Daily Archives: February 15, 2022

[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

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

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

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