Bettors have wagered more than $13 billion since online sports betting became legal in the state State Senator John Keena discussing a bill he introduced to target the sports gambling industry on Wednesday during a State House forum. Jonathan Wiggs/Globe Staff Nangle said many of the people he counsels at the Bridge Club are teenagers […]
Bettors have wagered more than $13 billion since online sports betting became legal in the state
Nangle said many of the people he counsels at the Bridge Club are teenagers addicted to gambling on their phones. Sometimes they arrive at the sessions with their parents.“If we don’t heed the lessons of the opioid epidemic, we will find ourselves in the very, very same situation,” said state Senator John Keenan, a Quincy Democrat who introduced the bill. “And if we don’t get out ahead of it, we will have a public health crisis.”Chris Serres can be reached at chris.serres@globe.com. Follow him @ChrisSerres.
Massachusetts would impose strict new limits on online sports betting and ban sports gambling operators from running advertisements during televised events, under an expansive bill cosponsored by three state Democratic lawmakers.It is illegal for anyone under 21 in Massachusetts to gamble online on sports, and operators have introduced safeguards designed to deter underage bettors from accessing the platforms.“Data shows that problem gambling rates remain low since the rise of legal sports betting, consumer protections on the legal market are stronger than ever, and that most people spend less per month on sports betting than they spend in a week on their morning Starbucks,” said Nathan Click, a spokesperson for the Sports Betting Alliance.A 2024 survey highlighted the pervasiveness of online sports betting, particularly among young men. Nearly 40 percent of American men age 18 to 49 have at least one account with online sports betting services. Of those who place bets online, 38 percent said they gambled more than they should have and 18 percent bet money meant for financial obligations — common signs of compulsive gambling, according to the survey by Siena College and St. Bonaventure University.“It’s a tinderbox,” Kenny Olson, 59, of Foxborough, who is in recovery from gambling addiction and placed his last sports wager 26 years ago, said at Wednesday’s forum. “I heard a kid recently talk and he said, `I literally can go broke sitting on my toilet.‘”At a forum Wednesday on Beacon Hill, legislators and people recovering from gambling addiction raised concerns that regulations have failed to keep pace with technological sophistication of online gaming platforms, which are inundating the sports airwaves with ads. Several speakers drew parallels with the early stages of the opioid crisis, when drug companies like Purdue Pharma used aggressive marketing strategies to peddle powerful painkillers well after they were known to be highly addictive.Massachusetts bettors have wagered more than billion on sports betting platforms since mobile sports operators went live in March 2023, and calls to the state’s problem gambling helpline have surged.The measure would ban so-called prop betting, a rapid-fire form of wagering that many addiction specialists say is particularly addictive. These wagers are not connected to a particular outcome of a game. Instead, they are tied to specific events within a game, such as the speed of a pitch or the number of shots on goal during a hockey game. In Massachusetts, prop betting is not allowed for college sports.A spokesperson for the Sports Betting Alliance, which represents Boston-based DraftKings and three other of the largest sports betting operators, noted that the Massachusetts tax on sports wagering is already higher than the national median of 14 percent and that increasing taxes on legal operators will drive people to bet on unregulated, offshore betting apps that “actively flout state gaming law” and consumer protections.If passed, the law would make sports betting in Massachusetts the most heavily regulated in the country, with unprecedented limits on how much and how often people could wager online, according to representatives of the gambling industry.Former state representative David Nangle, who is recovering from a gambling addiction, was among those Wednesday who spoke in favor of the legislation. A longtime Democratic lawmaker from Lowell, Nangle’s political career was destroyed in 2020 after he was charged with using tens of thousands of dollars of campaign funds to bankroll his gambling habit. Now, he works at the Bridge Club of Greater Lowell, a nonprofit that assists people struggling with addiction.Advocates for problem gamblers are particularly worried about the marriage of smartphones with online prop betting, which has made it possible to make hundreds of bets during a game without ever leaving the couch.The bill would also limit how much people can bet each day and prohibit all advertising related to sports wagering during televised sporting events. It would also raise the tax rate paid by sports betting operators to 51 percent of gross gambling revenues, up from 20 percent, in line with rates in New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and New York.Olson added, “If the availability [of sports betting] was what it is today when I stopped, then I don’t know that I would have stopped. It’s fragile.”In Massachusetts, calls to the state’s gambling helpline surged in the months after sports betting was legalized. The helpline received 3,050 calls in fiscal year 2023, which included the first five months of 2023. That’s up 121 percent from 1,379 over the previous year. The state Department of Health did not have more recent data.“Today is a whole different era,” said Nangle, a supporter of the bill. “Who do you think is placing all these bets on these cell phones? The old dinosaurs like me? No… I’m telling you, it’s the kids. It’s the youth.”The Supreme Court in 2018 paved the way for the expansion of sports wagering when it struck down a 1992 federal law that effectively banned the practice in most states. Since then, sports betting has been legalized in 38 states and the District of Columbia.The legislation, called the Bettor Health Act, is designed to rein in the runaway growth of sports betting in Massachusetts and ban industry practices that some public health advocates have described as highly addictive.Lawmakers supporting the bill also said they have been alarmed by the ease at which young people can access the betting apps. School administrators, mental health counselors, and Gamblers Anonymous meeting groups from across the state have reported seeing an influx of young people — some as young as 13 — seeking help for gambling problems. Many kids are using their parents’ or older friends’ accounts to make bets.
The legislation is expected to face strong opposition from online gambling operators. Industry groups have pointed to research studies showing that rates of problem gambling have remained steady, at between 1 to 2 percent of bettors, in several states even after they had legalized online sports betting.
The legislation is expected to face strong opposition from online gambling operators. Industry groups have pointed to research studies showing that rates of problem gambling have remained steady, at between 1 to 2 percent of bettors, in several states even after they had legalized online sports betting.
