You Bettor, You Bettor, You Bet

When we were in our 20s, my friend Norman and I somehow got connected to a couple bookies named Rocky and Al. Once someone in the network vouched for your credit, you’d call on Sunday morning and lay your bets, and either Rocky or Al would yell you through the process with phones ringing in the background. If you weren’t ready, if you paused, they hung up. There was no time to suffer fools as kickoff approached. We didn’t bet big. But we bet often because putting a little money on game that would otherwise hold no interest can turn three hours of boredom into four quarters of adrenaline-pumping, dopamine-firing excitement. That’s one of the ways sports bettors get hooked. But back then, we had some guardrails to keep our weekly hobby from turning into a degenerate addiction. There was the barrier of getting a bookie; the fact that what you were doing was illegal; the difficulty of physically moving cash money from place to place; the concern that if things got out of hand, Rocky and Al might have to break one of your parts. Today, those barriers are gone. It’s easy to bet on sports and in many states it’s totally legal. With smartphones, the casino is always right in your pocket (and that also mean kids are finding ways to bet). Betting has become completely normalized. It dominates sports advertising and even the Disney-owned ESPN is fully on board with sharing odds, making picks, and covering big wins and bad beats. That’s good news for the companies taking the bets and those who can control their habit. But it’s bad news for a lot of people, especially young adults who are about the same age as I was when I first dabbled. For a preview of what’s coming, let’s head to New Jersey where sports betting has been legal for a while and warning signs are flashing like a jackpot-hitting slot machine. Data from New Jersey is a warning sign for young sports bettors. How bad will this problem get as sports betting goes even more mainstream? Bet the over.