly coercive, which might make people resistant. Of course, you can nudge people towards poor choices, too.

Nobody will stake money on Liverpool losing 150 to Port Vale, because they know this is close to impossible. But in games that are entirely random, players exert no control at all over the success of their bet. Indeed, assuming that the game isnt rigged, nobody has total authority over the outcome. Gamblers often behave as if they do not understand this. Sociologists have observed dice players throwing softly when they want a low number and hard when they want a high one, for instance. In her 1975 paper The Illusion of Control, Ellen J Langer conducted a series of experiments that showed that our expectations of success in a game of chance vary, depending on factors that do not actually affect the outcome. One of the variables that makes a big difference to how gamblers behave is the introduction of an element of choice. In one of Langers experiments, subjects were given lottery tickets with an American football player on them. Some subjects got to choose which player they wanted, others were allocated a ticket at random. On the morning of the draw, everyone was asked how much they would be prepared to sell their ticket for. Those who had chosen their ticket demanded an average of $8.67, while those who had been allocated one at random were prepared to give it up for $1.96.

Even though the choice of a ticket had no influence on which one would be the winner, those who had made a conscious decision were significantly less willing to abandon it.

Dr Steve Sharman, research fellow in the School of Psychology at the University of East London, is a specialist in gambling psychology. He explains whats going on: If you go into a casino and youre playing roulette, they show the previous outcomes. They might show so-called hot numbers or cold numbers. A hot number is one that has come up a lot recently, while a cold one hasnt been seen for a while. By displaying them, the casino is inviting you to entertain the idea that previous spins of the roulette wheel have an effect on future spins. This, explains Sharman, reinforces something called the gamblers fallacy, or the failure to appreciate the statistical independence of turns. If Ive had 10 heads in a row, it doesnt make it more likely that tails will come up next, he says. But gamblers dont think like that. Indeed, people in general dont tend to think like that.

I came across hot numbers while reporting on fixed-odds betting terminals too. Above the machines, staff would plaster a notice advertising which numbers had been coming up a lot lately on the machines digital roulette games. This, says Sharman, reinforces the sense that you are basing your decision on something other than complete chance. At that point, youre labouring under an illusion that you have some kind of agency.

Jos Perales points out that there are different kinds of illusion of control. One type is related to the notion that some person or force other than ourselves is pulling the strings, and that our behaviour might be able to affect that force. Thats something we can recognise in those who believe in the power of prayer, or simple superstition dont walk under that ladder or youll have bad luck. The other kind is a belief in our own abilities. Thats something at play in those complex football bets the feeling that you know quite a lot about football so your instinct that Rashford will nab the first goal in a 31 win is a decent shout.

The illusion of control is a psychological phenomenon that can be particularly effective among the cohort of people most likely to be problem gamblers: young men. Perales contends that young, educated men are particularly susceptible to the mostly illusory notion that they are using their intelligence to get ahead. Their general reasoning abilities are pretty good. But that doesnt protect them from developing cognitive biases related to how gambling works. You can feed their sense of confidence and self-worth by designing the product in such a way that you increase the sense of control or the sense that you are learning something.

This could work by displaying hot numbers or nudging betters towards complex markets where they believe they are well informed. It also works with something incredibly simple, like the mechanism of an online slots game. In some games you click on spin and the reels whiz round and stop of their own accord. In others, you can stop them at a moment of your choosing.

Its very difficult to avoid the feeling that the physical process determines the outcome. But its just a random-number generator, says Perales. In other words, whether you stop the spin or you let the computer do it, it doesnt make a difference. But it somehow feels as if it does.

Make a simple bet on Tiger Roll to win the Grand National and you lose your stake if the thoroughbred throws his rider at the first fence. Theres no hiding the fact that youve lost. That isnt always the case, though. One of the most common devices that gambling firms use to placate punters and keep them coming back for more are losses disguised as wins.

On a slot machine, you might deposit some money on Egyptology-themed game Eye of Horus, set your bet to 1 and spin. Most of the time you lose the stake. A small percentage of the time you spin and get more than 1 back. But one of the other outcomes is that you lose a portion of your stake, say 50p. At that point, an animated box flashes up saying: Winner paid 50p. Objectively, youve still lost, says Sharman. But the slot machine frames it as a win.

Gambling companies have an incentive to ensure you dont twig that youre steadily haemorrhaging cash, and that informs the way games are designed. Typically, a machine might flash up with the same music and lights for a win as it does for a loss disguised as a win.

The only feedback you might get is the lights and sounds, says Sharman. So, if theres no difference between the feedback from a win and a disguised loss, thats a clever way of tricking the neurological circuitry.

In 2020, the Gambling Commission set up a working group to look into ways of making slots and other products safer. One of the results of the process was that the misleading happy music, as well as visual effects that may disguise a loss as a win, were abolished.

The reels on the slot machine spin. The first strip lands on cherries, and the second lands on cherries too. The third briefly touches on cherries and then slides on perhaps in slow motion to the lemon, or the gold bars. Behind this common image lies a strange phenomenon.

Near misses are very interesting, Steve Sharman says. Theyre consistently rated as being more unpleasant. People feel worse when they have a near miss than when theres a massive miss. At the same time, they make people want to continue gambling more.

Sharman and his fellow researchers decided to test how gamblers react to two different types of slot machine near miss: the ones where the reel spins one place too far, beyond the payline (the horizontal axis along which the crucial symbols appear); and the one where it doesnt spin far enough. Interestingly, they found that when the reel doesnt reach the payline, the gambler is more likely to keep playing, having apparently been on the brink of the jackpot. But if the reel moves one place too far, it seems to dissuade people from continuing, almost as if the chance of a win briefly materialised and must now have gone for good. Yet neither outcome actually has any bearing on the result of the next spin.

Modern online slot machine games, with multiple lines of play, are more complex than the old-school one-armed bandits. They move much faster too, in order to increase the rate at which they take your money. This makes it harder to spot near misses during regular play. But most slots have bonus features, an occasional moment where the opportunity to win a bigger prize comes up and the gambler pays closer attention, including to near misses. This is when todays slot machine gambler might be more likely to experience the emotional reaction to the perception that they almost won big.

The feeling that youre getting a good deal is another motivating factor that makes you more likely to bet. But its worth it for the house if it brings you back for a second bet at riskier odds.

One of the products that has emerged in recent years is boosted odds, where the bookmaker gives you much longer odds than you would usually get, say 151 that a good team such as Chelsea will beat a weaker side like Fulham. Sometimes this will be on offer to new customers only, as a means of driving new account sign-ups.

The same phenomenon is at play with the free bets and bonus spins that companies hand out. Its called the house money effect, explains Philip Newall. People are much more risk-seeking with money theyve won than with money theyve paid in.

If the house gives you a free spin, youve got nothing to lose. Except that such free bets and bonuses usually come with strings attached. You get them, for the most part, only on the condition that youll roll over the bet into a second or third one. Sometimes the bet has to be rolled over many more times before it can be withdrawn. The house money effect makes that whole process feel like a free ride. Of course, all the while you are becoming habituated to gambling, and youre more likely to return with your own money and to go on longer rides, this time at your own expense. The more you bet, the more youll get free bets, and the more likely that you give it straight back, says recovering addict Phil Worrall, from Nottingham. You might think youve got no money left, but if you get an email saying youll get a 50 free bet if you bet 50 of your own money, you find a way to scrape it together. Its a little hook back in.

There is a question mark over the extent to which gambling firms are deploying these techniques with precision. Some of these phenomena are so woven into the fabric of certain products that they arent so much being weaponised as a fundamental feature of gambling. If youre at a casino and you put all your chips on 25, spin the roulette wheel and it lands on 26, the only person you can blame for that near miss is Lady Luck, whatever the detrimental effects on you may be. Its a near miss, but not a manufactured one. It is self-evidently an intrinsic part of the game youve chosen.

It would, of course, be different if a digital game were designed in such a way as to make this happen more than is statistically likely.

I have spoken to many problem gamblers who are convinced this is the case that the machines are rigged to push your buttons as much as you push theirs, to maximise near misses and capitalise on psychological weaknesses. I have never seen any evidence for this and such information would surely be closely guarded by any company unscrupulous enough to deploy it.

The same goes for the early win. This is something that crops up again and again in my conversations with gambling addicts, and it is backed up by statistics. A 2019 report from the National Gambling Treatment Service, an umbrella term for several organisations offering help to addicts, found that 62% of those receiving treatment had experienced a big win at the start of their gambling career. It makes sense that hitting the jackpot soon after you start gambling or even early within a session creates a memory of that sweet feeling that might drive you to gamble more and more, hoping to recapture the same taste. Its reminiscent of the horror stories parents tell their kids about drug dealers giving out free samples to get people hooked.

In the course of my journalism, I occasionally experiment with various gambling products so that I can get a better idea of what Im talking about. On my very first go with online slots, I had a couple of big wins. (Steady on, were only talking a tenner here.) I dont know what would have happened if Id carried on gambling, but the return to player on that game was 96.09% spend 100, on average you get 96.09 back so its a certainty that Id have lost my winnings eventually.

When it comes to online casino games and slots, Kim Lund feels that something less cunning is going on: that firms are simply watching what makes money and repeating it in a robotic process of trial and error. My main gripe with the industry is that it has, to a large degree, been run by people who dont love it, who treat gamblers as dumb sheep. They see gambling like petrol: We have a commodity how do we sell it? What else can we sell them while theyre at the gas station?

The result is an evolutionary mechanism that rewards the development of addictive content while absolving anyone from the responsibility for its impact.

Breaking this cycle can be done. In the course of writing about the gambling industry, I hear inspiring stories of people like Chris Murphy, who used to gamble online secretly at night as his girlfriend slept beside him, but now works for the Sporting Chance clinic, run by former England footballer Tony Adams, helping athletes with addiction issues. Or James Grimes, who lost everything betting on football and now works via his group The Big Step to disentangle gambling from the game he loves.

But tales of recovery like these require superhuman effort and a good deal of support from friends, family and treatment services. All too often these safety nets are lacking and there is nothing to fall back on; no recourse but another spin of the wheel.

This is an edited extract from Jackpot by Rob Davies (Guardian Faber, 14.99). To support The Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.

In the UK, anyone concerned about their gambling, or that of a loved one, can visit BeGambleAware.org for free, confidential advice and support. The National Gambling Helpline is available on 0808 8020 133 and operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. The charity Mind is available on 0300 123 3393. In the US, Mental Health America is available on 800-273-8255, and the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is at 800-273-8255. Other international helplines can be found at http://www.befrienders.org

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What gambling firms don't want you to know and how they keep you hooked - The Guardian

Early in Interference, investigative reporter Dan Moldeas important and maligned study of the influence of gambling and organized crime in the National Football League, the author recounts an interview he conducted with former all-pro Alex Karras while researching the book.

A generation of moviegoers probably remembers Karras for some of his comedy roles, especially as the horse-punchng Mongo character in Blazing Saddles. In the early 1960s, Karras was a ferocious defensive lineman for the Detroit Lions, albeit a controversial one. The league suspended Karras in 1963 for gambling on games.

Karras, a blunt truth-teller throughout his life, quickly distilled the leagues real and rarely reported relationship to sports betting and what was then still mostly illegal bookmaking.

The only thing that keeps the NFL going is gambling, Karras told Moldea, and I have objected to the hypocrisy within the NFL for not facing up to that.

Karras died in 2012 still calling out the leagues sanctimony on sports gambling and its criminal failure to take action against the debilitating effects of concussive brain injury from which so many players suffered.

Published in 1989, Moldeas book was full of interviews with Las Vegas bookmaking and handicapping insiders, many of whom I knew well. Some quibbled with Moldeas conclusions, but I never heard anyone question his reporting. It was as close to the source as it gets.

That didnt prevent a book so highly critical of the NFL from being panned in many corners of the nations press. The image-conscious league has never suffered from a shortage of press-box publicists, and many savaged the story that few had the courage to pursue.

It begs the obvious to say that the NFLs hand-wringing about sports gambling has evolved since then. The league that condemned the Las Vegas Line and legal bookmakers is now married to the fastest-growing element of the gaming industry.

It has official sports betting partners in Caesars Entertainment, FanDuel, and DraftKings and has given its seal of approval to FOX Bet, BetMGM, WynnBET, and PointsBet. With 30 states and Washington, D.C. operating legalized sports betting and three other states expected to launch this year, the market is expanding at a staggering pace.

An estimated $21 billion was wagered legally in 2020. Thats up dramatically from the year before with approximately 10 percent of Americans planning to bet on NFL games, according to the American Gaming Association. The majority of wagers arent made in Las Vegas super-sized sports books, but on a smartphone.

The change has been so dramatic that it can be hard for newcomers to the current world of legalized sports gambling to fully appreciate. Not so many years ago, no one would have predicted it. Well, almost no one.

The dinosaur bookmakers and handicappers I knew always figured theyd forever be considered either outlaws or under suspicion. After all, they couldnt even take sports bets inside the four walls of a Nevada casino until 1975.

Even the new generation of sharp operators and line makers appeared to accept the reality that their world would probably always be defined by the Nevada state line. The idea of opening up shop on the Boardwalk in Atlantic City seemed like a daffy dream, especially after the passage of the well-intentioned but utterly useless Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act of 1991. PASPA was an attempt to prevent the spread of legalized sports betting in a nation boiling over with the illegal variety.

Nevada enjoyed a legislative exemption, but New Jersey and other states wanted in on the action. When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled PASPA unconstitutional in 2018, the sports betting gold rush was on.

After digging deep into the NFLs back story and gaining an appreciation for the leagues history with the sporting crowd of the upper and underworld, Moldea gained his own insight decades before the Supreme Court struck down PASPA.

On a September 1989 segment of ABCs Nightline, Moldea predicted the NFL would change its view of sports gambling as a corrupting force as soon as it found a way to grab a piece of it.

I think whats happening in the NFL is that the NFL owners want to control the gambling themselves, he told host Jeff Greenfield. I think they want to have it right in the stadium just as you would at a horse racing track where you can go to a parimutuel window and make a bet on your favorite team or any other team thats going on or any other game thats going simultaneously.

Predictably, NFL security director Warren Welsh scolded, We dont need more betting, and particularly on the National Football League, and concluded that Moldea was 100 percent wrong. Even Michael Roxborough, among the brightest of a new generation of Las Vegas sports handicappers, called the prediction too bizarre and totally outrageous.

In a line that should reverberate throughout the multibillion-dollar world of legal sports betting on this Super Bowl Sunday, Dan Moldea responded, Remember where you heard it first.

Correction on 2/13/22 at 10:51 a.m. : The original version of this column said 21 states are operating legalized sports books. There are 30.

John L. Smith is an author and longtime columnist. He was born in Henderson and his familys Nevada roots go back to 1881. His stories have appeared in Time, Readers Digest, The Daily Beast, Reuters, Ruralite and Desert Companion, among others. He also offers weekly commentary on Nevada Public Radio station KNPR.

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After grabbing a piece of the action, NFL punts its anti-gambling hypocrisy - The Nevada Independent

HONOLULU (KHON2) There was a lot of action Sunday both on and off of the field.

The American Gaming Association predicts $7.61 billion was wagered on Super Bowl LVI. Theres a new push to allow online sports gaming in Hawaii now, with revenue going somewhere you might not expect.

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Sports gambling is sweeping the nation. Its now legal in some form in 31 states and the District of Columbia after becoming federally legal in 2018. Hawaii and Utah now remain the only two states that outlaw all gambling.

Number one, you want consumer protection. You dont want that guy or gal getting ripped off from some offshore company account trace after they put their money in electronically. Number two, you want regulation, Rep. John Mizuno (D) said of pushes to legalize sports gaming.

Thats why he introduced House Bill 1815 in this session. Rep. Mizuno argues that thousands of local residents spend money on legal sports betting, not to mention those that head to Las Vegas to place action legally, especially on a day like Sunday.

You are going to see millions of dollars wagered on this game, and tens of thousands of people from Hawaii or local residents will be gambling on illegal websites that are offshore, Rep. Mizuno said. And I bet you, everybody watching this news segment. I will bet you either they or a friend or family member is betting on the Super Bowl.

He wants legal online sports betting in the islands taxed at 55%. Through the first three quarters of 2021 alone, there was about $3 billion in revenue for states.

New York just passed theirs. They have a ton of taxes on it, but its gonna go to a lot of good social programs, Rep. Mizuno said.

Take New Mexico for example. The state grants its residents paid tuition at state public universities as long as they maintain a 2.5 or above grade point average. The source of that $63.5 million is the state lottery.

Capture some of the tax revenue which could go for a lot of good things like Hawaiian Homelands, affordable housing, and education for kids, Rep. Mizuno said.

Still, there are plenty of valid concerns about gambling addiction. The National Council for Problem Gambling said about 2% of Americans are vulnerable. That would be about 28,000 Hawaii residents.

Rep. Mizuno wants revenue to also go to programs to help addicts recover.

Make sure we have a commission to watch over and so if we have someone that has an addiction to gambling, he or she can get the help that they need, he said.

Check out whats going on around the nation on our National News page

The bill passed its first reading and Mizuno is hoping it will head to the committee next. Its scheduled for the Committee of Economic Development.

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Lawmaker introduces bill to legalize online sports gambling in Hawaii - KHON2

Virtually everyone expected the advent of online casino gaming and sports betting in Connecticut to prompt an uptick in calls to the Connecticut Council on Problem Gamblings helpline, whichcounsels callers, often referring them to state-run treatment programs.

Now, few would describe whats unfolded as an uptick, which suggests a slow, gradual rise.

I didnt think it would increase this fast, Diana Goode, the councils executive director, saidin a phone interview. Normally, it takes a problem gambler a while to hit rock bottom and raise their hand. I thought wed have six months to a year to sort things out, but people are losing everything in a weekend. The speed with which people are losing all their money has been shocking as far as Im concerned.

Goode made news last month when she publicly described the increase in the volume of helpline calls since October, the month southeastern Connecticut casinos Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun and the Connecticut Lottery Corp. launched new forms of gambling the legislature had approved just months before.

At a Jan. 24 informational forum, Goode told the legislatures Public Safety and Security Committee that the number of helpline calls had quadrupled. In November, they were up 87% over the same month the previous year. Since then, the year-over-year increases have grown each month.

According to the council, from October through January, calls were up 122% over the same period a year ago.

In her testimony, Goode made sure not to sugarcoat the seriousness of the dire situations callers have reported. She told the panel she and the two other council employees handling the helpline traffic calls come in by text and internet chat as well as by phone to (888) 789-7777 heard some Monday mornings from people who had lost everything betting on sportsthe preceding weekend.

That means the helpline could be busy this coming Monday, the day after the Super Bowl, Goode said.

I made sure to raise a red flag, she said of her Jan. 24 presentation. I dont want the legislature to come back to me in a year and say, Why didnt you tell us it was so bad?

Based on the helpline calls shes taken, Goode said she worries something really bad is going to happen, meaning a problem gamblers suicide.

Among those with mental health issues, problem gamblers have the highest suicide rate, she said.

Self-exclusion not perfect

One caller, a father in his 60s, called about his 40-year-old son who had maxed out his credit card while gambling online and then had opened another account in his wifes name and maxed out her credit card, as well. What kind of protections are available in such situations, the father wanted to know. The helpline offered counseling and a referral to a Bettor Choice treatment program, of which there are 16 across the state. In eastern Connecticut, problem-gambling services are available through United Community & Family Services in Norwich.

In another case, a male college student emptied his parents bank account during a weekend gambling spree and, when his parents discovered it, told them it was a banking error. At that point, the student called the helpline.

A problem gambler who hadnt gambled in more than a year and who thought he had been self-excluded from all gambling received a gaming promotion via email, signed up for an online account and got hooked all over again.

In theory, the self-exclusion programs put in place by Foxwoods Resort Casino, Mohegan Sun and the state give those addicted to gambling foolproof protection against their own impulses. But in reality, Goode said, its unclear how effective they are.

If you ask, many of the people who sign up are still gambling, she said. The bottom line is you just cant win a jackpot.

By signing one of the casino self-exclusion forms, a person bans himself from that particular casino.

Exclusion means you may not be employed by the MPGE (Foxwoods) in any capacity and may not be in the Foxwoods Resort Casino for any reason, Foxwoods self-exclusion application reads.

Similarly, Mohegan Suns form states that those who sign up for self-exclusion will be excluded from the Mohegan Sun premises, including but not limited to all properties owned and managed by the Mohegan Tribal Gaming Authority d/b/a Mohegan Sun.

A self-excluded person who returns to Mohegan Sun is subject to arrest for trespassing and all jackpot winnings will be forfeited, the form reads. Foxwoods states it will make reasonable efforts to deny a self-excluded person access to the casino, but will accept no responsibility if a self-excluder fails to comply with the terms of theexclusion.

Casino officials acknowledge that some candidates for self-exclusion may refrain from signing up because they dont want to be banned from the casino altogether. They may need to forgo gambling but stillwant to attend a show, a restaurant or a basketball game.

Mohegan Sun offers self-exclusion for durations of one or five years orfor life. A person who has self-excluded for one or five years must request in writing that their exclusion be rescinded. Foxwoods offersa five-year exclusion that is automatically rescinded at the end of the fifth year, and a permanent exclusion.

In the case of a permanent exclusion, You cannot under any circumstances be removed from the exclusion list, Foxwoods application form says.

Jeff Hamilton, Mohegan Suns president and general manager, said a person applying for lifetime self-exclusion from Mohegan Sun must meet with casino officials and have a discussion. Applications for shorter exclusions can be completed online.

A person who self-excludes from Mohegan Sun isnt automatically excluded from the casinos digital platforms, either its casino gaming app or its sports betting app, Hamilton said. That requires a separate process.

Were talking about changing it, he said. I do think at some point well have unity.

'A huge trigger'

During the Jan. 24 forum, Goode told lawmakers that many people who had signed self-exclusion forms prior to Octobers launch of online casino gaming and sports betting assumed they automatically were excluded from the new forms of gambling. Some learned that wasnt the case, she said,when they started receiving marketing materials touting the new wagering.

What you can do is set up an account with individual vendors (DraftKings in the case of Foxwoods, FanDuel in the case of Mohegan Sun and PlaySugarHouse in the case of the lottery) and exclude through their sports betting app, Goode said. But just setting up the app can be a huge trigger for a problem gambler.

Another misconception among some members of the public, Goode said, is that its possible to self-exclude from a specific form of gambling, such as sports betting, which is not the case. She also said the casinos have not shared with the council how many people are on their self-exclusion lists, although she understands its in the thousands.

Last December, the Massachusetts Gaming Commission announced that since 2015, when it launched its self-exclusion program in connection with the opening of the Bay States first casino, more than 1,300 people had signed up. The program offers exclusion for one, three and five years, as well as lifetime.

The commission reported that 53% of the enrollees had opted for a five-year term while 3% chose the lifetime option.

In Connecticut, 446 people have signed up for the self-exclusion program the state Department of Consumer Protection maintains, according to Kaitlyn Krasselt, a DCP spokeswoman. Those on the list are excluded from all forms of internet gambling in the state.

Asked how its enforced, Krasselt wrote in an email: The self-exclusion list is shared with the operators, who ensure those on the list are unable to create an account and that any existing account is disabled. If a person is found to be gambling while on the self-exclusion list they would forfeit their winnings.

Gambling study overdue

In addition to seeking more resources for the nonprofit council, Goode is advocating for the legislature to fund a so-called prevalence study that would update gamings impact on Connecticut residents, and the establishment of a commission to oversee gaming in the state, a function now entrusted to the DCP.

Originally, the council wanted a study done before the new forms of gambling took effect and another one after online casino gaming and sports betting had been in place for some time so thattheir impact could be measured. Now, Goode said, the council will settle for the after study.

In Massachusetts, which has yet to legalize sports betting, the legislature mandated a study of residents gambling behaviors soon after casinos were approved more than a decade ago. Over a six-year period that ended in 2019, a research team surveyed the same 3,000 people five times. The studys findings, released in a 178-page report last year, recommended gambling prevention and treatment programs and provided policy guidelines.

Were definitely going to put in a bill concerning a study thats overdue, said state Sen. Cathy Osten, the Sprague Democrat who co-chairs the Connecticutlegislature'spublic safety committee. Both of the casino-owning tribes, the Mashantucket Pequots and the Mohegans, have vowed to cooperate with such a study.

Goode also called for the tribes to provide more financial support for the council. She said an extra $300,000 $150,000 from each tribe would help the council market its helpline. The gaming-expansion bill passed last spring requires each tribe to contribute $500,000 to problem-gambling programs but doesnt specify where the funds should be directed.

Goode said oversight of gaming in the state is now too big and too important to throw at DCP.

I dont think that will happen this year, Osten said of any proposal to establish a gamingcommission. Im not sure DCP is on board with it. Theyve done a decent job. Weve hired staff for them. Im not interested in spending money just to spend money.

She noted that some provisions of the gaming-expansion bill have yet to be fully implemented. The lottery has yet to open all 15 retail sports betting locations that were authorized, or introduced online sales of its draw-game tickets.

b.hallenbeck@theday.com

Editor's Note: An earlier version of this article mistakenly reversed the names of the casinos' respective online gaming and sports-betting partners.

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Magnitude of increase in calls to problem gambling 'helpline' took many by surprise - theday.com

PITTSBURGH, PA Steel City Media has debuted Bet Sports Radio on 96.9 WRRK-HD2 in Braddock. The format features all gambling programming from the Vegas Sports Information Network.

The station's primary WRRK -FM format will continue to have the Bob-FM music format, but will receive VSIN updates several times a day.

"Bet Sports Radio" will deliver news and analysis from sports betting experts and book makers to inform and entertain the growing number of people betting on sports.

"As sports betting expands within Pennsylvania and across the country, there's a real appetite for credible sports betting content," Steel City vice president Michael Frischling said in a news release. "And, with best-in-class content from entertaining hosts, sports betting journalists, professional sports bettors, and legendary oddsmakers like native son Jimmy Vaccaro, who grew up in Trafford, PA."

Brian Musburger, VSIN founder and CEO said: "VSIN is thrilled to work with Steel City Media to bring relevant, 24-7 sports betting coverage to sports fans in Pittsburgh for the first time. "The new Bet Sports Radio has a strong signal in a great sports town located in one of the top sports betting markets in the country."

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Pittsburgh HD Radio Station Switches To All-Gambling Format - Patch.com

Only a matter of months after his 12-step meetings in a church basement transitioned to Zoom calls with the pandemic lockdown, a former sports bettor named Robby started seeing the next generation of problem gamblers begin to show their faces on his computer screen.

He noticed the first new members once legalized sports betting launched in Colorado in May of 2020, and saw their numbers increase after major U.S. sports returned to action following a COVID pause. The faces, almost all of them young men, tell stories that echo his own past: A fun social activity with friends somehow veered off the rails.

Just about 100% of the time it starts out that way, says Robby, a 52-year-old school teacher in the Denver metro area who, though in recovery, spoke on the condition that only his first name be used because of the persistent stigma around gambling addiction. But then, you start realizing, damn, Im behind now and Ive got to chase this (lost) money. And your brain starts going on that hamster wheel again.

Call it a business spike, a tax windfall or a massive social experiment. By any description, Colorados sports betting frenzy passed a milestone recently: $5 billion wagered on everything from game outcomes to individual performances to wacky proposition bets.

Nearly three months shy of the two-year anniversary of sports gamblings legalization, that figure signaled massive year-over-year growth fueled by more operators, a nonstop marketing blitz and technology that has accelerated the shift of sports wagering from back rooms to family rooms. It more than doubled tax revenue earmarked for the states plan to conserve and protect water.

But the robust statistics also contrast sharply with Colorados historically small commitment, dating back to the launch of casinos in 1991, to deal with the fallout from problem gambling. Roughly $100,000 a year from the Limited Gaming Impact Fund went toward programs to provide money for treatment to uninsured or underinsured individuals and also to increase the number of counselors with problem gambling certification a shortage that persists.

The bill that legalized sports wagering in 2020 earmarks $130,000 annually to fund a 24-hour helpline (800-522-4700) as well as prevention, education, treatment and workforce development. Although unspecified substance abuse or mental health grant funding could augment that, critics contend the states commitment falls well short of the need.

Colorado hasnt prioritized problem gaming ever. And so this isnt just a sports-betting issue.

A 2016 survey referenced by the Colorado Office of Behavioral Healths 2020 strategic plan listed Delaware as the leading per capita investment in problem gambling services in the U.S. at $1.46. Colorado committed 3 cents, ranking 37th out of 40 states that provide public funding.

A national survey a year before the arrival of legal sports betting showed that 77% of Coloradans reported gambling in the previous year, compared with 73% nationally. The OBHs strategic plan estimated that the state mirrored the 2.4% national average of problem gamblers among the adult population.

But the boom in sports wagering has refocused attention on a long-festering issue, says House Speaker Alec Garnett. The Denver Democrat is one of the architects of the legalization bill that followed narrow approval of legal sports gambling in a statewide vote.

Colorado hasnt prioritized problem gaming ever, Garnett says. And so this isnt just a sports-betting issue. This is an issue around gambling and making sure that people have access to the resources that they need, whether its sports betting or table games or slots or other forms of gambling. So its time for Colorado to kind of take the lead in that position.

John Bundrick, a certified gambling counselor and outpatient provider in private practice in Salida, zeroes in on two basic flaws in Colorados sports betting rollout: One, it underestimated the speed at which sports gambling would grow; and two, it had no plan in place to deal with the negative impact from an activity now so fundamentally driven by technology.

The state currently lists 25 online operators, whose apps account for more than 99% of the legal action. Brick-and-mortar sports books Colorado has 17 have become an afterthought as bettors overwhelmingly wager before and even during games on their computers or smartphones from virtually anywhere. Early research on legal sports betting shows individuals who use mobile devices have higher rates of problem gambling and overall, the number of Americans who bet on sports grew 30%, by 15.3 million bettors, in an 18-month period ending in 2021.

I dont think they did their research, Bundrick says of legalizations proponents. Not only on the nature of growth, but the style of betting that is available with these apps. The speed with which you can place bets, withdraw your cash, move into another bet is so different from what youd think of five years ago.

Nancy Lantz, a certified gambling counselor in the Denver metro area, watched the rollout of limited stakes casino gambling back in 1991 and recalls that the games were in full swing well before there was even a problem gambling helpline in place. Once one was established, she says, the state initially contracted with Nebraska to answer the calls because for years, we had no funds for it.

Like Bundrick, she feels the explosion of sports betting caught Colorado flat-footed.

We dont fully understand how to set up prevention measures around this, Lantz says. Every other ad on TV or radio is around sports betting. Its like a perfect storm. And then we ended up with COVID, so people cant leave the house, and its so easy to do sports betting online. For a while, (people were) betting on almost anything, anything to keep the action going.

Colorados eyebrow-raising sports wagering numbers quantify the cultural sea change that has brought gambling on athletic competition into the mainstream including through partnerships with major pro sports and even colleges that once publicly recoiled from the very idea of sports wagering.

Ads dangle enticing propositions to potential sports bettors and gambling-focused sports media have proliferated, offering content to feed the growing interest of fans keen on maximizing their success.

Keith Whyte, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based National Council on Problem Gambling, notes that his organization testified in detail about what could lie ahead for Colorado, and how the state could prepare for it, as legislators considered the bill legalizing sports betting in 2019. He labels the states problem gambling response completely insufficient, and calls it a choice, not an oversight.

I do think there is a lot of cynicism amongst state legislators who see this as a painless windfall, Whyte says, referring to the influx of tax dollars. And its also true that the social costs are hard to count. We call problem gambling the hidden addiction. You dont have some of the obvious physical signs like you would with someone who has an opioid problem. The substance that people abuse is money. And thats easy to conceal.

Colorado has been among the first states to see a major university outside of Nevada buy into sports betting as a revenue enhancer. The University of Colorado Boulders sponsorship deal with PointsBet attracted national attention not only for its economic implications but also for the risk to a demographic particularly vulnerable to sports betting.

Consider, notes the NCPGs Whyte, that young, male online sports bettors are the group with the highest rates of risky behavior. Layer on top of that the massive popularity of college sports and even the number of students who are engaged in college athletics. Several studies have shown athletes being at particular risk for gambling problems.

College campuses, he says, are ground zero.

Even when sports wagering was illegal, the problem gambler Robby whose interest began when he ran $1 pools for his high school teachers fell deep into trouble once he found a college, and a bookie, and upped the ante. One failed marriage and two personal bankruptcies later, he finally faced his gambling problem through the 12-step program in 2014 and hasnt wagered since.

But he continues to attend meetings to lend his experience to the next wave.

When sports betting went legal in Colorado, and the commercials began to flood the airwaves and appear on billboards, he wasnt tempted to relapse into a world of quick, clean online apps instead of shady characters and fraught phone calls to offshore sites.

But he was angry. Hed yell profanities at the TV simply because the on-screen pitches reminded him of the pain and loss he experienced when his own behavior was out of control.

I am very secure in my recovery, Robby says. I just feel for people who I know never would have entered this realm that will probably go through suffering in their life. But I know that I cant solve all the problems in the world. I just have to take care of me.

Finding the right resources isnt always easy. The 12-step programs work for some, but while problem gambling can overlap with issues like substance abuse, counseling geared toward other addictions doesnt always address issues in the way counselors specifically certified to treat gambling can.

Recovery also can be made more difficult by lingering societal perception that gambling addiction amounts to a moral weakness rather than a medical disorder, says NCPGs Whyte, echoing public attitudes about substance abuse 20-30 years ago. Financial problems that often go hand in hand with problem gambling also can limit access to treatment.

The NCPG suggested 1% of total gaming revenue counting casinos and lottery as a benchmark for spending to address problem gambling during testimony in Colorado. But it also encouraged a comprehensive needs assessment to come up with an even better number.

There is a path forward for Colorado if they want to take responsible gambling seriously, Whyte says. But its a serious issue that requires a serious commitment, and its pretty clear thats not been the way its been perceived in the past.

From 2018 to 2020, lawmakers channeled annual Limited Gaming Impact Fund dollars to producing a legislative report and strategic plan that left zero funding to actually deal with problem gambling.

Then came legalized sports betting.

From 2020 to 2021, calls and texts to Colorados helpline jumped 45% from 6,688 to 9,686, says Peggy Brown, board president of the Problem Gambling Coalition of Colorado, a nonprofit that seeks to address problem gambling while, like Whytes national organization, remaining neutral on legalization. And with the continued expansion and marketing of operators in the state, she expects those numbers to continue climbing.

Sports betting is, at a minimum, twice as addictive as any of the other forms of gambling, Brown says. Its taxing resources.

From the $130,000 earmarked by statute for problem gambling, $30,000 goes toward running the helpline. After administrative costs, that leaves less than $100,000 in state funding for proposals to address a laundry list of needs.

Brown, whose organization has overseen the helpline since 1995, will devote much of the money to a prevention and public awareness campaign aimed at adult males 21 to 34. Still in the planning stages is a program to address problem gambling on Colorados college campuses. Starting next month, Colorado counselors will be able to attend webinars to work toward national certification in problem gambling. Currently, the PGCC lists only seven counselors statewide who hold that credential.

Thats a lot to fit under 90 grand, says Brown, who remains optimistic that lawmakers will re-examine how Colorado deals with gambling addiction.

Garnett, the state House speaker, says he expects to run a robust problem gaming bill this session as well as another that will address shortcomings in the states existing gambling legislation. While he feels that the rollout of legal sports betting has largely succeeded in moving activity from the black market to the regulated marketplace, he acknowledges that some of the promotional enticements from operators may need another look.

There are some things that weve done around boosts and promotions and other things that have incentivized consumers to come into the regulated marketplace that now we can start to think through unwinding, Garnett says. So I think youll see what I would call a clean-up bill going forward and then a problem gaming bill.

In terms of funding, Garnett points to the Hold Harmless Fund, created to reimburse organizations financially harmed by the impact of sports betting, as a possible source, rather than revisiting the existing allocation of tax revenue to state water projects a popular feature that helped fuel the narrow win for sports betting at the ballot box.

I dont think we have to pit voter intent around water against creating a better mental and behavioral health system for problem gaming, Garnett says. I think theres ways for us to carve out consistent revenue and seed revenue that will help get these ideas off the ground.

Clinical experts point out that this newer iteration of problem gambling tends to escalate faster than previous forms of social gambling. Casino gambling, for instance, featured built-in speed bumps, because it took time and effort to get to physical locations in the first place.

In that scenario, says Bundrick, the Salida counselor, it could take five years or so before problem gambling emerged.

With the help of technology, the process moves faster. And while some reports show an increase in women betting on sports, Bundrick says hes seeing primarily younger adult males. Some may have come into their first job that provides an independent source of income, or if theyre at the tail end of their college years they may still have access to student loans or parental bailouts.

Not only is younger bettors concept of money different, but the advertising pitches appear to offer something close to a cant-miss proposition. Some clinicians compare the seduction to a drug dealers spiel: The first ones free.

The incentivization is different, Bundrick says. Its just, Hey, place a bet, were going to guarantee a win. From an addiction standpoint, theres just nothing like it. So that can already create some real distorted thoughts around, Oh, yeah, this is going to be easy.

Hes heard the same refrain from many young sports bettors over the last few months. After theyve collected on a big win, they start to envision a fun recreational pastime as a side gig, if not a primary means of making money.

Theres just a lot of weird pieces to this that it just seemed like 10 years ago there would have been harsher boundaries, Bundrick says. And the boundaries now are very amorphous.

That shifting landscape led Joshua Grubbs, a psychology professor and researcher at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, to plan a grant-funded, long-term study that zeroes in on sports wagering in the U.S. Fueled by fantasy sports action and compounded by growing legalization and, particularly, technology like mobile apps, sports betting has raised new questions about how this piece of problem gambling differs from others.

But he adds that little has been done to find answers.

Historically, both research and treatment of gambling disorders has been comically underfunded, Grubbs says. And I use that comically somewhat sarcastically its quite frankly not funny at all. Gambling, and all behavioral addictions, have been the redheaded stepchild of addiction research for generations now, and have just never received the same types of fundings from federal agencies that other addictions have.

His study will follow 4,000 American adults over two years to determine betting behaviors, prevalence of depression and anxiety, PTSD and substance addiction. It will track the participants intermittently to see if we can figure out whats predicting people transitioning from not having a problem to probably having a problem, as well as trying to isolate the specific risk factors.

With the increasing popularity of sports betting, Grubbs says, his worst-case scenario is that well see exploding levels of gambling addiction. That said, he doesnt think the problem gambling population will ever exceed 1 in 20 people and that estimate could well be on the high side.

But even at those numbers, he adds, the available resources for treatment remain woefully inadequate and most counselors are ill-equipped to treat gambling addiction.

Brown, the volunteer board president for the state coalition, successfully weathered her own 25-year battle with problem gambling starting with dog racing, then casino gambling and, when limited stakes blackjack didnt give her the rush she craved, slot machines. She quit in 1998, through a 12-step program whose final step pointed her toward service.

Late last month, she picked up the office phone and found herself talking to a 26-year-old former college athlete who developed a sports betting habit about two years ago, when it became legal in Colorado. Although employed with a six-figure income, he managed to rack up $50,000 in debt. Embarrassment gave way to depression and suicidal thoughts.

After nearly an hour on the phone she connected him with a professional counselor. She says his story is typical of what she hears several times a week.

Im a little different in that I can say I understand, been there, done that, hear you, Brown says. I told him theres help. Theres hope.

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With sports bets in the billions, Colorado lags on tackling problem gambling - The Colorado Sun