If you’re a sports fan, you’ve probably noticed the rapid expansion of gambling apps. Companies like FanDuel, MGM, DraftKings, and even legacy media companies like ESPN are all making it remarkably easy to place bets on everything from what will happen during a single at-bat in an Arizona Diamondbacks game to who will end up as the WNBA’s most valuable player.
There’s nothing new about gambling, of course, but legal sports betting is a very recent phenomenon. It’s making a lot of companies very rich very quickly, and convincing a lot of first-time gamblers that they, too, are going to get very rich.
It’s a trend that worries Jonathan Cohen, the author of a new book on the subject called “Losing Big: America’s Reckless Bet on Sports Gambling.”
Cohen joined The Show to discuss that, while the legalized gambling explosion may seem sudden, it’s actually a moment we’ve been building towards for decades.
Full conversation
JONATHAN COHEN: Over the course of the late 20th century, we saw a gradual liberalization of American gambling laws, starting with the legalization of of charity bingo, then lotteries, then tribal casinos, then non-tribal casinos, and then daily fantasy sports, and now sports betting.
So sports gambling, it was in fact, you know, a long part of American history and a long part of American sports and sort of appeared to be on a slow trajectory towards legalization. Congress, with the cooperation of the sports leagues, put a damper on that in 1992 with the passage of the Professional Amateur Sports Protection Act that blocked states from legalizing sports gambling. And in 2018, the Supreme Court overturned that law, effectively permitting states to legalize sports gambling if they wanted to.
SAM DINGMAN: Right, and since that, the decision was overturned, 38 states, as of this recording have gone ahead and and legalized sports gambling, and the numbers to my mind are are pretty staggering. The estimate is that 20 to 40% of Americans have placed at least one bet on sports since 2018. I mean, did that bowl you over as much as it did me?
COHEN: Yeah, and I'll say that that number is who have bet on sports legally, not to mention which is important because Texas and California don't have legal sports betting yet, but eventually those two states are going to legalize and the size of the market is effectively going to double.
DINGMAN: My goodness, I did, yeah, I mean, these are just staggering, staggering numbers to think about. Have you gambled on sports yourself?
COHEN: Yes, I did before the 2018 Supreme Court decision, and I have somewhat recently.
DINGMAN: OK. Can you, would you be able to say personally, like, what is it about sports gambling that that you like?
COHEN: I would say for me personally, sports was a big part of my, of my youth and specifically sports fandom. And you know, as I've gotten older, you know, the, the, the edges of my fandom have sort of receded and my fervor for sports have sort of receded.
And as my wife, who's not even a sports fan, can attest, it is so easy to put $5 on a game, to put 10 cents on a game, and immediately the stakes of that game that you have no control over, it's taking place in Houston between two different, two basketball teams. You don't even know any of the players' names or anything. The stakes of that game could not feel higher, could not feel more consequential when you literally have 10 cents on the line.
So I think as a matter of just excitement, sports betting in that way can be fun and should be generally permissible.
DINGMAN: OK, OK. So let's get then to why for you, this is potentially a crisis.
COHEN: There is mounting evidence that sort of what I initially suspected and what drove me to write the book in the first place is, is sort of now being verified through research, which is that in states that have legalized online sports betting, the rates of bankruptcy rates, of credit card delinquencies, reduced savings and investment in the stock market, particularly in low income households, not to mention indicators, and it's notoriously hard to track, but indicators that rates of problem gambling or gambling addiction or even sort of a lesser version of it, sort of problematic play, hazardous play, that rates of all those have been increasing, particularly among young men.
This is not just a benign new gambling activity, but this is a mounting public health crisis.
DINGMAN: And how is problem gambling, dangerous gambling defined?
COHEN: The American Psychiatric Association has a, you know, a list of 10 behaviors, I guess, and, and, you know, a certain exhibiting a certain number of those behaviors within a certain time period is evidence that you have, you know, you are either at risk for a gambling addiction or you have a gambling addiction.
The, the most common one that, you know, I'm myself I'm guilty of, of, of doing is, is chasing your losses, you know, if you lose a bet and you feel like you have to double down or you have to place another bet to try to get back what you just lost.
But they ranged to much more severe, you know, from thinking about gambling all the time, to lying to friends and family or therapists about the extent of one's gambling to committing a crime in service of gambling or in service of getting money for gambling.
DINGMAN: Yeah. Well, so speaking of like the diagnostic environment around this, something I was thinking about, and I wonder if you could speak to this at all, is that there are other things that are legal in American life that are addictive, alcohol, you know, certain, painkiller medications like these things are legal, but they're also addictive. Gambling also legal, also potentially addictive, but notably not a substance. It's almost like it's more of like a psychosis.
COHEN: Yeah, so this is, I mean, what you're, you're referring to is actually something that's very unique about gambling, which is that it is the only behavioral addiction categorized as such by the American Psychiatric Association.
Unlike, you know, you might think of, you know, kleptomania or sex addiction, those are, those are sort of often referred to as addictions, but are not actually formally categorized as like technical addictions.
Gambling addiction is, is categorized that way because of the recognition that when you are addicted to gambling, that addiction rewires your brain, you know, affects your brain chemistry as if you were taking drugs.
Because people are going to get addicted to it by increasing the number of people who have access to it, you are by definition going to increase the number of people who are addicted.
DINGMAN: Yeah. So what are some solutions you might suggest to moderate?
COHEN: This a little bit, put some, put some backstops in place. So in the book, I, I have all sorts of policy ideas for things to fix sports gambling, you know, deposit limits, how much do you can deposit within a certain amount of time, affordability checks to prove players who are given a lot of money can afford what they're actually playing, limiting advertising, all sorts of other things that either the sports books could put in place themselves, or if they're not going to win, spoiler alert, they never will, states could regulate and could require them to change about their behavior.
But there are all these new companies coming out that are probably never going to be required to follow any policy of any kind. So what's even the point of gambling regulation?
Of course, I think it's valuable and I think it should happen, but until regulators figure out what to do about those companies. I'm, I'm, I'm fearful that regulation might only go after the good faith actors when they're gonna be, when there are still so many bad faith actors out there.
I do think that there are actual solutions that are, that, that should happen regardless of public policy and sort of the shape of regulations, and these would be sort of on the cultural side and on the attitudinal side.
You know, I, I, for example, I think this current generation of young men was basically caught flat-footed and their teachers and their parents and, and, and the like were caught flat-footed by the rise of sports gambling and how quickly it has taken over, these, these young men's finances and their mental health.
And we know how addictive it is now. We know how these apps are designed and we could better prepare younger generations to deal with gambling as adults, and we could destigmatize gambling addiction, and we could normalize calling for help when they need help. These are things I think that should happen that would help acclimate a new generation to the new normal, and the new normal is gambling on your phone at all times.
