The massive growth of the sports betting industry in the past years has led to both economic benefits and concerns over public health.
Just six years ago, a federal law from 1992 called the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act made it illegal for anyone to wager on sports. But since the Supreme Court overturned that law in 2018, citing it as an “affront to state sovereignty” to prevent sports betting’s legalization, 38 states have legalized it (though not all have implemented it), while 30 of those (including North Carolina since March) allow online betting. U.S. adults legally betted $120 billion on sports in 2023, and according to the North Carolina State Lottery Commission, account holders in North Carolina bet $370 million in August 2024. As a result, Goldman Sachs expects sports betting in the U.S. to become a $45 billion industry when it reaches maturity.
Popular betting apps such as BetMGM, DraftKings, Fanduel, and ESPN BET are spearheading the online gambling revolution. These digital sportsbooks are changing the way players gamble; parlays, or combinations of multiple wagers into one bet, have become increasingly popular. Sports betting executives have noted players’ interest in personalized bets. One analyst from Goldman Sachs Asset Management, Noah Naparst, predicts that forms of betting will become even more sophisticated in the future: “‘You’re watching a basketball game in your betting app, and a player is about to take a free throw. The odds that he or she makes it pop up on screen, and the app asks, ‘Do you want to do this bet or not?’ That’s where the industry is heading.’”
These invasive strategies are a threat to public health, according to experts. Calls to gambling addiction hotlines have increased in the past few years, but experts in addiction note their relative inexperience with gambling addiction, as compared with alcohol and cigarettes. Most of the victims of gambling addiction are young men whose prefrontal cortices have not fully developed, making them more vulnerable to losing tens of thousands of dollars. The industry is so new that there are few regulations on, for example, whether players can use credit to make wagers. As a result, states that have legalized sports betting have seen moderate decreases in credit scores and increases in bankruptcies, especially for young men in low-income counties.
Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Representative Paul Tonko (D-NY) have introduced legislation to regulate sports betting in response to these effects. The bill, which is called the Supporting Affordability and Fairness with Every Bet Act (SAFE Bet Act), would limit customer deposits, ban sportsbooks from advertising during live events, and ban the use of AI to track user habits. Since sports betting is also a source of tax revenue for the states, raising $505.96 million across the country in the third quarter of 2023, legislators are focusing on preserving the economic benefits of the business while minimizing its public health consequences.
