Dr. Rachel Volberg: Sports bettors and problem gambling
SciLine conducts interviews with experts and makes the footage available to journalists for use in their stories.
What is Experts on Camera?
Expert on Camera
Gambling on the NCAA basketball tournaments has become a multi-billion dollar business, raising concerns about problem gambling, which is twice as common among sports bettors as other gamblers.
On March 17, 2025, SciLine interviewed: Dr. Rachel Volberg, a research professor of epidemiology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. See the footage and transcript from the interview below, or select ‘Contents’ on the left to skip to specific questions.
Journalists: video free for use in your stories
High definition (mp4, 1280x720)
Introduction
[0:00:19]
RACHEL VOLBERG: My name is Rachel Volberg. My title is a research professor in the School of Public Health and Health Sciences at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. But I’m actually required by the university to also tell people that I am president of Gemini research, a consulting company that I established in 1992 to do gambling research projects very similar to the one that I direct at UMass. I’ve studied gambling and gambling problems and harms and the social and economic impacts of gambling since 1985.
Interview with SciLine
How has the gambling landscape in the U.S. changed since the federal sports betting ban was overturned in 2018?
[0:00:58]
RACHEL VOLBERG: So, I’m going to do a little bit of a history lesson because many of the people I talked to don’t really have a background in gambling studies at all. The PASPA—the act that was overturned by the Supreme Court in 2018—was actually passed in 1992, and it prohibited states from conducting sports betting. There was a later law that was passed at the federal level in 2006 which banned credit card companies from processing gambling transactions, effectively preventing online gambling in the United States. But interestingly, there was a carve out for fantasy sports betting because quite a number of congressmen at that time liked to engage in fantasy sports betting. In 2011, there was a law passed in New Jersey to legalize sports betting, and it took seven years to wind its way through the courts, and eventually, when the Supreme Court took the case, they overturned the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act in 2018, which opened the door to legalized sports betting being introduced by states. And in 2019, 10 states legalized, plus the District of Columbia. In 2020, there were only three states, but that was because of COVID. 2021, 10 more states. 2022, five more states. So, at this point, we’re now at 38 states and District of Columbia operating legal sports betting. So, you know, legalization of sports betting, I would say, is the most significant change in the gaming landscape since the 1990s, when casinos proliferated rapidly in the wake of the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, which was passed in 1988, and states followed up with—very quickly—with legalizing commercial casinos. They were also in the midst of budget downturns and federal restrictions on spending, so gambling was considered at that time a useful tool to increase revenues without increasing taxes. And I would say that legalization of sports betting has followed very much the same trajectory and reasoning, except even more explosively.
Can you discuss research on the effects of legal sports betting on individuals and families?
[0:03:42]
RACHEL VOLBERG: It’s important to understand that sports betting legalization, as it’s rolled out very rapidly across the U.S., has actually created a huge natural experiment in the country where changes in various social and economic indicators can be linked to legalization of sports betting in different states. So, looking at before and after and comparing states with sports betting to those that have not legalized, and this research has shown that there is a strong relationship between sports betting legalization and reduced household savings, increased credit card debt, especially amongst financially constrained households. Sports betting legalization has been linked to higher bankruptcy rates, higher debt collections, higher debt consolidation rates, and loan delinquencies. And last of all, sports betting legalization has been linked to rates of intimate partner violence.
Sports betting ads are everywhere. What do we know about the effects of advertising on gambling behavior?
[0:04:56]
RACHEL VOLBERG: So, there’s been a lot of research conducted. Reflected on the impacts of advertising generally, but relatively little work on the impacts of advertising on gambling behavior specifically. It’s also important to understand that advertising has undergone very profound changes since the advent of the internet in the 1990s. It’s no longer about print media or billboards or radio and TV broadcasting. There are now numerous forms of online advertising and marketing that have emerged since the internet, with very profound implications for the effectiveness of that advertising, as well as potential impacts on people who are vulnerable. So, one group that’s of particular concern is individuals who are in recovery from gambling problems and their susceptibility to relapse in response to very heavy advertising.
When it comes to problem gambling concerns, do the risks of smartphone-based betting apps differ from traditional gambling venues like casinos, racetracks, or sportsbooks?
[0:06:01]
RACHEL VOLBERG: So, we know that there is a correlation—that is a relationship—but we don’t know what the nature of the relationships. We just know that things move together. So, there is a correlation between the availability of gambling and rates of gambling problems. So, when you introduce a new form of gambling into a population, typically, you see an increase in the prevalence of problem gambling, as it’s called, the proportion of people who have a problem in a relatively short period of time. But for the most part, that research really only looks at what are called brick-and-mortar venues. So those are places that people have to go to, like racetracks or casinos, and just the simple issue of the availability of gambling when it’s available on a smartphone suggests that there probably is a much greater risk of over-involvement of time and money when gambling devices are available 24/7.
What is problem gambling?
[0:06:45]
RACHEL VOLBERG: There’s several definitions. The one that I use is an internationally accepted definition that basically distinguishes two dimensions of problem gambling. On the one hand, there’s the dimension of loss of control. People, because of the nature of their involvement, become unable to stop. So, loss of control is very important to understand. But the other dimension is what we call gambling harms. So, as people become more and more involved in gambling, as they spend more and more time and money with that or activity, they begin to experience, not surprisingly, financial problems, but also relationship problems. If they’re always on their phone gambling, or if they’re losing their temper because, you know, they lost a bet.
Are certain groups at higher risk for developing a gambling problem from sports betting?
[0:08:26]
RACHEL VOLBERG: We believe there are, and it has to do with groups in the population that have not had a lot of experience with gambling before they get very involved. So not surprisingly, one important group that is very much at risk is adolescents and young boys in particular. Another group is women. Typically, sports betting has not been something that women very frequently do, but there’s very heavy marketing to women to get involved in gambling, and they are not experienced necessarily, with sort of the variability and finances that comes when you’re gambling heavily. Other groups include immigrants, college athletes, and, most particularly, from my personal perspective, people who are in recovery from a past gambling problem are very, very much at risk of suffering relapse and falling back into behavior that was very damaging to them previously.
What is known about the economic impacts of online sports betting?
[0:09:47]
RACHEL VOLBERG: The economic impacts of online sports betting are actually very different from the impacts of casinos and other brick-and-mortar venues. Online sports betting companies are very large, multinational technology enterprises. They don’t employ large numbers of people. They don’t create a lot of jobs or associated wages that can be spent in the economy. They don’t purchase very much in the way of goods and services. So the main economic impacts of online sports betting actually are profits to the operators after they’ve paid out winners and their business expenses and tax revenues to the state governments that have legalized it. Those revenue, those tax rates typically are around 15 to 20%, so for the most part, the main economic impacts are multinational companies pulling money out of communities.
What percentage of revenue from legalized gambling comes from at-risk individuals or those with gambling problems?
[0:10:53]
RACHEL VOLBERG: We have quite a bit of research that addresses this particular issue. In Massachusetts, for example, in 2022 we found that the proportion of casino expenditure coming from at-risk and problem gamblers had risen from 77% in 2013, yes, to 83% in 2021. In a similar study in Connecticut in 2022, we found that 75% of all reported gambling expenditure came from three and a half percent of the adult population classified as at risk or experiencing gambling problems, and these individuals actually were more likely than the general population to be male, age 35 to 49, non-white, and with a high school or lower education.
