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Some see shadows of the opioid epidemic in the Massachusetts online sports betting industry.
When state Sen. John Keenan surveys the landscape of sports betting in Massachusetts today, he sees an eerily familiar echo of the past. He sees powerful companies using bold marketing tactics to push a product that can be used safely but that can also destroy lives. He sees these companies blaming individuals for not being able to control themselves while pocketing massive sums of money. He sees the early days of the opioid epidemic.
The comparison is not an exaggeration, Keenan insists, and sports betting companies are using the same playbook deployed by those that recklessly sold drugs like OxyContin.
“They target these people, knowing that they are addicted, and they make most of their money off of those that are addicted. And they do it with very aggressive marketing, much like Purdue Pharma did,” Keenan told Boston.com.
The proposed solution? A new bill that would impose major regulations on the state’s booming new sports betting industry. Dubbed the “Bettor Health Act,” it targets practices that public health advocates say fuel gambling addictions.
The legislation would ban so-called prop betting, prohibit sports betting advertising during sports broadcasts, require companies to double their contributions to a state fund that supports addiction treatment services, increase the corporate revenue tax on sports betting companies, limit the amount of money a person can bet each day without being subject to an “affordability check,” and require operators to provide more gambling data to the state.
‘We are already behind’
Keenan, a Quincy Democrat who filed the bill alongside state Rep. Lindsay Sabadosa and state Sen. Patricia Jehlen, said that alarm bells started to go off for him soon after online sports betting was legalized in Massachusetts two years ago.
People immediately complained about the prevalence of sports betting ads. Keenan noticed that a lot of these ads included “misleading” promotions where, for example, bettors were offered hundreds of dollars in credits for only betting $5 of their own money. Many bettors did not realize the caveats associated with these promotions, he said.
In his district south of Boston, a “constant drumbeat” of calls for politicians to act steadily rose. Then, as billions of dollars in wagers stacked up, Keenan began to hear from more people struggling with a gambling addiction. He heard stories of people skipping work to gamble, of those already struggling financially overextending further, of rent and mortgage payments being missed, of people turning to crime to support their habits. Those that did seek help had to pay for sometimes-expensive treatment.
The clock is ticking to prevent another full-blown crisis, he said.
“If we don’t learn from what happened with the opioid epidemic and get out in front of this as fast as we can — and I think we are already behind — then we’re going to have a public health crisis,” Keenan said.
Nationally, the sports betting industry saw $13.71 billion in revenue in 2024, a record. The previous revenue record, $11.04 billion, was set in 2023, ESPN reported. A recent survey from Siena College and from St. Bonaventure University found that 22% of all Americans have an active online sports betting account. This includes 48% of men between the ages of 18 and 49. Most Americans support the legalization of online sports betting, but they also think that it should be better regulated.
In Massachusetts, gamblers quickly took to online sports betting. People here have spent almost $14 billion on sports betting since its introduction, with the vast majority of those bets being placed online.
Last year the state reported that its gambling helpline saw a 121% increase in calls, including a 41% increase in referrals to treatment and a 40% increase in calls looking for help for a loved one. But the line was also inundated with gamblers seeking technical help with their mobile sports betting platforms, not assistance curbing their habits. State officials attributed this to an increase in sports wagering advertisements, which list the helpline.
Although online sports betting is illegal for anyone under the age of 21 in Massachusetts, many have voiced concerns about young people evading age requirements and developing problematic gambling habits.
One particularly popular form of online sports betting are prop bets: wagers not connected to the overall outcome of a game or match. Instead, people can wager on individual pitches in a baseball game or individual plays in a football game. This can be highly addicting, Keenan said.
Prop bets offer an easy and quick way to keep a game interesting, even if it is clear that a wager made on the overall outcome of a game is not going to be successful. They also give bettors the opportunity to potentially win back what they lost on their initial bets.
“I’ve heard [prop bets] called the crack cocaine of sports betting. It gives that instant gratification, it triggers the same receptors as what crack cocaine and other drugs do,” he said.
Pushback
The Sports Betting Alliance, which represents DraftKings and other large sports betting operators, says that “alarmist headlines” obscure the fact that legal sports betting is well regulated and not a significant risk to underage populations. The organization points to studies that have found that problem-gambling rates have remained stable at 1-2% for decades, and that the recent legalization is not fueling addiction.
“Data shows that problem gambling rates remain low since the rise of legal sports betting, consumer protections on the legal market are stronger than ever, and that most people spend less per month on sports betting than they spend in a week on their morning Starbucks,” Nathan Click, a spokesperson for the Sports Betting Alliance, recently told The Boston Globe.
While that group says that increasing taxes on legal operators will drive bettors to use unregulated, offshore apps to place their wagers, Keenan disagrees. This has not happened in states like New Hampshire and Rhode Island that have enacted similar laws, he said, and he does not expect it to happen in Massachusetts.
While Keenan says he has received nothing but positive feedback on the legislation from constituents, he expects fierce opposition from the sports betting industry.
“Whenever there’s big money involved, they are formidable. They will do what they have to do to keep making the money that they’re making,” he said. “That’s what businesses do and that’s fine. But when businesses are peddling products that can become addictive and create havoc and ruin lives, there’s got to be some reasonable, common sense regulation.”
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