Increased Sports Betting Can Lead to Financial Difficulties such as Rising Debt and Bankruptcy
Americans have wagered almost $450 billion on sports since the Supreme Court struck down a federal law prohibiting sports gambling in 2018. On average, households spend $1,100 a year on sports betting while cutting back on investments and oftentimes spending more on cable TV and other forms of entertainment. Broadcast Retirement Network’s Jeffrey Snyder discusses the financial impact to sports betters with East Carolina University’s Michelle G. Malkin, JD.
Jeffrey H. Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
This morning on BRN, are Americans betting their futures on sports? Joining me now is Dr. Michelle Malkin of East Carolina University’s Gambling Research and Policy Initiative. Dr. Malkin, so great to see you. Happy New Year. Thanks for joining us this morning.
Michelle G. Malkin, JD, East Carolina University
My pleasure. I’m happy to be here.
Jeffrey H. Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Yeah, it’s great to see you. And I know we’re talking about sports betting, and I want to talk just at a very, very high level. I mean, since 2018, many states have legalized sports betting in a lot of different ways.
Seems like the states are making out, are Americans making out?
Michelle G. Malkin, JD, East Carolina University
Well, that’s kind of complicated. So prior to 2018, quite a few people were already betting on sports legally, as well as unlawfully. So legally, because people were able to bet on sports at sports books, at casinos and other places, it just wasn’t available necessarily at the palm of their hand, unless they were doing offshore wagering.
So wagering on sports has been around, people have had bookies, things like that. But since 2018, state after state after state has legalized the use of mobile sports wagering. And that means that the sports wagering is legal and at the palm of their hand, as well as they still have those sports books and other things.
What we see with legalization is that prevalence does go up, meaning more people are wagering on sports, as well as the possibility of people facing gambling related harms. Because what we have seen is in every single state that passes new gambling legislation, we see a huge growth in people who have called the hotlines for help. But just to know, about 50% of the people who are calling the hotlines are actually affected others.
Their parents, their spouses, there are other people in somebody’s life who are concerned about somebody else’s gambling. And then the other 50% are people who are actually seeking resources themselves. We’ve actually had people calling hotlines.
Sorry, I didn’t mean to go in.
Jeffrey H. Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Go ahead.
Michelle G. Malkin, JD, East Carolina University
I’m sorry. I interrupted you. We’ve had people calling hotlines to actually try to understand how to bet on sports correctly, which is not what the hotlines are for.
And so the hotlines are just available now. People are more aware of 1-800-GAMBLER and these other ways to call for help. But a lot of people don’t know where to get the information on how to do sports wagering in a healthy way.
What we also see is that females are more likely to engage in the new legalized form of gambling once it’s legal, more so than males who are already gambling. And so they just switch to these other platforms. Finally, I’ll say that the legalization has led to a huge number of advertising around sports wagering, whether it’s on social media, it’s on your TV, it’s on the radio.
There’s just all these ads. And when it goes legal in a state, a lot of these ads offer a lot of bonus bets. So they try to get people in, you know, deposit $10, you’ll get $250 in bonus bets.
So they get people in by these like huge incentives to start gambling.
Jeffrey H. Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Yeah, my apologies for interrupting you, doctor. I didn’t mean to do that. Sometimes hard to discern.
I had a lot to say right there. No, that was very good. But sometimes I have a difficult time discerning beginnings and endings of sentences.
But $14.2 billion, that’s a lot of money that booking operators have brought in. I want to ask, you talked about the gambling hotline. I was watching the NFL playoffs this weekend and virtually in between every segment of the program, they were talking, they had a gambling component.
So do we need to spend more time educating people about the challenges with gambling? I know that they do have, you know, I saw one famous quarterback or some famous actor saying, you know, you can always call the gambling hotline, but do we need to do more education for people before they jump in and download that app on their phone?
Michelle G. Malkin, JD, East Carolina University
The problem that we have is that we say, if you have a problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER or whichever hotline. But we haven’t educated people on what it looks like to have a problem. Is it suffering from one gambling related harm, losing your money for rent or mortgage once, or is it you have to do that multiple times?
What does it look like to have a problem with gambling has not been educated. So it’s really important that we start with people who are young and continue on with an education process of this is what gambling is, because I can’t tell you how many people don’t know that lottery is gambling. They’re always like, me buying a scratch off is gambling.
And I’m like, yeah, you’re risking something for the hope of getting something more. But they don’t even understand necessarily if their behavior is gambling. And then they don’t know the signs of somebody going down that pathway towards gambling disorder.
You know, suffering from one gambling related harm does not equal somebody having a problem with gambling. It means they bet more than they should have once. But a multiple types of issues, not just financial, but social, possibly legal, can happen as somebody goes down that pathway.
But we don’t know how to. We haven’t done a good job educating people on what those harms look like, because what happens with a lot of people is they think they’re the only one. I’m the only one who ever maxed out my credit card.
I’m the only one who chose to open a P.O. box so I could hide my bills. I’m the only one because they don’t know that these are common types of traits of somebody who has gambling disorder. It’s it’s a hidden disorder.
So we have to figure out the ways to identify it so that people understand whether they themselves or somebody they care about is suffering from gambling disorder.
Jeffrey H. Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Yeah, certainly. I don’t know if it’s a public service campaign or if it’s shows like this and other mediums or maybe even a regulatory requirement, although, you know, I don’t know how you how you do that. But a regulatory requirement is part of the disclosure, like you are taking part in betting.
And this is what some of these things look like. I mean, I guess that could be part of a campaign.
Michelle G. Malkin, JD, East Carolina University
The other thing is people don’t even necessarily know if the application that they’re using is a legal or illegal. Sites, because there are so many applications and they’re advertising to them in their state, they think automatically it’s one of the approved vendors for sports wagering. But in fact, you’re they’re getting people who are, you know, applications trying to get them to start betting on their site that have absolutely no legality because they look the same.
And so we have no way of educating people. These are the only sites you’re supposed to use. You’re protected more by these sites.
So that that’s a big thing. But we really when it comes to education, we need to start, you know, when they’re young with some of this. And so there’s curriculum that already exists and there’s some new curriculum that’s coming for adolescents.
And then we at the GRPI are actually developing a new curriculum for college students that might be able to also be used with other emerging adult groups. And because this curriculum didn’t exist before. And so we need to educate not only the signs of gambling, but how do you fit gambling in your life?
Gambling is not bad on its own if you’re able to budget for it, if it fits into your expendable income, just like going to a movie does. But we need to be educating people young and then we need to have opportunities for people to learn even beyond that. And a lot of sites actually offer some education, but people don’t know necessarily where to find it and they don’t know to look for it.
Jeffrey H. Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Dr. Malkin, excuse me. Are there certain members of the population that are maybe a little bit more vulnerable than others? And by the way, I was surprised and maybe just I’m stupid.
But that there are a lot of women that are signing up for the site. And so I don’t know if that’s because the sites are particularly tailored towards women in particular. Maybe they maybe they are serious sports aficionados.
But are there more vulnerable groups in our population than others?
Michelle G. Malkin, JD, East Carolina University
I’ll start with talking about gender. When it comes to gambling, women tend to engage in gambling when it’s lawful. So we do have women who do unlawful offshore wagering, bookie wagering, stuff like that.
But for the most part, once it’s socially acceptable, that’s when women start to engage in it. We see that with all kinds of behavior. You know, men in general are just more likely to engage in risky behavior in general.
But when we’re making it socially acceptable and everybody around somebody is doing it, then they’re going to try it. Women are going to try it, too. And one of the problems we have is that women.
Have less resources in some ways, because a lot of the resources were tailored toward men because they are the ones that traditionally have sought help or needed help for gambling. But women don’t tend to have a higher likelihood of having gambling disorder. But once they have gambling disorder, whether it’s men or women, they face the exact same percentage of gambling related harms.
And so once they have gambling disorder, gender no longer matters. The effect of gambling impacts them in the exact same way. When it comes to populations that are more vulnerable, it’s actually really about types of gambling within a population.
So, for example, when we’re looking at individuals in the LGBTQ community, we know that they are more vulnerable because of kind of minority stress and things like that, that they are more vulnerable to have other addictions. And we’re actually studying whether they’re more vulnerable also to gambling. We know right now the largest group of people needing help that is not traditional is this emerging adult 18 to 24 year olds who traditionally they weren’t facing a lot of gambling related harms yet.
It takes time to develop gambling disorder. But we also know certain types of gambling lead to problems faster. And those include slot machines and it includes sports wagering, partly because these apps were built to be very similar to slot machines and gambling nonstop every second.
Now, slot machines aren’t even pulling the right now.
Jeffrey H. Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
It’s buttons, right?
Michelle G. Malkin, JD, East Carolina University
And you can do that now on your phone every single second. And you can have these parlays and things like that that offer very large potential rewards. And so we’re seeing that young people are particularly vulnerable.
So here in North Carolina, as well as in other states, everybody’s talking about how do we best serve this community? And one thing I’ve noticed from my own studies is that emerging adults don’t necessarily answer the same questions that are screeners for gambling the same way somebody who is older and is taking care of a family would answer them. So we’re developing actually an emerging adult gambling screen so that we can actually help people see if they’re suffering from gambling related harms and may need further assessment.
So it’s a very particular group of people that are definitely at high risk right now. We also know people within certain socioeconomic like lower socioeconomic status are more likely to engage in lottery at more risky ways and more risky ways and tends to be more money than somebody can afford to lose. And so the amount of money somebody loses or wagers doesn’t matter.
It’s the amount of money that is compared to their income and expendable funds. So, for example, I was recently talking to somebody who is African-American, grew up in a lower socioeconomic neighborhood, and they said, you know, when mom won, we had everything we could desire. And when mom lost, we had no food on the table.
And so she was trying to get them out of the socioeconomic place they were by betting. But in fact, the whole family suffered because of her gambling disorder.
Jeffrey H. Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Well, you know, certainly I think I think it’s analogous to to a lot of different things. I mean, you’ve got to have the basic, you’ve got to have the education to make people just because you’re legalized, it doesn’t mean it’s all good. And certainly we need the infrastructure to support people using these things, including screens, you know, help, etc.
Dr. Malkin. Oh, go ahead. I’m sorry.
One last thought.
Michelle G. Malkin, JD, East Carolina University
Gambling has always been around. It’ll be around whether we legalize or not legalize. But so legalization and regulation is better than people not having any resources.
But it comes with responsibility, and that is to ensure we have funding for the outreach, for the education, for all treatment and for research.
Jeffrey H. Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Well said. I couldn’t have said that better, Dr. Malkin. Great to see you, as always.
Thanks for the work you’re doing. And look, we look forward to having you back on the program again very soon.
Michelle G. Malkin, JD, East Carolina University
My pleasure. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me.
Jeffrey H. Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
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Until then, I’m Jeff Snyder. Stay safe, keep on saving and don’t forget, roll with the changes.
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