The Real Game We Are Not Watching

By Deborah Buhaj

March Madness looms. Millions will fix their eyes on glowing screens, phones in bars, tablets on couches and televisions blaring highlights. Once, the focus was the game itself. Now, for many, the focus is the line, anxiously waiting to see whether a bet placed minutes earlier will hit. Few realise that a much bigger game is being played.

A 22-year-old young man works two jobs and anxiously awaits payday. When his pay arrives, roughly $2,500 appears briefly as a string of digits on a screen. Within hours, sometimes minutes, it is gone. Not spent on rent, food or savings, but funnelled into a sports betting app. He knows he will lose. He has before. Even when he wins, the relief is fleeting. Seconds later, the winnings are placed on another bet, with the same result.

For a growing number of young men, a pressure is felt nationwide: to make big money, fast. Many are turning to sports betting apps.

The gambling industry has much to answer for. The United States sports betting market generated approximately $21 billion in revenue in 2024. Modern platforms use artificial intelligence and real-time behavioural tracking to monitor when users win, lose, hesitate or attempt to disengage. Losses are frequently met with targeted incentives designed to keep them betting.

This is not a neutral marketplace. It is a system engineered to optimise engagement and revenue.

Gambling addiction is insidious. As a behavioural addiction, it hijacks the brain’s dopamine-driven reward system and can be one of the most difficult to overcome. It is treatable, yet we are doing far too little to raise awareness, offer support and protect vulnerable individuals.

I am a clinical social worker and part of the UCLA Gambling Studies Program, where I treat individuals affected by gambling disorder. I have sat across from people whose lives have been dismantled socially, emotionally and financially. Some carry debts of $25,000. Others owe hundreds of thousands. A few owe more than a million.

The stakes are devastating. Gambling disorder carries one of the highest suicide attempt rates of any addiction, with research estimating that roughly one in five people affected will attempt suicide. I have worked with individuals who were actively suicidal because of sports betting losses. This is happening quietly, behind screens, often without families realising until it is too late.

Young men are among the most heavily targeted and disproportionately affected by the rapid expansion of sports betting. It is the college freshman who has gambled away his student loan. It is the 23-year-old whose fortnightly pay disappears into an app. It is the 27-year-old gambling his last dollar away in the middle of the night.

This is not abstract. It is unfolding in dorm rooms, apartments and bedrooms across the country.

The sports betting industry markets itself as harmless fun, woven into the excitement of the game and amplified by flashy advertising and celebrity endorsements. Yet this feels less like stable entertainment and more like 1995, when early warning signs of the opioid crisis were present but ignored.

The gambling industry and state gaming commissions must meaningfully invest in independent prevention, research and treatment at a level proportionate to the revenue being generated. The sports industry, which profits from this ecosystem, must also take responsibility. These billion-dollar industries cannot ignore the harm that unchecked growth can create for everyday people.

Silence benefits the industry. Investment in prevention and treatment protects people.