Massachusetts joins with NCAA, sports teams to tackle gambling among young people

BOSTON — Top Massachusetts officials joined NCAA President and former Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker on Thursday to announce a new initiative aimed at addressing the public health harms associated with youth sports gambling.

Baker said this harm extends not only to young people who place bets, but also to student athletes who face enormous pressure from gamblers hoping to make money from their individual performances.

Baker said he spoke to hundreds of college athletes before officially taking on the role of president about a year ago, and he said they talked about the enormous pressure they feel from classmates and gamblers on their individual performance.

“The message I kept getting from them is that there’s so much going on that it’s very difficult for us to just stay away from it,” he said.

Baker said student athletes pointed to classmates who wanted to talk to them about “how is so-and-so doing? Will he or she be able to play this weekend? What do you think your chances are?”

“These were the exact same conversations I had with my classmates and classmates in the ’70s. But back then it was just chatter in the cafeteria or the dining room,” added Baker, who played basketball at Harvard University. “Now it’s currency.”

Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell said that since the state made sports betting legal in 2022, a bill signed by Baker has essentially made Massachusetts a participant in the market.

It creates a burden on the state to make sports betting as safe as possible, she said.

“Think about it. We’re putting an addictive product – gambling – on a highly addictive device, your smartphone,” she said. “We’ve gone from sports gambling being illegal almost everywhere to legal in dozens of states in just a few years.” through the whole country.”

In Massachusetts, it is illegal for anyone under the age of 21 to bet on sports or in casinos.

Because young people will be more influenced by the teams they support than by state government officials, Campbell said it is critical to create a public-private partnership like the new initiative she unveiled Thursday, the Youth Sports Betting Safety Coalition.

Campbell said members of the coalition include the Boston Red Sox, the Boston Celtics, the Boston Bruins, the New England Patriots, the New England Revolution and the NCAA. The goal is to create a sports betting education, training and safety curriculum for youth ages 12 to 20, she said.

NCAA data shows that 58% of 18- to 22-year-olds have engaged in at least one sports betting activity, while the Massachusetts Department of Public Health found that it is estimated that about half of high school students have engaged in one or has committed other forms of gambling, Campbell said. .

Baker said the NCAA is pushing states with legal sports gambling to ban “prop bets” — short for proposition bets — which allow gamblers to bet on the stats a player collects during a game instead of the final score.

Baker also said that the NCAA’s survey of college students found that they gambled at essentially the same rate regardless of whether it was legal for them or not. The study also found that one in three student athletes has been harassed by gamblers and that one in ten students has a gambling problem.

“It’s actually a 50-state issue, even though it’s only legal in 38 states. And if you think kids under 21 don’t do this, you’re kidding yourself,” he said at the press conference at the TD Garden in Boston.

He said the ugliness and cruelty of some of the posts on social media platforms from some athletes in the NCAA tournaments is disturbing.

Last year, NCAA officials considered a threat from a gambler serious enough to a team that they gave them 24/7 police protection until they left the tournament, he said.

“For student athletes in particular, this is an extremely challenging issue, and for many of those who are really in the spotlight, as many will be here tonight, this is one more thing that I think we would all like to do. see you taken off the table,” he said.