As sports betting has soared, more people search online for help with gambling addiction

More and more people are looking for help managing gambling addiction. That’s a finding from a new study, published in JAMA Internal Medicine on Monday.

The study looks at the impact of a Supreme Court decision in 2018 that loosened restrictions around online sports betting.

Before 2018’s Murphy v National Collegiate Athletic Association, only Nevada allowed betting on sports. In 2024, 38 states allowed it. Sports wagers went from $4.9 billion in 2017 to more than $121 billion in 2023, according to the study.

John Ayers, a professor of data and behavioral sciences at the University of California San Diego, says the idea for this study came to him after a conversation he had while he was golfing.

“One of the cart boys comes up to me and asked me to borrow money,” Ayers says. 

When Ayers pressed him about why he needed cash, Ayers says the young man said, “I’ve had a bunch of bad breaks lately on my bets.”  

Searching for help

To get at the effect of the significant expansion of online betting platforms since 2018, Ayers and his colleagues looked at internet search terms that indicated people are struggling with gambling addiction. 

People are Googling phrases like “Am I addicted to gambling?” and “Help me find help with gambling addiction,” Ayers says.

“And we see that those searches nationally increased about 23 percent since the Supreme Court case legalized sportsbooks,” Ayers says. 

Researchers could see that these kinds of search terms increased in states immediately after they opened sports betting, and they found that the impact was significantly greater than the opening of brick-and-mortar gambling establishments. Ayers says gambling addiction is a significant public health and mental health issue. 

“Gambling disorder is a clinical diagnosis, and you start looking into the potential health implications and you see we have a complete blind spot to this,” he says.

A study by the Illinois Department of Human Services showed that teens and young adults had the highest prevalence of online gaming.

Out of “the shadows”

Industry groups argue otherwise, however.

“It’s important to remember that the vast majority of gamblers enjoy gambling and all forms of casino gaming responsibly, and that includes sports betting,” says Joe Maloney, a senior vice president with the American Gaming Association, which representing casino and online gambling companies. 

He argues that legalizing online sports betting allows for its regulation — and services to help people who are struggling. 

“To the extent that there are those that are demonstrating problematic behavior right now, this activity being out in the light, not in the shadows, is enabling services to be delivered,” Maloney says.