Sports Gambling Opinion
If you’re on campus and walk up to any given male over the age of 21, there is a high chance they have an online sports gambling account. Four months ago, Missouri became one of over eighty percent of states to legalize sports betting. Furthermore, 32 states have legalized online sports betting, making it more accessible than ever before.
In America, we are in the midst of a mental health epidemic. According to The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, one in every five people with a gambling disorder has attempted suicide. Additionally, gambling addicts are 15 times more likely to die by suicide. When the second-leading cause of death for Americans under the age of 24 is suicide, and that demographic is the most likely to gamble on sports, it becomes evident we can’t let sports gambling go unregulated.
So what can be done about sports gambling? To find out what can be done, we have to go to the root of why people are betting on sports in the first place. According to the University of Maryland, over 80% of those who have placed an online sports bet have done so with a promotion, such as “risk free” bets. These are far from risk free, as they don’t return your money to its original account if you lose. Another common promotion involves ‘free’ bets which give users up to thousands of dollars to wager; however, if you win, you receive betting credits rather than real money. These promotions are often the basis of where people get the idea they can win money by sports betting, which is overwhelmingly untrue. Around 80% of sports bettors believe they can at least break even. In reality, that number is less than 3%. Not a single state has banned these promotions, and only three have banned the use of the words “risk free.” The term “risk free” is a blatant lie—and at a minimum, the term needs to be banned. Moreso, banning these promotions outright would prevent a substantial number of people from beginning sports betting at all.
Additionally, not a single state has regulated sports betting advertisements beyond two that mandate the gambling helpline number be included. In 2024, almost a billion dollars was spent on advertising sports gambling. It has infiltrated the leagues themselves according to mediapost.com No longer is it just a TV ad you see in between innings or during a timeout. In 2025, I had to watch my beloved Milwaukee Brewers and Bucks on the Fanduel Sports network. Every second of every broadcast had advertising for Fanduel sports, as their logo was in the corner of the scorebug, or screen, telling you you’re watching on the FANDUEL sports network. At games there are banner ads and paid integrations during breaks. The advertising is completely unavoidable. Children are now being raised seeing sports gambling being intertwined, and indistinguishable, from the sport itself. America banned advertising for cigarettes when it was revealed how harmful they were to people. We already know how harmful gambling is, and we have a chance to get ahead of the tragedies and ban advertising for sports betting before generations have it normalized.
I’m not outright saying we need to ban sports betting – that would be hypocritical. I’ve bet on sports in the past, legally, as I was over 18 and in Australia. However, I had to seek out a bar with a machine which enabled sports betting. It wasn’t as easy as pulling out my phone and tapping a few times and spending money before I could even think twice about it. Sports betting can be fun. It can make a game you otherwise wouldn’t care about a bit more interesting. However, the potential for abuse means that something has to be done about it. The cat’s already out of the bag; re-criminalizing sports betting likely won’t happen within any of our lifetimes. Instead we need to seek out ideas and policies that can reduce the amount of harm it can cause. Doing things like banning advertising and promotions, putting restrictions on prop bets and live in-game betting, and forcing companies to show customer data on losses could potentially save thousands of lives.
