Chasing the Winning Horse: The Current State of Sport’s Gambling
- Eugene Zinchenko
- 3 days ago
- 6 min read
In the United States alone, sports betting generated nearly USD 14 billion in revenue in 2024. Gambling ads and logos now saturate many major sports broadcasts, while clubs and leagues sign multi-million dollar deals with betting companies. How did gambling become so entrenched in sports, and why is so little being done to address it?
Manufactured Addiction
While gambling has long been part of society, the methods sports betting companies use to recruit and retain customers are far more accessible and aggressively marketed. All the while, they face relatively light advertising oversight. The US sports betting market saw rapid expansion, rising from USD 260 million to over USD 10 billion after the 2018 Supreme Court decision to lift the federal ban on sports betting. Similar trends can be seen in Europe. A combination of limited regulations and aggressive advertising resulted in the European sports betting market having a current value of over EUR 30 billion.
The timing and content of advertising also matter. A high proportion of sports betting advertisements are shown during the sports games themselves. During recent NHL championship broadcasts in the United States, viewers were exposed to gambling logos and ads 3.5 times per minute, with some references appearing every 13 seconds. Furthermore, various celebrities like LeBron James or Steven A. Smith have participated in advertisement campaigns, promoting online sports gambling to their fans. Even if a sports viewer manages to avoid all this noise and tries to watch a Champions League game, they will still not be safe. This is because various teams, like Inter Milan, still display a sports betting company brand on the front of their shirts right next to their club’s badge.
Sports and sports betting are becoming increasingly intertwined, making it difficult to think of one without the other. A person who loves and watches sports will not be able to escape sports betting promotion, no matter how hard they try. This is made even worse for people recovering from gambling addiction, as every time they try to watch their favourite team play, they are exposed to the temptation again. The sports betting agencies have a direct interest in keeping their most loyal customers on the hook. For instance, at one online gambling company, less than 1% of users reportedly generated 70% of its profits. Agencies use various tricks to both retain and attract customers. They will run promotions like rewarding high spenders through VIP programmes, gifts, and other perks. For new customers, companies offer deals like a first bet free or matching the customers’ first bet. Yet, a “free” or bonus bet usually means that they will reimburse you in site credit so you can make another bet, not actually allow you to withdraw money from the platform. Meanwhile, sports betting apps will constantly bombard their customers with notifications and reminders, creating a sense of fear of missing out on the next big bet that can change their fortune.
The temptation created is so strong that even professional athletes can not ignore it. Newcastle midfielder Sandro Tonali received a 10-month ban for betting offences in Italy, while former Toronto Raptors player Jontay Porter was banned for life by the NBA after an investigation found that he had limited his own participation to influence bets on his performance. Both players stated that gambling addiction, rather than monetary gain, was their main motivator for placing those bets. Cases like these show how deeply betting now permeates sport itself, including among the people who are supposed to protect its integrity. It is not a surprise that ordinary watchers find it so difficult to resist the urge to continue betting.
An Offer Too Good to Refuse
The NBA has an official sponsorship deal with multiple authorised gaming operators. In Europe, gambling sponsorship is also widespread. Almost half of the top-flight leagues across the EU and UK have a gambling or lottery title sponsor, while two-thirds of clubs have at least one betting partner. Even in wealthier competitions like the English Premier League, every club had a betting partner in the 2024/2025 season. If sports betting can be so harmful to both players and fans, why do clubs and leagues agree to these deals in the first place?
The main motivator behind this is money. In smaller leagues like Bulgaria’s top division, more than two-thirds of all clubs heavily rely on betting sponsors to avoid bankruptcy. For big leagues and clubs, betting sponsors constitute a large part of their revenues. Real Madrid, for example, has an official betting partnership with operators such as Codere and SportyBet. In Germany, 15 out of 18 Bundesliga clubs have gambling partnerships. When national regulatory agencies seek to prohibit or limit sports betting advertisements on player shirts or gambling advertisements in general, league officials often oppose such restrictions because of the lost revenue involved. When Spanish authorities tried to ban gambling advertisements, the head of La Liga claimed the move would cost La Liga USD 90 million in lost revenue per year. In Italy, a similar law was actually passed, but clubs found various ways to avoid it. They would display news, entertainment, or adjacent sub-brands linked to betting companies in order to bypass the restriction. Right now, Italy is planning to scrap this law as the officials argue that the ban has hurt Italian clubs financially and weakened the league’s competitiveness.
The clubs, leagues and sports betting firms have a perfect symbiotic relationship. The firms provide much-needed revenue for clubs and leagues, which allows them to grow. In turn, the popularity of the sport increases and with it the number of people exposed to it. The larger audiences then also expand the number of people placing bets, allowing betting firms to make even higher profits.
Wider Economic Consequences
There have been various attempts, both in the USA and Europe, to regulate sports betting advertisements more. The top betting firms in the industry try to deflect any responsibility by stating that regulation is unnecessary and that people who are likely to gamble will do so anyway. Some industry leaders even claim that people have a smartphone addiction, not a gambling addiction, overlooking the fact that making gambling more accessible means more people are likely to get addicted. Governments also sometimes move slowly because sports betting provides a significant source of tax revenue. In 2025, New Jersey alone collected more than USD 225 million in online and retail sports wagering taxes.
Thus the case for the legalisation and normalisation of sports betting is not entirely weak. Governments can argue that a legal sports betting market is easier to tax, regulate and monitor compared to an unregulated betting market. Legalisation can generate public revenue, support local sports’ infrastructure and enable the gambling operators to be better supervised. This leads to a possible conclusion, that the issue is not the legalisation of sports betting itself but the fact that governments, including the US, legalised it without creating proper restrictions to limit social costs.
The costs of this are immense. There is clear evidence that more and more people are betting on sports, and the monetary amount of those wagers is growing as well. In the USA, sports betting firms’ revenue, as mentioned before, has grown exponentially. The number of calls to the hotline for people suffering from gambling addiction has also risen sharply in the US, with a reported 45% increase in calls between 2021 and 2022 alone. Young adults, especially young men, are disproportionately likely to bet on sports in both the U.S. and Europe. There is not only the immediate social and economic strain placed on the immediate family and friends of a person suffering from a sports betting addiction. There are also the wider economic costs imposed on society. Researchers in the US have found that states that legalised sports gambling saw decreases in monetary savings, increases in credit debt and credit card defaults. People suffering from gambling addiction also find it difficult to effectively function in society. They may require medical and mental health support from professionals, which will cost taxpayers money. Yet these calculations rarely enter the heads of owners of top clubs, top leagues, betting firms or even local governments, all of which look to maximise their revenues. For them, as long as their own numbers look right, they can overlook the wider picture and the costs they impose on their constituents or most loyal supporters.
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