Written by Niko Smith
As I was walking home from class one Thursday, I opened up YouTube to listen to one of my favorite podcasts. I’m not usually the type of person to get excited about sports and the like, but for some reason I really love learning about the ins and outs of basketball. It was on this quest to learn more about a sport I don’t play, that I was faced with the 10th ad that day for the online casino and Sportsbook DraftKings. In it, I was faced with a replay of Kevin Hart yelling “DraftKings got Bonus Bets now?” from the super bowl.
The selling and integration of products into our lives that have addictive properties is nothing new, however, the way that it is presented to us and the way it affects our society changes all the time. Take for example, the podcast ad with Kevin Hart and Ryan Fitzpatrick I was subjected to. It uses all of the hallmarks of an effective ad, with some form of messaging making the product seem friendly like celebrity endorsement, a product discount or promotion, and a call to action (Modern MBA). While these tactics may sound obvious or like most of us would be able to see through them, take some other modern examples of this strategy. In the early 2000’s, when one of the wealthiest families in medicine was faced with the possibility of their family’s empire succumbing to bankruptcy, they used plush toys, young college graduates and medical infrastructure to push Oxycontin, causing a subsequent opioid epidemic (Goldman 2024). That was Purdue Pharma. In the 20th century, utilizing cartoon characters and characterizations like The Flintstones to sell cigarettes, caused a major increase in the amount of lung cancer patients (Institute of Medicine 1994). That was Philip Morris International. Although opioids, nicotine, and gambling are all quite different from each other, presenting varying levels of risk to the user, the underlying method is the same. Selling products that have a built in risk of developing addictive traits to consumer bases is something that we should be wary of. This is especially true for younger consumers in college who are new to being adults.
As a college student, sports gambling is often one of the first ways that we are exposed to a product that has a significant risk of addiction (along with alcohol). However it was not always so prevalent. Gambling in general has been a contentious subject throughout the history of the United States. This is because it has been proven that Casinos located in commercial areas close to a civilian population are demonstrably poorer over time as a result of an increase in gambling which would otherwise not exist (Frum 2014). Furthermore, in the 20th century, casinos were often associated with illegal drug use, and criminal activity as a number of organized crime cartels utilized casinos as fronts for their operations (Modern MBA 2024). These realities have had the effect of making most in person gambling illegal in large swaths of the country, and concentrating it instead in tightly regulated markets like the Las Vegas Strip, Atlantic City in New Jersey, and interestingly on Native American reservation land (Modern MBA 2024). However, online gambling and specifically online sports betting, due to how new it is, has only had some form of major federal regulation since 1992, with a supreme court decision banning it by extension. However, in 2018, the decision on sports betting was overturned when the supreme court ruled in favor of sports betting legalization in the Murphy v. NCAA case (Supreme Court 1).
This opened the floodgates for companies to swoop in and capitalize on the newly deregulated online sports betting industry. For years prior, online sportsbooks Draftkings and Fanduel had made money via streamlining the playing of fantasy sports, and allowing wagers on outcomes in fantasy leagues (Modern MBA 2024). However with a new hole in the market opening up, it was the perfect opportunity for both companies to expand their brands to those they previously did not have access to: college age men, and hardcore fantasy sports betters. This is where problem gambling has become a major issue for Americans. Since it has been made legal, the number of calls received by gambling hotlines nationwide have increased by 30%, while the number of problem gamblers identified in the US has risen to as high as 6% of the population per state (Meyersohn 2023). It is unclear what percentage of this is due specifically to the sportsbooks, their marketing campaigns and brand sponsorships with universities, major sports leagues and others. It is a notable increase nonetheless.
Although it is unclear how exactly Major Sportsbook companies will fare going into the next few years and beyond, it’s clear that a doorway has been opened, introducing large numbers of college students and millennials and Gen Z kids like myself to gambling in a way that has never been done before. The impact so far has been a significantly increased number of calls to gambling addiction hotlines, and the number of people seeking in person treatment has gone up as well. This is very similar to the overall arc of adoption of coffee, sugar, Nicotine products, and even the ongoing opioid epidemic.
Works Cited
Frum, D. (2014, August 7). A good way to wreck a local economy: Build casinos. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/08/a-good-way-to-wreck-a-local-economy-build-casinos/375691
Goldman, D. (2024, February 1). An Oxycontin Advertiser will pay $350 million in the first-ever … CNN. https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/01/investing/oxycontin-publicis-settlement/index.html
Institute of Medicine (US) Committee on Preventing Nicotine Addiction in Children and Youths. (1994, January 1). Tobacco advertising and promotion. Growing up Tobacco Free: Preventing Nicotine Addiction in Children and Youths. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK236761/
Meyersohn, N. (2023, February 10). The Dark Side of the Sports Betting Boom | CNN business. CNN. https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/10/business/online-sports-gambling-addiction/index.htm
Modern MBA. (2024, February 28). The dangerous wild west of online gambling. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZ-NU1vK0wM&t=2145s&pp=ygUKbW9kZXJuIG1iYQ%3D%3D
Supreme Court Of The United States. (2018, May 14). 16-476 murphy v. national collegiate athletic assn. (05/14/ … The Supreme Court of The United States. https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/16-476_dbfi.pdf
Works Consulted
Ignatin, G. (1984). Sports Betting. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 474, 168–177. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1044373
Gupta, R. (2013). Legalising Betting in Sports: Some Reflections on Lawmaking. Economic and Political Weekly, 48(48), 13–15. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23528912
Huggins, M. (2007). Betting, Sport and the British, 1918-1939. Journal of Social History, 41(2), 283–306. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25096480
Del-Corral, J., & Gomez-Gonzalez, C. (2022). THE ECONOMICS OF SPORTS BETTING AND SPORTS BETTING IN ECONOMICS. In R. BUTLER (Ed.), Advances in Sports Economics (pp. 197–212). Agenda Publishing. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv25tnx3v.17
https://quitgamble.com/gambling-addiction-statistics-and-facts/