You can’t go anywhere without encountering sports betting these days. Watch ESPN, and you’ll see betting lines on every game. Sportsbook apps advertise on television and sponsor sporting events.
Recent gambling scandals involving Major League Baseball pitchers, pro basketball stars, and coaches have kept sports betting in the headlines as well. These came on the heels of other scandals in professional and college sports over the past few years.
It used to be that you had to go to a sketchy joint in a less-than-savory area of town to bet on sports. Now you can bet on a game or even a single element of a game right next to your Instagram app or your email app. It’s tremendously easy and ubiquitous.
Yet sportsbook commercials promise big winnings with the finest of fine print on the screen that says something like, “Please gamble responsibly,” as if “gambling” and “responsibility” go hand in hand. What we don’t hear about is the cost of sports betting, particularly to young men.
The Colson Center released a video about the toll that sports betting takes on people, and it brings up three key points.
First, sports gambling is addictive and destroys lives. During the 2024 NFL season, $34 billion in bets were placed. That’s a third more than the prior year, and 100% more than six years ago, when sports gambling was re-legalized. During that time frame, sportsbooks have raked in over $300 billion. All that money isn’t coming from winners.
Since the Supreme Court ended a federal ban on sports gambling in 2018, we’ve seen an increase in bank overdrafts, credit card balances, and delinquent debt. Sports bettors are 25% to 30% more likely to declare bankruptcy.
Second, sports gambling victimizes the innocent. One of the primary arguments for legalizing this kind of gambling is that it doesn’t harm anyone. So, why should the government tell people what they can do with their money? However, money problems and addiction are plagues on households, and sports gambling brings home the worst of both things. In the process, other social pathologies are made worse.
There’s a correlation between sports betting and domestic violence. States that allow people to gamble on sports have seen a 9% increase in domestic violence incidents. Ask the woman or child who becomes an abuse victim when a husband, boyfriend, or father loses money on a bet whether sports betting is a victimless problem.
Third, sports gambling corrupts sports. People play and watch sports for the athletic competition and team spirit. However, when gambling is introduced, athletes are incentivized to change or even degrade the way they play. Officials are tempted to cheat, and fans forget why they enjoyed a sport in the first place, focusing instead on financial gain.
Related: What Can College Sports Do About Its Biggest Problems?
This circles us back to the scandals. It’s not just the NBA stars playing cards with underworld figures or pitchers affecting prop bets; it’s Olympic stars, college baseball coaches, and tennis stars fixing sporting events. The 1919 Chicago White Sox and Pete Rose paid a hefty price for their dalliances with gambling, and successive generations continue to damage the trust that sports fans have in the institutions they love.
Sports betting isn’t harmless fun. It hurts individuals and families, and it ruins lives.
Sports betting is everywhere — on your TV, in your apps, and now in the headlines, thanks to scandal after scandal. The industry keeps telling you it’s “harmless fun,” but the data paints a very different picture: addiction, broken families, bankruptcies, even corruption inside the games we love.
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