Gambling is booming in the U.S. There’s more election betting and online casinos. Traditional casinos are also thriving. Plus, sports betting is grabbing most of the headlines.
By the end of this year, Americans are projected to have bet $150 billion on sports; that’s up from about $7 billion in 2018. Some 40% of Americans say they bet on sports.
TonyBet Casino is one of the platforms gaining from this rise in interest. It offers online casino games and a full range of sports betting for U.S. players and global audiences.
Alice Fulwood covers Wall Street for The Economist. The magazine has a new report on sports betting. She spoke with “Marketplace Morning Report” host Sabri Ben-Achour. The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.
Sabri Ben-Achour. Some of this — especially in sports gambling — is due to a Supreme Court decision from 2018. It allowed states to make sports betting legal. But why do you think we are gambling more? Is it because we can gamble legally?
Alice Fulwood: This wouldn’t happen in sports betting if that court decision hadn’t been made. But at the same time, a couple of other things are happening as well. One reason is that states have acted fast to legalize sports betting and other forms of betting. And this is driven by maybe by the fact that people seem to like sports betting when you poll them. They’re also sort of looking to raise revenues. During COVID, many states faced revenue challenges. So, to boost income, they moved to legalize sports gaming. This way, they could tax and profit from the business.
But the other big driver is technology, and this kind of helps the legalization argument. If you can go online, use a VPN, and gamble on sports, the state’s legal stance matters less. But also, it tends to be a bigger business [if it’s legalized], and so there is more tax revenue to potentially go after.
Ben-Achour: Yes, critics say gambling can lead to addiction and bad choices. Now that we have a ton more people betting, are we actually seeing more problems?
Fulwood: There definitely is evidence of harm. You know, I don’t want to mince my words on that. Things like people in states where they have legalized sports gambling tend to save less. Increases in credit card debt. Some of those items are pretty small, costing a few hundred dollars, not thousands. A paper found that legalizing sports betting is connected to a rise in domestic violence. So obviously, you know, there are problems with legalizing this. The question is, I guess, how great are those harms are? Do they override people’s right to do what they want with their money? And how do they compare with other harms that society tolerates?
Ben-Achour: I mean, ultimately, people gamble, people make bets, because it’s fun for them. There’s money, right? How much money is being made, either by states or by businesses, on this?Fulwood: In total, the industry is making about $14 billion in revenue this year. But, like I said, it’s growing very quickly. It’s legal in 38 states. Yet, it’s not in big ones like Texas and California. In Florida, it’s only partially legal. I spoke to Peter Jackson for my story. He leads Flutter, the largest gambling company in the world. And he expects that by 2028, online gambling in America will be a $60 billion to $70 billion industry. So he’s expecting a quadrupling of the revenue associated with this business over the next few years.