Name: Placing bets on Super Bowl Sunday? Here are some things to keep in mind | Terms of Service
Uploaded: 2026-02-05T17:10:25.000Z
Duration: 27 min 57 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Micro betting, same game parlays, make no mistake about it, are machine versus human.

I'm not saying whether it's good or bad, but

I am saying is the public has a right to understand what they're doing right now.

With the super bowl coming up, I wanted to talk about a tech trend that has absolutely exploded in the past few years, gambling on sports.

With apps like FanDuel and DraftKings, this has become a massive business.

Americans bet around $150 billion in total on sports in 2024.

And that means for individual betters, there can be serious money on the line, too.

I wanted to dig into how these apps work and their impact on users.

So a couple weeks ago I invited Harry Levant into the studio.

Harry is a gambling counselor and he serves as director of gambling policy with the Public Health Advocacy at Northeastern University, where he's working to bring public health reform and more regulation to the gambling industry.

And look, I think Harry would acknowledge this too.

We should say that the sports betting industry is not his number one fan.

They often disagree with his portrayals of their products.

The Sports Betting alliance, which represents five of the major sportsbook companies, says that it has more than 200 employees dedicated to responsible gaming.

He and that 93% of users report that responsible gaming tools help to manage their activity.

When I reached out to the companies for comment on this episode, a FanDuel spokesperson told me the company, quote, aims to set the standard for consumer protection by consistently surfacing clear, actionable information that helps customers manage their play.

They pointed to features on the app such as myspent, a dashboard that allows users to track their spending and manage their budgets and and Real Time Check in, which prompts users to reconsider if they try to deposit more money than they usually do.

DraftKings and BetMGM did not comment for this episode.

Also, a note for our listeners, this episode includes brief mentions of suicide.

If you or a loved one is struggling, we've included links to resources in our show notes down below.

So you are a gambling counselor, an advocate, a researcher, and this.

This work is born out of personal experience.

Talk to me a little bit about how you got introduced to sports betting and when you realized it had become problematic for you.

And you did list a number of the titles that I wear because you left off.

I made my last bet on April 27, 2014, and that night nearly took my own life.

In the grips of that gambling addiction, and

in the grips of my gambling addiction, I hurt a lot of people.

I had been a practicing attorney in Philadelphia for 23 years, 22 of them I remember fondly the last year.

Just obliterated by my gambling addiction.

I made my first bet, was a sports bet when I was 15 years old.

Obviously made my last bet when I was 50 years old in 2014.

But in February of 2015, I stood in a courtroom in Philadelphia.

I'd been a lawyer for more than two decades, but this was a very different day.

I was being sentenced for the financial crimes that I committed in the grips of my gambling addiction.

And on that day, in the presence of the court that I had betrayed the clients whose trust I had violated.

And in front of my own kids, with tears going down their faces, I made a very solemn promise and vow that if I could get well, I would dedicate wherever my future took me to helping prevent.

Prevent being the operative word, other people from suffering similar fates to gambling addiction.

Little did I know in 2015 that in 20 we'd be looking at everyone's cell phone being a full fledged sports book and in many states now a gambling casino.

Work led me in 2018 back to school to become a therapist.

And then in 2021, I was fortunate to be accepted into a doctorate program at Northeastern, where I earned a doctorate in public policy.

And my research focuses on how we're going to make this safer because it is completely out of control right now.

So it's interesting that you went back to school in 2018.

In 2018, the Supreme Court also struck down the federal ban on sports gambling.

Since then, 39 states, the district of Columbia have legalized it.

How have we seen the landscape of sports gambling change in just the last few years?

Very interestingly, in that opinion called Murphy versus the ncaa, Murphy being the then governor of New Jersey, Phil Murphy.

The Supreme Court specifically notes that Congress remains free to regulate this, but

if they don't, every state can do what they want.

39 states, district of Columbia, territory of Puerto Rico.

But more than that, the product has fundamentally changed since 2021.

In 2021, the NFL led the way by coming up with a business model to sell its real time data to the gambling industry.

This launched something called micro betting and same game parlays and prop bets at levels we had never seen before.

It's a fundamentally different and inherently dangerous new form of gambling product.

And we've also seen the emergence of all of these apps, as you said, where people can bet from their couches.

How has that changed sort of the prevalence of using and participating in sports betting because people don't have to go to a casino to do this.

It's been completely normalized is the word that I use and understand that.

We have known as a matter of science that gambling is an addictive product.

Just like heroin and opioids and tobacco and alcohol and cocaine, but with every other addictive product.

Think about them for a minute, people watching this podcast, every other addictive product.

Government seeks to regulate the advertising, the distribution, the promotion, the speed of consumption.

As you point out with your question, with online gambling and apps immediately accessible on your phone, state governments have become a partner in speeding this up.

So what we have, we have normalized and now we deliver a known addictive product at light speed in partnership between the gambling industry, the sports leagues, media and the tech companies.

And people have in their palms of their hand this addictive product.

It's quite different and it's quite dangerous.

Do we have any idea how common addiction is in this sports betting world?

That's probably the single most asked question that I hear and I respectfully want to rephrase it a little bit because from a public health perspective, we don't want to wait until people are addicted.

So respectfully, I believe the question is how much harm is taking place.

And we don't have studies on that yet because this product is so new and still developing.

But what we do know, both from heavily peer reviewed research from Europe and research that's finding its way here, that for every person who struggles with a gambling issue, eight to 10 other people in their orbit are also suffering gambling related harm.

So it's not how many people are addicted, it's how much harm is taking place in the country.

And it's a much, much bigger number than the gambling industry suggests.

So the great misnomer here is that gambling addiction only causes financial harm.

Financial harm is just the tip, the iceberg that you see sticking out of the water, harm related to gambling disorder, anxiety, depression, co occurring, substance disorder, housing security, loss of job, loss of career, loss of educational opportunities, significant rise in domestic violence, bankruptcy filings, foreclosures, obviously loss of finances and loss of.

The correlation between gambling addiction and suicidal ideation is greater than any other addiction.

One out of every two people who struggle with gambling will contemplate suicide.

One out of every five will make an attempt.

Subtitles ListPlay Video

Placing bets on Super Bowl Sunday? Here are some things to keep in mind | Terms of Service

episode

struggle

approach

individual