The Super Bowl and gambling are locked in a tight and dangerous embrace
For the first time, this year’s Super Bowl will take place in Las Vegas. And NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell is aware that a gambling mecca and professional sports teams can be a dangerous mix: He issued a memo ahead of Sunday’s game, with team personnel being reminded that they are not even allowed to walk into a sportsbook, let alone place a bet on the game.
For the general public it is a completely different story. The clash between the Kansas City Chiefs and the San Francisco 49ers is expected to be the biggest single-game gambling event in American history. The American Gaming Association (AGA) expects that 26% of American adults will bet on the game for a total of $23 billion. That’s no surprise given the scale of the event and the industry’s explosive growth since a 2018 U.S. Supreme Court ruling cleared the way for regulated sports gambling outside Nevada.
It is now available in 38 states, Washington DC and Puerto Rico. More than $300 billion has been legally used for sports in the US since the 2018 ruling $79 billion betting in the first nine months of 2023. According to the AGA, this represents an increase of 33% compared to last year. And the two most populous states, California and Texas, have yet to participate.
In 2003 – and for the next 16 years – the NFL was infamous refused to allow it Las Vegas tourism promoters will run television ads during the Super Bowl on the basis that the What happens here, stays here campaign encouraged gambling. In 2015, the competition forbidden then-Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo from hosting a fantasy football convention in a building connected to a Vegas casino. Even in 2017, when NFL owners voted to let the Oakland Raiders move to Nevada, Goodell insisted that “we remain strongly opposed to legalized sports gambling” because it threatens the integrity of competition.
But the league quickly changed when the 2018 verdict raised the stakes. Last year’s Super Bowl in Arizona was the first in a state with legalized sports betting. Next year it will take place in gaming-friendly New Orleans, at the Caesars Superdome, an arena sponsored by a casino company.
The NFL, which occasionally punishes players for violating its strict gambling policies, is trying to reconcile the emergence of a lucrative and popular revenue stream with its history of institutional prudishness based on the fear of reputational damage from potential bottom-line improvement.
Players can be forgiven for feeling disoriented. In 2022, Raiders wide receiver Davante Adams became a brand ambassador for a casino operator who also worked with the franchise. Still, the NFL tightened its gambling policy last year by increasing the suspension from one to two years for a player who bets on his own team.
The NFL said last week that it has trained more than 17,000 staff members on the rules. In 2021, the year in which partnership agreements were concluded worth almost $1 billion with three sportsbooks, it donated $6.2 million to the National Council on Problem Gambling, a neutral advocacy and awareness organization.
David Highhill, NFL general manager of sports betting, told reporters that only three sports betting commercials will air during Sunday’s Super Bowl broadcast, while less than 5% of in-game ads during the season will involve sports gambling. It probably doesn’t feel that way to many viewers, given the plethora of betting chats, stats and promotions now pervading the sports media.
On Sunday, ESPN published a long-term function about the NFL’s changing attitude toward sports betting. Meanwhile, on the broadcaster’s app, the story was surrounded by links to analysis and advice articles for bettors and a link to the ESPN BET sportsbook is prominently placed just below the latest scores on ESPN.com. Last year, ESPN struck a $2 billion deal with a gaming company, Penn Entertainment, to launch the sportsbook brand.
As with Goodell and the NFL, the move was a quick turnaround for the Disney network. Disney CEO Bob Iger said in 2019 that he did not expect the parent company to “facilitate gambling in any way.” But Americans gambled legally more than 100 billion dollars in sports last year – up from $13 billion in 2019 – and ESPN is the biggest name in sports broadcasting. “This is not something ESPN wants to do,” said Jay Snowden, CEO and president of Penn, said at a 2023 conference. “This is something ESPN needs to do because sports fans demand it.”
Today, odds and lines are routine content, almost as easy to recognize as scores and score lines. “It’s become so common in our society and it’s celebrated,” says Patrick Chester, who was seriously addicted to gambling for about 15 years and now tells his story to college athletes and others in educational sessions.
“We celebrate March Madness, we celebrate the Super Bowl and there’s betting and gambling going on everywhere, so it’s just ingrained in our society that that’s exactly what we do: we watch a sporting event and we have to take action on it because it’s something adds a lot more excitement to the game.”
Chester, a 51-year-old former general contractor from Washington state, owed more than $1 million at the time of his last bet: $45,000 on the Seattle Seahawks to win the 2015 Super Bowl. He had borrowed more than $30,000 under false pretenses from his brother-in-law, who was sitting next to him in the stadium in Glendale, Arizona, when the Seahawks lost agonizingly 28-24 to the New England Patriots.
“The next day I’m sitting at the airport with my wife making plans to end my life by suicide, that’s where I sat,” he says. “While we were out of town in Arizona at the game, a family member discovered that I had a gambling problem, so when I got home, my family put together an intervention for me literally the day after we got home, and that saved my life because I was put on a plane and sent to treatment. If that hadn’t happened, I would have been dead.”
Some problem gambling educators warn that the U.S. is unprepared for the fallout from the dramatic rise in gamblers, amid increasingly easy access via mobile technology, extensive mainstream media coverage and endorsements from major leagues and star players . Not to mention smart marketing; some sportsbooks are offering Taylor Swift-themed Super Bowl proposals.
“There are going to be people who have never gambled before, who bet on this game because it’s the Super Bowl, and then end up having a problem. Not all, not most, but some are,” says Chester.
“They don’t know the consequences, they don’t know the warning signs, they don’t know there could be a problem, they don’t know that gambling addiction is even a thing. That’s consistent with pretty much everyone I’ve encountered, even myself, who’s had problems. We have no idea what is happening and that it could get out of hand if we are not careful.”
Dan Trolaro, US vice president of prevention at Epic Global Solutions, a gambling harm consultancy that is neutral on gambling, says young people are realizing that gambling is easily accessible. “You have a casino and a sportsbook in your pocket 24 hours a day,” he says. The Super Bowl, he adds, is “essentially a betting buffet – but technology has made it possible that there is now a betting buffet in almost every sport on every night of the week.”
Rob Minnick, a 24-year-old recovering gambler from New Jersey who creates content to help others, struggled with addiction for six years and made various bets six to eight hours a day. He started playing daily fantasy sports at the age of 18.
“The speed of play has increased and the barriers to entry have decreased. When you go to a fantasy sports app you are always one click away from a sportsbook and one click away from the casino and once you are in they actually offer offers to get you involved in the more addictive forms of gaming to get you to keep things going,” he says. “It’s going to be very different from the love of the game and more connected to ‘how much money can I make watching this?’ I think it’s bad for the sport in general.”
Prominent services like ESPN BET emphasize their commitment to industry-standard policies that encourage responsible gaming, while the NBA, NHL and MLB helped produce an ad last year urging fans to use responsibly. Yet hosting the Super Bowl in Las Vegas underlines that gambling and sports, once at arm’s length, are now locked in a tight embrace that could have profound consequences, especially for younger generations.
“Research has shown that early exposure to gambling increases the risk of developing a gambling problem later in life,” the National Council on Problem Gambling said in a statement. “NCPG believes that as media companies increasingly integrate gambling content, there is potential for additional risks, especially in the increased promotion of sports gambling among youth and perhaps the expectation that sports and betting will go hand in hand… As sports media companies continue to integrate gambling-related content, we encourage strongly encourage them to equally develop and promote innovative, responsible gambling messages.”
One proposal from federal lawmakers to use tax revenue to fund treatment, prevention and research is drawing resistance from the industry. “States have gone through all this legalization without really having a framework for prevention and education,” said Lia Nower, professor and director of the Center for Gambling Studies at Rutgers University.
“Schools that have programs that target drugs, cigarettes and vaping do not have programs to educate children about problem gambling. The same goes for emergency departments, primary care physicians, child welfare agencies and the juvenile justice system – there is no place where gambling is screened on par with substance abuse, nor is there a framework to assess people for treatment early.”
Meanwhile, as the Chiefs and 49ers prepare in Vegas – or rather, in a quiet holiday resort far from the temptations of the Strip – the money and mixed messages continue to flow. Last week, basketball superstar LeBron James signed with fantasy sports and gambling giant DraftKings offering weekly choices. But since NBA rules prevent active players from betting on the league, he’ll share his insights on the NFL.
In the US, you can call the National Council on Problem Gambling at 800-GAMBLER or text 800GAM. In the UK, support for problem gambling can be found through the NHS National Problem Gambling Clinic on 020 7381 7722, or GamCare on 0808 8020 133. In Australia, Gambling Help Online is available on 1800 858 858 and the National Debt Helpline on 1800. 007 007