It’s no secret that online sports gambling is a serious problem, draining the coffers and harming the prospects of young men. It’s also no secret that politicians are disinclined to crack down on it. No one wants to be a Puritan killjoy, and politicians are wary of antagonizing the millions of voters who engage in sports gambling. The result is a paralyzing stasis: the industry gets bigger and more harmful while our elected leaders seem helpless to do anything about it.
But what if there was a popular, populist, light-touch solution to this problem—a solution that reined in sports gambling while also striking a note of freedom and non-discrimination? As it turns out, there is. The solution is this: Congress should mandate that sportsbooks not discriminate and treat all customers on equal terms. The dirty little secret of sportsbooks is that they radically limit bets from those whom they know to be savvy gamblers, because savvy gamblers can spot inefficient betting lines and take the sportsbooks for big money over time.
The statistician Nate Silver, for example, has written about how he can’t place anywhere near as large a bet as the average Joe because the sportsbooks know that they could easily lose money to someone of his caliber. If Congress required sportsbooks to treat all customers equally, the sportsbooks would probably scale back or close shop entirely because they couldn’t afford a world where they suffer heavy losses from savvy gamblers like Silver. This could be an effective and politically feasible way to rein in sports gambling, because it would not rely on perceived nanny-state regulation, but rather, on a more crowd-pleasing view that customers should be treated equally.
The rise of online sports gambling is a familiar story. In 2018, the Supreme Court struck down a 1992 federal law that banned sports gambling in most states. In a world of ubiquitous smartphones, the Supreme Court’s decision set off a gold rush of online sports gambling. Online platforms like DraftKings and FanDuel became household names, offering a bewildering array of sports bets to consumers nationwide.
Gambling disorder cases have started skyrocketing in states where sports betting is legal (this started ~May, 2018) following the end of COVID.They’ve remained flat from COVID to today in states where it has remained illegal. https://t.co/bA9TAIFO5p
— Crémieux (@cremieuxrecueil) June 26, 2026
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.