Having sports gambling readily available on smartphones, easily connected to people’s bank accounts, has made it far easier than ever before for bettors to fall into addiction. Southern Methodist University examined 700,000 sports gamblers and found that less than 5% of them withdrew more money from their betting apps than they deposited into them. That 5% won more than $100 million, which was covered by bets placed by 80% of bettors. The bottom 3% of bettors lost enough money to make up half of the net revenue of their betting apps.

Betting apps target that large group of losers, and skilled gamblers in the top 5% game the system, making their app activity appear as if they are degenerate gambling addicts, thus ensuring that their accounts get higher gambling limits. Win too much, and these betting apps slap your account with limits to restrict your winnings and their losses. The professionals try to expand their limit and then win as much as possible before the sportsbooks wise up to the ruse.

A study from the University of California, San Diego, Rady School of Management reported a worse result than SMU’s, determining that 96% of the 700,000 gamblers it studied lost money, with just 4% taking home winnings. That study also found that over 5% of gamblers bet more than 10% of their income, while over 3% spent above 15% of their monthly pay. Low-income gamblers were the most irresponsible gamblers. A spokesperson for Gamblers Anonymous said that before 2020, someone in their 40s would be the youngest person in a room full of recovering gambling addicts, but that age is now common for those in recovery.

Widespread addiction is the predictable outcome of the rapid transition of gambling to on-demand sports betting at the fingertips of everyone with a smartphone. The effects extend far beyond the damage done to addicts themselves and to their rapidly draining bank accounts.

Athletes are the subject of billions of dollars’ worth of bets every year. With social media and individual player stat bets, or “prop” bets, individual athletes now cost bettors money and are assailed for bad performances in their Instagram direct messages or X replies. The NCAA has understandably pushed for prop betting on college athletes to be illegal. Sports gamblers have managed to make the NCAA look reasonable, which is perhaps the biggest sign the industry has gone too far.

Some athletes have fallen into online sports gambling. High-profile cases such as that of the late baseball great Pete Rose and the Boston College point-shaving scandal prove that gambling scandals have always been a part of sports. But widespread online sports gambling has seen far more examples pop up far more frequently.

That includes multiple athletes at Iowa State University and the University of Iowa who were charged with gambling on games in which they participated. Jontay Porter was banned from the NBA for life for helping bettors manipulate sportsbooks for payouts on prop bets, with bettors taking the “under” on Porter’s stats and Porter then checking out of the game with discomfort, not an injury, to avoid voiding the bet, after a few minutes to secure the payouts. New England Patriots receiver Kayshon Boutte was charged with illegal underage gambling stemming from his time at Louisiana State University, allegedly placing more than 8,900 bets. The charges were dropped because Boutte completed a “gambling awareness” program.

Here is the difference between gambling scandals over the years. Paul Hornung and Alex Karras were suspended by the NFL in 1963. Art Schlichter was next, 20 years later, in 1983. It took another 36 years until, in 2019, Josh Shaw was suspended. In 2022, Calvin Ridley and Miles Austin, a former player-turned-coach, were suspended. Then, in 2023, 10 players caught suspensions, eight indefinitely, for betting on NFL games. The other two, Jameson Williams and Nicholas Petit-Frere, did not bet on games but placed other bets while they were at NFL facilities, receiving six-game suspensions.

It isn’t difficult to see when things changed or why so many athletes are getting caught up in sports gambling. Sports leagues have embraced sportsbooks through sponsorship deals designed to line the pockets of owners and league officials. In 2021, the NFL reached deals with Caesars Entertainment, DraftKings, FanDuel, FOX Bet, BetMGM, PointsBet, and WynnBET.

Worse for fans who have not jumped on the gambling train is that gambling infects broadcasts. Sports podcasts and analysis shows are littered with betting lines, prop bets, and gambling sponsors. Even sports fans who avoid that and stick to game broadcasts can’t avoid the taint of gambling, as ESPN and others constantly put lines on the screen and spend significant time talking about over/unders. Everywhere you turn, sports gambling is there.

There is no end in sight to any of this. The Super Bowl last February brought in $1.4 billion in legal bets, a number that will almost certainly be topped by the next one in two months. March Madness topped $3 billion. States are happy to be part of this. North Carolina got a cut of $7.6 million in July, which is supposed to be the dead period in the sports season. The state took in nearly $19 million in April, reaping the financial benefits that other states are seeing as gamblers fall further into addiction and sports leagues fall further into dependence on gambling ads.

Congress has begun kicking the tires on gambling regulations. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Rep. Paul Tonko (D-NY) introduced a bill to ban college prop bets, as the NCAA has requested, and would require states to meet federal regulations on advertising, affordability, and artificial intelligence. A bipartisan group of senators is asking the Justice Department to investigate whether DraftKings and FanDuel violated antitrust laws.

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Whether Congress can agree on some sort of solution is a secondary question, though, compared to whether or not it could put this genie back in the bottle even after it reached consensus. Online sportsbooks, sports leagues, gamblers, and state governments are all in on the online sports betting phenomenon, with each annual sporting event setting new betting records every year. The only real opposition now seems to come from disgruntled fans who are tired of trying to make it through a college football game without being told that a touchdown would “cash the over.”

Widespread on-demand sports gambling is ruining sports broadcasts and is increasingly jeopardizing the integrity of games in the nation’s most popular leagues. But it is also ruining the lives of addicts and making addiction an easier trap to fall into as barriers to entry collapse and sports increasingly and enthusiastically operate within a gambling environment. Leagues, states, and sportsbooks win, while fans and most gamblers lose.