It's late in the fourth quarter. Your team is losing, but that doesn't matter anymore. You've got a prop bet on the quarterback's completions, a live bet on the next field goal, and another game starting in twenty minutes. When it's over, a friend asks, "Did they...
Profit Over Protection: What a ProPublica Investigation Reveals About Sportsbooks and Problem Gambling
On the morning of this week's Sunday Project, Marc Lefkowitz sat down to breakfast with nine men in gambling treatment. Marc has worked in the gambling field for more than 30 years and has been in his own recovery for over 43. He asked each of them the same question:...
Collecting or Chasing? What Parents Need to Know About Card Collecting and Gambling
Your son loves Pokémon cards. Or baseball cards. He watches YouTubers open packs, talks about "hits" and keeps asking for money for one more box. It looks like a harmless hobby and for many kids it is. But for some, collecting has quietly turned into something closer...
Faster, Smarter, Harder to Stop: How Betting Changed
Gambling used to come with built-in pauses. A bet placed before kickoff was fixed until the final whistle, three hours later. At the track, there were 25 minutes between races. Betting again meant waiting for the next game or the next race and that wait was a chance...
The Questions Parents Should Be Asking
Your son seems anxious. Maybe low. His grades are slipping, he's always on his phone, he's pulling away from friends. Money keeps disappearing and he's asking you for more. You might put it down to depression, ADHD, or just a hard patch. Marc Lefkowitz, who has worked...
When the bet isn’t on the game any more
On 5 September, LeBron James posted a 14-second video: an elevator, its floors labelled sports, politics, crypto, economy. With it, he became Polymarket's first athlete partner. Money has orbited LeBron James for a long time. He was the first active NBA player to be...
“We Are Broken”: The Families Carrying the Hidden Cost of Sports Betting
Parents ask themselves: What did we miss? What did we do wrong? And then the harder questions: Should we pay off his debt? Are we helping our child, or are we helping the addiction? This week's SBS discussion opened with ESPN's feature on Amit, a University of...
The Addiction With No Track Marks
An estimated 170 million Americans may have gambled before they were legally old enough to. Most of us never saw it happen. Every other addiction leaves a mark somewhere. Alcohol shows up on someone's breath. Drugs show up in dilated pupils, in weight loss, in the...
An organization built for a smaller problem
The National Council on Problem Gambling is the closest thing the United States has to a national body responsible for gambling harm. The problem it's responsible for has grown enormously in the last few years. The organization itself has not grown to match it — and...
$2 Million Doesn’t Buy Independence: What Kalshi’s Donation to NCPG Really Tells Us
Kalshi has just donated $2 million to the National Council on Problem Gambling, badged as a “financial trader health and safety initiative.” On paper, it looks like responsibility. Look closer, and it raises more questions than it answers.