Watchdog Report Exposes Sports Betting Industry’s Opposition to Gambling Addiction Safeguards
April 15, 2025
Contact: Michael Clauw, mclauw@campaignforaccountability.org, 202.780.5750
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, Campaign for Accountability (CfA), a non-profit watchdog group, released a report documenting the online sports betting industry’s behind-the-scenes efforts to prevent states from enacting new consumer protections that experts say would help reduce the harmful impacts of gambling addiction.
The report comes amid an explosion of online sports betting that has led to a rise in gambling addiction, amounting to a “public health emergency.” Despite companies’ claims of concern for customers struggling with gambling addiction, their quiet and frequent opposition to legislation that would enact commonsense consumer protections reveals a two-faced approach.
“It’s an open secret that addicted players are the gambling industry’s best customers, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that sports betting companies aren’t eager to implement controls that minimize addictiveness. Legislators need to understand that the gambling industry—like the tobacco industry before it—cannot self-regulate when profits and the addictiveness of their product is so tightly linked,” said CfA Executive Director Michelle Kuppersmith.
Today’s report—CfA’s first on US gambling operators’ predatory practices—explores how the betting apps’ business models directly conflict with the implementation of consumer protections that could help minimize gambling-related harms. To find examples of companies opposing such reforms, CfA searched through state legislative hearing transcripts, public comment submissions, and other archived primary materials. The report documents instances of gambling company opposition to proposed legislation in Arizona, Connecticut, Florida, Maine, Massachusetts, Maryland, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Virginia, Wyoming, and Puerto Rico.
Kuppersmith continued, “CfA’s research adds to a growing body of evidence showing the gambling industry isn’t simply a passive bystander in how addicted players interact with their products. Rather, the industry is actively fighting against many of the measures that could start to reduce harms.”
Since 2018, regulation of sports betting apps has largely been up to individual states. In 2024, however, U.S. Representative Paul Tonko (D-NY) and Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) introduced the SAFE Bet Act, which would institute certain player protections federally. If the bill gains traction, federal legislators will likely come up against many of the same dubious arguments and tactics that the gambling companies have honed at the state level.
“Implementing consumer protections around sports betting isn’t just picking winners and losers on a balance sheet,” Kuppersmith added. “Gambling addiction is linked to depression and suicide, meaning lives—especially of young people—are on the line.”
Campaign for Accountability is a nonpartisan, nonprofit watchdog organization that uses research, litigation, and aggressive communications to expose misconduct and malfeasance in public life and hold those who act at the expense of the public good accountable for their actions.