I've been thinking about writing some variation of this post for a very long time. It’s long. I’ll include some videos to provide a break.
If you watch or listen to sports on television, radio, online, or in person, you are inundated with advertisements for sports betting. All of the professional sports leagues and some (many?) individual sports teams have partnerships with various gambling companies such as FanDuel, DraftKings, and BetMGM. Even if you are able to ignore the commercials, the announcers give live odds with graphics showing them. ESPN highlights scores and schedules via the scroll on the bottom of the screen but will also show game odds. It's impossible to avoid sports betting. More on this momentarily.
Virginia legalized sports betting in April 2020. Online sportsbooks started accepting wages in early 2021. I downloaded the BetRivers app several months after that. I got some type of sign-up bonus and deposited maybe $50 or $100 of my own. I was down to the last few dollars in my account for the 2022 NCAA men's basketball tournament championship between Kansas and North Carolina. I had some type of bonus bet where I picked Kansas to win the national title before the tournament began and would get a pretty good payout if the Jayhawks won. If I lost, I told myself that I wasn't going to make another deposit, and I would be done with sports betting. Kansas won, so I won.
First break!
I signed up for FanDuel in October 2022 and transitioned away from BetRivers. I started on DraftKings in February 2023, probably thanks to some type of Super Bowl promotion. I don't think that my initial deposit on either site was more than $10. While I'm not 100% sure of the accuracy, in my three years on FanDuel, I believe I have won about $150. I think I'm up around $500 on DraftKings. That sounds pretty good, and winning is definitely better than losing, but I'm starting to think I have a problem.
What concerns me most about the prevalence of sports betting is the impact on kids, primarily for those from the ages of about 12-25. (And yes, I know that people in their 20s aren't really kids.) Actually, it's not the prevalence of sports betting; it's how easy it is to bet which is concerning. I knew a bookie when I was in college. I made one wager with him on the January 1996 Steelers-Cowboys Super Bowl and that was it. I've also made a few bets at sportsbooks when visiting Las Vegas over the years. In both those cases, you had to physically go somewhere to make a bet. Now, all you have to do is download an app and you can make bets on all kinds of things 24/7. Sure, wagers on football (NFL and college), baseball, and basketball are probably the most common in America, but you can wager on anything. Snooker, badminton, tennis matches in Argentina or Indonesia. Any soccer league in the world. There is always the opportunity to make a wager on a live sporting event. And yes, I'm guilty of doing this.
Here's a video of me in Iceland going between the tectonic plates separating Europe and North America!
Lucy (my cat) often wakes me up around 5:00 AM. After I feed her, I regularly go on my phone to check email, see if anything big is happening in the world, and find out whether I won or lost bets from the previous night. I've also been known to make a wager on some live tennis or soccer matches without knowing anything about the players or teams. I should probably mention that I historically wager about $10-$15 a day. Nearly all of my wagers are $1. Sometimes, I go crazy and make a $2 bet on a game. Relatively low stakes, but I spend way more time on betting sites than I should. I also follow at least a dozen sports betting people on Twitter and check out a few different sports betting shows online. As I wrote above, I've had some success, and winning money is obviously better than losing. However, the issue isn't the money. It's the time. I don't think I want to know how much money I've made per hour spent on the betting sites or reading/following bettors. It must be insignificant. Actually, what’s even worse for me is the FanDuel Faceoff app. You play various cards or strategy games (such as Freecell solitaire and Boggle) against people for money. Even when you when, FanDuel wins. And when you lose, FanDuel wins more. By the way, I'm glad there wasn't a Minesweeper game like this when I was in college. I would still be in debt.
While I try to hide it from them, my kids have seen me on the sports betting apps. The Moose (14) seems to only care about sports. He loves ESPN. I'm pretty sure he's seen the Bad Beats segments they have on Sportscenter. Although I don't watch Pat McAfee, I know that he does, and there's probably some sort of gambling aspect on the show. (At a minimum, ESPN shows odds on the bottom scroll.) The Moose recently asked me how old you need to be to bet on sports. I was leaning towards stopping sports betting before he asked me this, but this sealed it. Do as I say, not as I do doesn't really work. It's time to delete the apps, but it's not that easy. And this is another way that the sports gambling sites get you. Courtesy of some boosts, I have several season-long wagers. I have $10 (to pay out $21.50) on the Steelers making the playoffs. $5 (to pay out $10.45) on Sidney Crosby having more regular season points than Jack Hughes of the New Jersey Devils. $10 (to pay out $27.40) on the Washington Wizards winning over 20.5 games. (As I'm typing this, the Wizards are 3-16. I thought they could win 25% of their games. Looks like I have chosen poorly.)
With the cash out option gone, it seems like these apps will remain on my phone through the end of the NHL and NBA seasons until these bets are settled.*
The Moose is probably one of thousands if not millions of people asking the same questions. When can I start betting? How much money can I make? When The Moose asked me about sports betting, I tried to explain to him that the reason there are so many betting commercials is because the sports books are making millions of dollars.
I don't think I shared this story before. I got my Masters degree in Higher Education and Student Affairs. For one of my classes, two of my classmates and I did a small research project on gambling among students at our school. I remember very little about this. I'm sure we had some theories or conclusions, but I don't recall what they were. However, at around the same time as we finished a paper, I attended a student affairs conference and went to a session about gambling among college students. The basics of the session was that there was a lot of programming and resources dedicated to combating binge drinking and alcohol abuse. There was nothing about gambling prevention/education and very little research into this. I really could have done a substantial paper/project about gambling among college students with one of my professors, but I was too lazy. I was already overwhelmed trying to balance school and work. I didn't have the time or energy to do a project in my "spare time." All of this is to write that I truly hope there's more research and activities about this now. I can't imagine how many college students are addicted to sports betting and how many are in debt.
To start, I'm going to delete the FanDuel Faceoff app and unfollow some accounts on Twitter. Then, I need to lead by example and completely stop betting.
* Though not the point of this post, I'm sure there's a way to delete the apps, download them again in April or May, and cash out, and then delete the apps again.
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