Since being legalized in 2018, sports gambling has swept the nation at a breathtaking speed. In 38 states, plus Washington, D.C., you can bet on anything—whether it’s the Super Bowl, a Valorant match, or how many hot dogs Joey Chestnut can inhale in ten minutes. In the world of sportsbooks, there’s a market for everything.
With a 14,700-word opinion, the Supreme Court galvanized the world of sports betting, striking down the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act of 1992 and delegating the permissibility of such gambling to each state. Prior to the Supreme Court ruling, just Nevada and Delaware offered regulated sports betting, and only approximately one percent of the U.S. population had access to legal sportsbooks. However, the Court’s decision led to a rapid shift in this landscape. Most states capitalized on the decision, with proponents of legalization citing the economic benefits of tax revenue and job creation as obvious incentives to launch legal betting markets. Massachusetts, for example, reported $94 million in tax revenue from sports betting in 2023. Moreover, a recent study conducted by the Legal Sports Report observed that operators have generated $40 billion of “lifetime gross revenue.”
But sports gambling economics are a zero-sum game. Put simply, it’s impossible for the three players—the taxman, the sportsbook, and the gambler—to all win. And sadly, research suggests that it’s the low-income gambler who stands to lose the most.
In states where sports gambling has been legalized, researchers Hollenbeck, Larsen, and Proserpio found that credit scores have dipped an average of 0.3%, credit lines have decreased by 1.6%, and auto loan delinquency has increased by 9%. Mowshowitz found that for every $70,000 sportsbooks rake in from regular gamblers, society eats an expected $200,000 loss in bankruptcy costs—a brutal 3-to-1 tradeoff that makes this whole system look less like entertainment, and more like financial arson.
And if that weren’t bad enough, here’s the most alarming finding: Tabarrok observed that legalized sports betting isn’t just extracting losses from gamblers, it’s slashing household investments by $50 per quarter, whether they bet or not. If $50 per quarter seems scoffable, here’s a quick reminder—that represents a 14% loss of annual income for the average American household.
It’s time to be real. Legalized sports gambling is nothing but a massive upward transfer of wealth, siphoning money disproportionately from the poorest of households straight into the hands of our gambling overlords. The industry’s marketing and easy access preys on vulnerable populations, offering the false promise of easy riches and, in reality, contributing to financial ruin. This has become uniquely key as a recent survey discovered that around 20% of Americans have placed a sports bet in 2024, which was a 67% increase since 2023. Furthermore, the same analysis found that, of these gamblers, around 29% plan to increase the amount they waged in 2025.
And the pain doesn’t end financially. A study conducted by Kyutaro Matsuzawa at the University of Oregon found a troubling link between sports betting and domestic violence. In states where sports betting is legal, reported incidents of intimate partner violence increase by about 10% following an unexpected home-team loss in the NFL.
Beyond violence at home, the surge in sports betting has unleashed a torrent of abuse towards the athletes themselves, with bettors lashing out when games don’t go their way. A recent NCAA study revealed that one in three college athletes have received hostile messages from disgruntled gamblers, with 90% of this harassment occurring online. Professional athletes are also emotionally tired of the sports betting spurred degeneracy; Trae Young, Josh Hart, Malik Monk, and dozens of other NBA stars have alluded to being fed up with fan’s emotional tirades. Things are reaching a tipping point, and Kevin Durant puts it best: “I don’t fuck with y’all like that.”
The legalization of sports gambling was truly a Trojan horse. We were promised a safer, modern approach to a shady, but truly American, pastime. Instead, we’ve built a relentless machine that not only extracts wealth from the most vulnerable, but also exacerbates contentious issues, such as domestic strife, while angering the professional athlete space. Even the gamblers themselves are struggling to reconcile with this almost inescapable habit. In April 2024, NBC News reported a dramatic increase in calls placed to gambling addiction hotlines as the promotion of sports betting persists.
The Supreme Court’s 2018 decision opened the door to legal gambling, but states were under no obligation to throw it wide open for sportsbooks. It’s time to reconsider. If legalized sports gambling continues to prove to be a net negative, then it’s not just another vice that we endure—it’s a policy mistake that enables one of the most disturbing infringements on financial, mental, and domestic health in recent memory.
Raunak Daga ’25 (rdaga@college.harvard.edu) is a guest writer for the Independent.
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