Opinion

The United States has a gambling problem. While I watched last week’s Super Bowl, the thing that stood out to me the most was not the game, nor the halftime show, but the repulsive number of sports betting ads. From the AI slop characters in Kalshi’s ad inviting me to start “trading” to Jamie Foxx telling me all about BetMGM’s incredible perks, it seemed as if every lull in play came accompanied with a Draft Kings or Prize Picks ad, offering tantalizing rewards if I were to join, like $300 in bonus bets, or a $50 addition to my first parlay. I often found myself thinking, “How on earth do these companies make money?” 

The answer is shockingly simple, and it’s that they don’t. Not at first. If you cashed your first parlay and proceeded to cash out, the companies would lose money. But you don’t cash out. You get greedier and greedier, addicted to the adrenaline rush that the uncertainty of the bet provides, and more importantly the dopamine hit that lights your brain up after your parlay hits. It feels good to win, especially if money is involved. 

But you can’t win forever. Somewhere, somehow, these multibillion dollar companies get their just desserts, and they know it. By luring you in with the promise of free, no-risk bets, they’ve improved their chances of gaining a lifelong gambler tenfold. They never cared about the initial bet, it was a loss leader, like Costco rotisserie chicken, or a Black Friday TV. All the betting companies care about is that they have you, trapped in a cycle of addiction and loss after loss after loss, hoping that the win will come and make it all right again. 

The most brilliant part about the Sportsbook’s hooks is that they know how easily influenced the young man’s mind is. Right now, the brain of every student at this school is in a state of plasticity, where the synaptic connections in all parts of the brain are strengthening, weakening, and adapting due to different stimuli and changes in our environment. When we introduce a source of dopamine that is addictive like sports betting, the brain adapts and becomes more dependent on said dopamine, permanently altering how it works, and creating every Sportsbook’s dream: the lifelong gambler. 

This doesn’t just apply to sports betting either. These betting apps are tethered to real life casinos and mega corporations that own all sorts of gaming platforms. A bet on a website and a poker hand at a real life casino all feed into the same pockets. If one goes to switch apps or switch casinos, they still end up losing money to the same people, because most if not all of the companies that own the apps and casinos own shares in each other, or have agreements that benefit all of the gambling companies. They have all preyed upon young men from the moment they joined the site to the moment they lose everything. 

Most don’t know how bad of a problem this really is until it is put into numbers. A study of young men aged 18-22 by the NCAA in its attempts to combat sports betting found that over half had placed a sports bet sometime in the past year, and that’s not even accounting underage bettors. I would estimate that a significant portion of our school’s population bets, both students and faculty. As young men who bear the burden of the future of our school, city, and nation, we cannot allow ourselves to be weakened by the vice and economic drain that these sites support. We must be stronger than that, and practice temperance from activities that take us away from God. 

If you don’t believe in God, or at least don’t believe that gambling is immoral, at least think about slowing down for the sake of your wallet. You may win today or tomorrow, but eventually you will lose. I know that gambling is fun, but the thrill is not worth it. Delete the apps before the bet becomes too big, and the consequences too dire.