The Sports Gambling Epidemic

Last updated:11 novembre 2025

Disclaimer: Please do not read this if you feel like you are in any way, shape or form at risk of gambling addiction. You win by not playing.

I like to watch sports; I’m a hockey and NFL fan and therefore I consume a large number of American sports media. This has become a surreal experience over the past 5 years, especially compared to the Swiss & European equivalence, due to the ungodly amount of Sports Gambling content shown during the broadcast.

It seems almost unbelievable that for a long time, American sports leagues frowned upon gambling, blocking any and all betting advertisements. This quest for purity went as far as barring Las Vegas from having sports teams. Yet today gambling ads, odds and “100$ in free bonus bets” are inescapable. And that sharp turn in policy can be traced back to an exact date: May 14^th 2018, shortly after 10:00 ET, when the US Supreme Court overturned the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act. Sports gambling, for years banished to Nevada by federal legislation, had become a states rights issue again.

This encroachment of sports betting on every facet of sports has vastly accelerated after the pandemic. In 2023, a report, aptly titled “You win some you lose some”, on gambling advertising caused a stir in Australia. It highlighted the gradual chokehold gambling has gotten in the country, the families it destroyed and lives it ruined. It sparked a debate about the messy gambling in the country, but most importantly it drew attention to the impacts of gambling: shortened lifespans, reduced health and mental well-being and increased suicide risk. Addicts suffer in silence, but the impact on society is so deep, that it ought to be treated as a public health crisis.

It’s oh so ironic, that a public health crisis, COVID19, accelerated the spread of sports gambling as leagues struggling with revenues gladly accepted the helping hand of gambling companies, who, due to the high potential of expansion given to them in 2018, had nearly unlimited funds.

Over/Under 20 ads an hour

The subsequent transformation of broadcasts was fast and uncompromising. Advertisements were ramped up; odds were presented by broadcasters during games and presenters made their picks live on TV. And you could join the action as well, just download the app and “the crown is yours”. Make watching games even more of a nailbiter by betting 100$ on it. Make whether you can pay rent this month dependent on its outcome.

Demographics that fall into gambling addictions are mostly male, young, from low- or middle-income families and often (in the US at least), minorities. Sports have been part of their identity forever, and it’s an enticing proposition to make money on something you have a passion for and are knowledgeable about. Especially if you are economically insecure.

For those in precarious economic conditions it sells hope in a simpler way: making easy money. And that is where the trap springs: The house always wins. The house takes the Vig (house cut) and determines the payout. And this is the important number to look at. Because the pricing of the bet is what tells you if there is money to be made. And usually there isn’t.

However, especially young men, sometimes seek the risk and the rush it entails more than the money itself. You can open your phone and experience the ups and downs of losing money live. No matter if two bottom feeder teams play, you need a team to score 7 more points to win 200$ that’s exciting enough.

What makes this development even more repulsive are the ads. Remember the hunch you have sometimes? Time to turn it into money. You know a lot about this game, it’s your hobby, your passion, a part of your identity. Use this knowledge and turn it into money, money that you desperately need.

But this framing largely misrepresents how making money in sports betting works. The first thing you need to know is that actual sports knowledge is useless. It will not help you be a more successful gambler. These gambling sites go head over heels to make the bettor feel informed. They give out data, they pay experts to give advice, and in general try and help you, the bettor, to make the most informed decision possible. Would they truly be so benevolent to give you this information if it directly hurt their bottom line?

Bounty ahead

To illustrate this, let’s take an example. My favourite NFL team, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, played the New England Patriots last weekend. The odds were the following:

Just focus on the last column. It shows the payout if you correctly bet on that team winning. These are American odds where the minus indicates the favourite and the plus the Underdog. A plus shows you the amount you get by betting 100$ while a minus shows you the amount of money you need to bet to win 100$. Essentially, a minus indicates a return of more than 100% while a plus indicates a return of more than 100%.

Next, we calculate the break-even probabilities for each bet. The idea here is to find the probability at which a bet would have a 0 Expected value, which represents the long-term winning per bet if you could repeat it an infinite amount of times.

If you have trouble following, think about a coin flip, where head is equal to 1 and tail equal to 0 and you sum it all up. If you do one coin flip you get either 1 or 0. But if you do 100 flips you may get 51, then you divide it by the number of tries and you get 0.51. Which is close to the expected value which is the probability of each event occurring multiplied by the probability of it occurring. (0.5*1 + 0.5*0 = 0.5).

This is calculated by dividing the stake by the payout + stake.

This tells you that, if the true win probability of the Patriots (Buccaneers), is higher than 45.45% (59.18%) you should bet on the Patriots (Buccaneers). If you have a keen eye for probability, you’ll realize that those numbers add up to more than 100%, 104.63% to be precise. Those 4.63% are the Vig. Because the higher a probability is to win, the lower is the payout. And we inferred the probabilities of these bets from the payout. So the payouts are too low (remember, payout is only in the denominator, so if the payout increases the probabilities fall and the cumulative probability goes closer to 100). If an equal amount of money is bet on both sides, the betting company will make a profit.

The image below shows you that if you knew the win probability, on what team you would have to bet on. The grey area, where no bet would be favourable is where the sweet spot for betting companies lies. The game is going to be a tossup with advantage for Tampa as they come out of their bye week and have home field. It’s probably where the true probability lies and therefore where most people will bet.

This Graph also nicely shows the difference between being correct and making money. If want to be correct just choose the favourite. They are more likely to win according to the oddmakers, many statisticians, and experts. That doesn’t mean you’ll make money. That is determined by the pricing.

Can you even make money?

So, we now know that sports knowledge isn’t very useful, and pricing is what truly matters. But can you employ this strategy to make money? Well, kind of…

You can try and find bets that are mispriced. That could happen if the Patriots were accidentally priced at -500. In that case, there is clearly positive expected value as the Patriots are clearly better than that. However, that doesn’t mean you will win money, as there is still a chance, when Tampa wins, you lose the money. There is also the rare possibility of a tie.

Now you could bet both sides, called arbitrage for a guaranteed win. If the Tampa bet was still -145, then if you bet 290$ on Tampa and 100$ on the Patriots. In case Tampa wins you win 200$ covering your 100$ loss incurred form the Patriots bet. If the Patriots win the payout is 500$, subtract the 290$ from the Bucs bet and you’re left with a win of 210$. But in a perfect market, and betting markets are as close to perfect as you can get, you will rarely see something like this. Usually this quickly corrected.

So, if you found a way to identify mispriced bets that have positive expected value, you either have to find an Arbitrage opportunity, or you bet only one side, knowing that if you have a large enough bankroll you can cover up short term losses.

No, the house still wins

Arbitrage bets usually net very low payoffs. Imagine a risk-free return of 2%. If you want to make a lot of money, you’d have to bet a lot of money. Bet 10’000$ and you’ll make 200$. But since these Opportunities are rare, and usually come from pricing errors, the betting company might void your bet, and then suddenly, you have a 5’000$ Unsecured bet that, no matter the expected payoff has the possibility to set you back 5’000$. All for a 200$ guaranteed payoff. You have limited opportunities to take make that money back, as there are a limited number of sportsbooks and a limited number of bets you can take.

You play you loose

But even if, in a perfect world, nothing of that sort happens, your bets don’t get voided, you find plenty of mispriced bets, and you have a large pile of money, even then, you won’t make a lot of money.

These gambling companies aren’t stupid. If I can put this strategy in less than 3’000 words, so can the countless math and computer science PhDs that work for these gambling companies. You may win a bit initially, but they will notice. They see if you got the bet at a “good price”. And if you continuously get good prices, alarm bells will go off, and you will get limited. That means that your maximum bet will be limited to something like 5$. Even if you have a risk-free return of 10% on a bet each day, you won’t get anywhere with that.

The only way to win is not to play.

Integrity

The effects of this go beyond the public health crisis that is brewing. It’s also hitting the integrity of the sport itself, negatively impacting the life of players.

NY Giants Kicker Graham Gano recently gave an interview, talking about the impact it is having on players : “Ever since sports betting started I get people telling me to kill myself every week because I hit a kick that loses money or I’ll miss a kick that loses them money”. For student athletes, it’s even worse. They’ll be on campus and are being confronted by their fellow students for losing them money.

But the biggest impact is on the fundamental integrity of the sport. Just a couple of weeks ago, a new betting scandal hit the NBA. Amidst a flurry of different allegations, there is one about match fixing, or intentionally throwing a game. But this is just the latest in a string of gambling related incidents shaking up the American sports world.

Over a dozen NFL players have been suspended for sports betting since the legalization. It’s not always clear exactly why, but for at least some, it involved gambling on their own teams. NHL player Shane Pinto was suspended for half a season for unspecified gambling violations as well.

Baseball Infielder Tucupita Marcano got a life ban for betting on Pittsburgh Pirates games, and basketball player Jontay Porter was banned for life after betting on himself. And there is also an ongoing NBA scandal concerning the Portland Trailblazers, involving their now fired coach and allegations of match fixing.

But the biggest scandal has been the one involving the biggest star. Shohei Ohtani, the 700$ million man, was caught transferring millions to a gambling provider. This was first reported as Shohei paying his translators’ gambling debt and is now officially as his translator stealing money from Shohei to gamble. For the two-time World series winner, it tarnished his reputation, and the question of what exactly the truth is still lingers.

A quiet Crisis

In the past you had to go to the racetracks, casino, sports events or Vegas to gamble. This was an important barrier of entry, especially for young people. Nowadays, it’s easily accessible on your phone. Push messages, SMS and emails are all there to constantly remind you and claw you back if you are thinking about quitting. Escaping is hard. The barrier to entry is much smaller now, and with promo offers where you get 100$ in free bonus bets when you sign up, people might perceive starting to gamble as something you get paid for. And so people start, get pulled in and betting spreads amongst society like the plague.

Twitter YouTube, Instagram and every sports broadcast are full of gambling ads. Every time I want to watch sports, I am exposed to over/unders, spreads and parlays. How, as an addict can you ever quit? And as someone who managed to, could you ever watch sports again? It’s like being a recovering alcoholic working in a liquor store.

The WHO estimates that around 5.5% of women and 11.9% of men experience some harm from gambling. And that still doesn’t include grey areas like video game loot boxes, which are just gambling with extra steps. And that Labubu craze? That worked very much in the same way too. Opening boxes to get a rare push gremlin? Same type of dopamine rush.

It’s a slow poisoning of our society, like led pipes that we know are there, but refuse to remove, getting their fangs into one of the most vulnerable demographic groups. The house always wins, and you will always be waiting on the outside. Gambling companies already finance many sports leagues and teams. They finance youth sports, in a cynical way to “give back”. But that will only make the eventual decision to do something about the problem far more costly.

Prohibition?

The argument that it’s to better have a legal and regulated industry that generates tax revenues and funds for good causes, than an illegal one is still a major talking point for the gambling industry. But do we really have a regulated industry? One where companies, although they know you want to quit, still send you psychologically finetuned messages to lure you back in? Gamble responsibly, they say, putting the responsibility on the customer and making it impossible for them to escape.

Now the gambling industry, due to a poorly regulated environment, has become extremely powerful and can lobby against reasonable protection. So we might not even get that legal and well-regulated environment that is apparently better than illegal underground gambling.

Prohibition in the 1920s showed us that we can’t just criminalize something everyone does and expect the public to follow But sports gambling (and online gambling) isn’t a millennia old foundation of society.

A Swiss example

For regulation, in Switzerland, we can be content. First, the bets amongst friends or office colleagues, where 100% of the money bet is redistributed (so there is no Vig) are legal. But everything else, from physical casinos to online betting, needs to be done by a licensed provider in Switzerland, with foreign casinos being blocked.

And people can actually be banned from every Casino if a provider thinks they may play above their means. Whether they always do it is questionable, since it hurts their bottom line. You can also ban yourself, making sure you won’t be able to gamble. It’s not a perfect system, but at least there are clear rules and hindrances, and when the slow rot of gambling finally surfaces in other countries, we may just call ourselves lucky.

Jonas Bruno