When Julian Katz made his last bet in 2013, the world of gambling was much more complicated. To bet on the big game, Katz had to go through a bookie who held his funds in an offshore bank account, circumventing laws that later banned digital gambling in most of the country, including Pennsylvania .
Today, easy-to-use instant sports betting apps are ubiquitous. Katz has vowed never to take them down, but that’s easier said than done.
Amid the onslaught of advertising for gambling apps, dubbed “casinos in your pocket” by gambling recovery experts, Katz said he struggles with temptation whenever he watches a Sixers or Eagles game, or most sports.
“Around the NFL playoffs, it’s really bad for me,” Katz said. “March Madness, really bad. The ads, the marketing that these online casinos do, they throw it in our faces.”
The 36-year-old Philadelphian is hardly alone. A nearly $2 billion-a-year nationwide marketing blitz for sports betting apps, sparked by a 2018 U.S. Supreme Court decision that legalized online gaming and brought it to Pennsylvania, is sparking a crisis for a new generation of people with gambling problems bombarded by TV and Internet ads, even billboards.
As the Eagles aim for the Super Bowl, recovery programs in the Philadelphia region are filled with clients struggling to avoid gambling apps, doctors say. They say most are young men overwhelmed by the ads that interrupt games and constantly pop up on their phones, often to dupe “no-sweat bettors” who promise to return lost money while encouraging more in-app bets.
“Gaming disorder was recognized as a full-fledged addiction in 2013, on the same level as heroin and opioid use,” said Harry Levant, who previously had a gambling problem and founded the Ethical Gambling Reform Group and offers licensed professional help to others. that they are fighting “When you have instant, non-stop access to an addictive product, people are going to get hurt.”
The legalization of sports gambling has brought an influx of advertising dollars, according to Eric Webber, a senior counselor at Caron Treatment Centers who works with problem gamblers in Pennsylvania.
Nationally, the gaming industry spent about $15.5 million on advertising in 2019, according to Webber.
By 2022, the industry was spending about $1.8 billion on gambling ads nationwide.
“Anybody with a phone, a laptop, a computer, everybody is affected,” Webber said.
Katz, who built a career as a licensed professional for problem gamblers, has stayed away from gambling apps by using skills he learned in therapy and signing up for the gambling registry of self-exclusion from Pennsylvania, preventing you from registering for applications.
Still, Katz said he struggles when football announcers talk about spreads and over-unders (popular betting results) at halftime.
“Basically, what I have to do is try to shut it down as much as I can,” Katz said. “I understand it’s there, I understand I’m seeing it, but I just have to process it and accept it and move on.”
For others like John, a Philadelphia native and South Jersey resident who asked that his last name be omitted because of a public-facing sales career, sports betting apps accelerated a decades-long struggle with addiction and they made the ads hard to ignore.
John began to struggle with gambling in high school, making increasingly large bets with his neighborhood bookie. He fell into a risky cycle, maxing out credit cards and taking out cash advances that at one point had lost him $40,000 in one month.
A year after the birth of John’s first child, sports betting became legal in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. John recalls the day he downloaded his first betting app and was surprised at how easy it was to use.
John immediately took to the app’s easy-to-use interface and seemingly endless betting options: how many rebounds Joel Embiid would grab, for example, or when Doc Rivers would call a timeout. Even more captivating was that the app linked to his credit card, allowing him to lose track of how much money he was playing.
John then downloaded others, which attracted his attention with flashy promotions.
With a new family to care for, John realized his risky behavior had to end and sought treatment last year. Today it has been more than three months without a bet. The apps are deleted from your phone.
But the pressure to play remains, as John, a die-hard Philly sports fan, roots for his teams.
John recently watched a Sixers game on TV where the announcers started discussing the odds at halftime. And when he went to an Eagles game at Lincoln Financial Field with his wife and friends, he was invited to the FanDuel Lounge, an all-inclusive two-story section of the stadium sponsored by the betting app. Although there are no betting kiosks in the section, members are encouraged to bet from their phones.
“It’s not easy,” said John.
Among colleagues at the recovery center, Webber said the conversation turns to the amount of gambling ads on television, even on the morning news. This is not surprising considering that large media companies have a stake in the industry.
Walt Disney Co.-owned cable network ESPN launched a major deal with DraftKings last year to capture the “younger, under-35 sports audience.” The Fox Corp., owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., has launched its own sportsbook, FoxBet, and has a stake in FanDuel, while outlets such as Sports Illustrated have lent their names to sports betting .
The Inquirer has gotten involved, partnering with sports media company Action Network and delivering betting odds directly to the website.
Jennifer Levitt, a certified gaming consultant with the Philadelphia-based Livengrin Foundation, said about three-quarters of her clients bet on sports or online casinos during the pandemic, when the shutdown of brick-and-mortar casinos coincided with the rapid launch of the industry.
Levitt was surprised to learn how much Pennsylvania was making from sports betting taxes, but a recent New York Times report on the industry’s advertising efforts blew her away. Caesar’s Sportsbook had signed multimillion-dollar deals with a handful of universities to advertise in their stadiums, campus meccas frequented by 20-year-old males, one of the groups most susceptible to gambling addiction.
“Once upon a time, you could see cigarette ads on TV, in magazines and newspapers, and they regulated it because they found it to be a known addiction,” Levitt said. “But [betting] Companies won’t come out and say that, because they don’t want people to stop playing.”
With gambling companies showing no signs of slowing their spending, advocates hope lawmakers can crack down on the industry’s advertising bombardment.
In Massachusetts, where Levant is pursuing a doctorate at Northeastern University, the Philadelphia-based councilor recently helped draft legislation that would include sports games as a form of misleading advertising, specifically when ads mention “sweat-free” and risk free bets.
These promotions invite players to sign up with the promise of getting their money back if they lose it. But in reality, Levant said, users don’t see cash back. Instead, they are awarded in-app credits to continue playing.
“If a player is sweating a bet in the first place, they have a problem,” Levant said.
And if the legislation passes, Levant said, players could take legal action against the companies running these promotions.
Still, Levant sees federal intervention as one of the most likely ways states like Pennsylvania can curb misleading ads. State-level restrictions are few, other than the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board’s requirement that ads include a toll-free number for addiction treatment.
Meanwhile, gambling ads continue to permeate the daily lives of recovering gamblers.
“Very funny, isn’t it?” John said in a message accompanied by a screenshot from his phone. It was an app he used to keep track of how much time he had been free to play. A marker read “90 days.” Above, a betting app ad, offering $1,000 in no-sweat bets.
